Hope is a muscle

After days of wind, blessedly, there is no wind. The world unfolds. Out of the long grass a pair of native hens usher their just hatched chicks into the wildness. Under the elms, two herons conduct a stately courtship. Across the bay a conversation of gulls floats. Amongst all this I make up Belle’s breakfast, scooping pellets into a bucket then carrying it to the tap and as the water streams, I watch the river, fat with high tide, the morning so peaceful it almost hurts.

I only have James and Errol for company, this is because Joan has become a mother.

Puppy with a dose of side eye from Joan (who hates having her photo taken)

On Saturday night she was uncomfortable, panting and whining, though there was no sign of her labour starting. I got up a couple of times to check her. I had a bad feeling. Our quick dial vet consultant had warned that if Joan only had one pup (which we suspected) she might not go into labour and would consequently require a cesarean. She explained¹ - and look, I’m going to tell you too, because how interesting - the way a bitch’s body is kicked into labour is because her puppies start releasing stress hormones. They have run out of room and nutrients. The environment, which has nurtured and grown them is no longer a place of safety. To survive they need to be born. But if there is only one pup, then the risk is that the pup is too comfortable. And sometimes (quite frequently it turns out) they don’t release enough stress hormone to make the mother notice they need to be born. So they hang around, a little bit uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough.

And indeed, this is what happened with Joan.

At 7am on Sunday morning we noticed she had some green discharge (green = not good) and looked at each other, sighed and rang the after hours vet. By 9.30am the vet delivered by cesarean section one enormous and very beautiful corgi puppy. A very good, if expensive, result.

I wondered if Joan would take to becoming a mother, after all the whole thing must have been a little mysterious. One moment she is deeply uncomfortable. The next she wakes up groggy and with a foreign creature needing her for its survival. She’s a dog. She hasn’t agonised over whether she will have a viginal birth or a C section, she hasn’t done any research, been influenced by trends or lawsuits, she’s just been pregnant and then not. The vet gives her an injection of oxytocin, the hormone which had not been triggered naturally in her. I place the pup in the front seat in a box and Joan in the back seat (where she promptly goes to sleep) and drive them home.

When we get home I put the puppy in her box, and I encourage Joan to hop in. The hormone is working. She’s interested in the noises its making. I put it by her nose and she licks it while it follows its instinct to the deep warmth of her belly. I help it onto her teat and then stroke her head and tell her she is a good dog. It snuffles and sucks, kneading its tiny paws into her not very full teats. Over the next few hours she becomes a creature transformed. She settles herself around it, her only purpose to nurse that puppy. And she’s been nursing ever since. I give it a supplementary feed in the middle of the night because she doesn’t have much milk, and I check them every two hours, but she is still, nursing and licking and nursing.

*

In the aftermath of the reckoning in America, I follow a link to a Krista Tippett essay on hope. It was written in 2020 in the midst of the trauma and chaos of the pandemic and the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. She said:

“I should say that hope for me is distinct from idealism or optimism. It has nothing to do with wishful thinking. It is a muscle, a practice, a choice: to live open-eyed and wholehearted in the world as it is and not as we wish it to be. We are strange creatures. We mask fear with rage, and despair with violence. Growth is always messy, never linear. […] I know that in life and society, wisdom emerges precisely in those moments when we have to hold seemingly opposing realities in a creative tension and interplay: power and frailty, birth and death, pain and hope, beauty and brokenness, mystery and conviction, calm and fierceness, mine and yours.”²

*

Later J and I sit in the sun with our coffee. On the bank below the garden the mob of sheep are in various states of ecstasy. Some chew their cuds, others tilt their heads, opening their throats to the warmth. The air barely moves. Magpies patrol the lawn, busy, busy feeding their babies. Down by the river there’s another clutch of native hen chicks following their parents. In such peace I’m thinking about hope being a muscle and about how Tippett considers it a practice, and a choice to live wholeheartedly in the world that is, not as we wish it to be. I want to bury my head in the sand over what is happening in Palestine, in the Ukraine, in America. But Tippett’s words remind me of how often change and growth, both as a culture and as an individual, come about because we are uncomfortable. The lesson is there in the natural world, but it’s still not an easy thought.

mmx

Poem of the Week

Against Resilience, James Crews³

We are not blades of grass that can 
bounce back after being stepped on, 
or foam pillows slowly returning 
to our former shape, having been 
pressed down one too many times. 
We must lie flat on the earth for now 
and stay with the breaking, resilience 
and repair not possible just yet. 
And though we may appear lifeless, 
defeated, like a tulip bulb in winter, 
let others be fooled as a new kind
of fuel fills these veins, gathering
power inside us again. 

Other things

Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals audiobook. Gold. Though I know it pretty much wordperfect after reading it every school holidays from the age of ten, it’s perfect listening escapism. If you haven’t already read Brandon Taylor’s most recent essay on his substack Sweater Weather…well, it’s a hard recommend. It’s ostensibly about addiction, but it’s much more. Need something quiet and meditive for 9 minutes? Watch this incredible animation Wolf, Wolf, You are Home by the Far Woods, based on the story of Wolf OR-7 and his journey from Oregon to California.Last week I became a little obsessed with the art of Judith Scott after reading an article written by Katy Hessel on the relationship between twins, Joyce and Judith Scott. Judith, who had Down’s Syndrome and was deaf, was placed in a series of institutions from the age of seven. After 35 years her twin sister Joyce brings her home. She enrolls her in an innovative art studio for people with developmental disabilities. Judith does nothing except show up for two years and then after a fibre workshop with a textile artist she starts wrapping things. The art is extraordinary. Here’s a BBC interview with Joyce if you are as fascinated as me.

Have a great week Sitters, I’m off to do some painting of my study walls.

1. Obviously this is my version of her explanation and there may be a few key points missing…

2. Here’s the whole essay in Orion, Spring 2020.

3. I took a screenshot from my online friend L’s feed and then found him on insta. L posts excellent poems and I’m always grateful. (follow James Crews here)