The work of...

This last week both my children have been travelling. My son from his university near Christchurch in the south of New Zealand up to the eastern tip of the North Island for a summer job. My daughter from Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory where she has been working as a locum vet, back to Coonamble in north-west NSW. In the quiet dark I measure the impossible distance from their childhood bedrooms to their present selves.

Occasionally, in a moment of sentimentality. I go to their rooms, pick up a book from the shelves and sit in their reading chairs. Please understand I am not sad, instead I think of the lines of a May Sarton poem, The Work of Happiness¹.

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day 
And how it is not sudden and it is not given 
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.

Meanwhile (I do love the heavy lifting of that phrase), every day, three times a day (at least) for the last few weeks, I have walked over to the sheep yards to continue a conversation I have been having with a ewe about adopting a lamb.

Happy Ever After: ewe and lamb from last week’s Sit Spot

J had found her, a fluke really, he’d been checking wethers and saw her in the bush. She was cast, a huge lamb stuck. He pulled the lamb, it had been dead for a while, and brought the ewe home to get her going again. She came good and though she didn’t have a whole heap of milk I thought I would put a crossbred lamb (an abandoned twin) I’d had on the bottle for a couple of weeks, onto her².

From the beginning, the lamb was delighted.

From the beginning, the ewe wasn’t.

Three times a day, and sometimes overnight, I would lock the ewe in a small space and the lamb would suck as if his life depended on it (which it did) almost lifting her into the air as he butted her udder, begging for her milk to be let down. Afterwards I’d top him up with a bottle and let them both out into a grassy yard. There the ewe would ignore the lamb. She would pull at the grass, drink from the bucket of water and get on with the business of living. Over the days and then weeks, I would watch for any sign of connection. There was none. She wouldn’t even flick her ear at the lamb as it bleated to be fed. Often I have had ewes adopt this position, never have I had a ewe resist for this long.

I felt sorry that her determination had met mine. It’s you or me, I’d say to her, and I’d prefer it to be you. As we progressed she quietened. She would see me coming and walk into the small yard with little protest. But she still refused to acknowledge the lamb, still kicked it, butted it, trampled it. The lamb was not put off. I watched it growing. I congratulated her on her increased milk supply.

Meanwhile, (that blessed phrase), my children found their way. My daughter sent a photo of her operating on dogs in 40 degree heat, her surgery, makeshift, under the shade of a veranda. My son sent a message to say he’d arrived safely, wicked spot, work starts, 5am.

May Sarton’s poem goes on

No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring. 
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark, 
But the tree is lifted by this inward work 
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering. 

This week, things finally changed in the three-way conversation between the ewe, the lamb and me. At first it was a moment where the ewe glanced back at the lamb when it called. Then (think days later) all I had to do was stand in the small grassy yard, corner her and she would let the lamb feed.

Today I watched them from a distance. The ewe stood, chewing her cud, as the lamb knelt on its knees beneath her udder, then she tilted her head, glanced back at the lamb, nudged its twirling tail and let her milk down.

I walked home from the yards, the light a golden shawl around my shoulders. I sent a message to my son: How was your first day? Then I sent a message to my daughter, let me know when you get to Walgett.

While I waited for their replies, I come to my study and read Sarton again, For what is happiness but growth in peace, The timeless sense of time….I let me fingers drift over the dictionaries my father gave me, then over tail feathers from a red tailed black cockatoo and river stones gathered from the creek bed. I brush these talismans lightly and sit down to work.

MM

Reading

This glorious essay by novelist Yiyun Li, on grief, writing and gardening (via another favourite newsy, Sarah McColl’s Lost Art). Then I fell down a David Hockney rabbit hole. Two reviews, one eviscerating, one not. Both of them have me wanting to go and see the exhibition. While we are on reviews. Here is Catriona Menzies Pike being brilliant on Richard Flanagan’s new Question 7. Whether you agree with her or not, we need this sort of fearless reviewing. And here is Tara June Winch being deeply moved and writing powerfully about the same book. Make of that as you will. Then there is The Menopause: Nina Stibbe on weeing (can’t wait for her new book, I will be listening), Lucy Cavendish on being 50 and Melissa Chadburn on being enraged. Jessica Defino, of The Unpublishable newsletter, who I love for her rage and incision, has a new beauty agony aunt column, Hey Ugly. Her first column tackles Botox. She’s good, she’s very very good. And for you knitters, Shetland Island Wool Week - apparently when tickets go on sale, it’s like a Beyonce concert. And finally, my friend Jessie Cole’s essay On Art as Love, has been shortlisted for the Woollahra Library Digital Publishing Awards. If you haven’t read it, do. And if you love it you can vote for it in the people’s choice award here.

Listening

Dark Angel via Lindsay Cameron Wilson. I very much enjoyed Charlotte Wood talking to Michael Williams on Read This, about her new novel, Stone Yard Devotional. It sounds stripped back, interior and utterly fascinating. I can’t wait.

Doing

Moving sheep. Wishing for a rain.

Have a good week Sitters xx

1. May Sarton, The Work of Happiness, full poem here.

2. Lamb milk is expensive and raising crossbreds as pets is a fools game, so by far the best case scenario for everyone was for this ewe to adopt this lamb.