I call them the Gang Of Four. They will all be shorn during the Bedlam Farm Open House on Columbus Day Weekend, here at the farm. These four are a formidable presence here now, they are almost always together, but have joined the flock and generally stick with it.
Red has them in hand, although they are grumpy and independent. Imperious would be a good word. When I approach with my camera, they all stand and stare at me, as if daring me to make trouble. They don’t even bother to glare at Fate, they just ignore here. And their wool is amazing.
I was thinking of my daughter all day, remembered the first days and weeks of exhaustion and chaos, mixed with moments of joy and wonder. She told me that Robin is waking up every hour, looking to be fed. She said her first day home with her new daughter she felt like they had gotten hit by a freight train, but in a good way.
I know what she meant. In two days, I will head to New York City with Maria, I’ll get a look for myself at this new arrival in my life, this granddaughter. She looks to be the essence of peaceful, but I know better. That piercing cry, coming day and night.
Emma estimates she’s had about six hours or sleep in four days, we won’t be staying long, but maybe we’ll be able to help. We’re coming and going in the same day.
I’m great at changing diapers and if it isn’t too soon, will love to take Robin out for a stroll. I’m bring two cameras and two lenses, if I can get the first fine portrait taken of Robin, that will be a contribution that will make me happy. I’m told her hand is blond.
A friend of mine wanted us both to write a bit about why he supported Donald Trump and I did not, I told him I couldn’t really do it, the issue is too personal, for me, too close for me to argue it in a thoughtful or reasoned way. Or to kid about it.
I think my grandmother Minnie is the reason why, and this week, just days after the birth of my first granddaughter, I am thinking about grandmother love, and whether or not there is guidance for me in my extraordinary relationship with Mindel Cohen.
A cousin sent me a photo of my grandmother that I had never seen before, she is on the left next to her cousin Rose.
My grandmother’s Yiddish name was Mindel, her American name was Minnie. Our barn cat, Minnie, is named after her.
I loved my grandmother very much, she fled the persecution of Jews in Russia, along with the fortunate members of her family. Everyone there, she told me, wanted to come to America, because they knew they might be free and safe. Life was harder here, the streets were not lined with gold.
My grandmother was a proud and very strong woman, she raised three daughters in a small flat in Providence, R.I. and worked brutish hours in a small Mom and Pop store in the Jewish neighborhood there. My grandfather and she took turns running the store, she seemed to overpower him.
On Saturdays, she walked me a mile or so into downtown to the spectacular and gilded RKO Theater to see the latest comedy film. She loved Charlie Chaplin and W.C. Fields, but her favorite was Jerry Lewis.
Minnie Cohen did not understand ten words of English, but she howled and clapped all through every Jerry Lewis movie, opening her purse to pass out an inexhaustible supply of tootsie rolls, red dots, licorice and chocolate coins. And guffawing in her throaty Yiddish.
I can still hear her shrieks of laughter and the crackling of the chocolates and tootsie rolls.
Every time a police car passed by on our walk to or from the theater, she would push me into a doorway and throw herself in front of me. If the police came for me, it was clear they would have to get through her first. I never could convince her the police were not going to come for me, she never stopped throwing herself in front of me whenever a police car came by.
My grandmother was a first-generation immigrant, but she was a tough and determined woman, she guarded her family fiercely, she understood the horrors that sometimes lurked in the world. You could come to America, but you could never leave the other world. She could not bear to speak of it.
America was the promised land, she said, but sooner or later, she warned, they would come for the Jews, they always did. That was the history she lived and was taught. Once in awhile, we would watch TV and she loved to laugh at Lucky and Ricky and spit at the set if Richard Nixon appeared. She thought he was an evil spirit, a dybbuk.
She thought America was a miracle, you could actually come her and make a life for yourself and your family.
When I was sick, I was dropped off at my grandmothers, she would take me to a spare bedroom, turn up her clanky radiator, swatch me in blankets and mustard plaster, hot water bottles and boiled towels and sweat the poisons out of me. I could hardly breathe in there, but I could feel the fevers boiling right out of me.
When I was permitted to stagger out of the room, soaked in sweet and red as an apple, there was always milk and pie and candy, to reward me for surviving.
My grandmother, who called me “My Johnny,” loved me as much or more than any human being has ever loved me, and her love sustained and nourished me through some of the darkest days of my life. This week, I’ve received hundreds of messages from mothers, daughters, grandkids, and grandmothers, talking about what it means to be a grandparent, responding to what I wrote about it.
Only two of the letters came from men. And lots of men send me messages.
The archetype, the stereotype, the mythic figure of grandparent love seems to be a woman, even though I know many men make wonderful grandparents and love their grandchildren completely. My granddaughter is only a few days old, and I am going to see her on Thursday, and I wonder if my grandmother is a role model for me.
Is that what I should be to Robin?
I think not.
The world has changed so much since I went to the movies with her. My own culture was limited to a squeaky transistor radio and some comic books. I had plenty of time to wander and spend with her, our trips to the movies were the most exciting things I was ever permitted to do for many years. And I spent hours sitting with her and watching the primitive TV of the time. I can’t imagine sitting in her kitchen and trolling through an Iphone while she cooked.
I was freer to wander along on afternoons and weekends, nobody knew or cared that I often took the bus to grandma’s house and sat with her while she cooked lunch or dinner, or went to help out in her store. I doubt my granddaughter will ever wander around Brooklyn by herself, or hop a bus to spend time on my farm.
My grandfather was a small, sweet man who lived very much in Mindel’s shadow, he did as he was told and stayed quiet. There was no question who was boss, he often secretly turned his hearing aid off to spare himself her scoldings.
When I wanted to run away from home, it was easy enough to make my way to my grandmother’s house, I don’t think my granddaughter will have a life anything like that. I could stay as long as I wished and eat whatever I wanted. No one cared. And then there was the fact that Mindel spoke little or no English. I couldn’t talk to her, she couldn’t talk to me, not in words but that made her love and my trust all the more intense and obvious.
We always found a way to communicate with each other, and because I had to pay close attention, it seemed to mean more.
We talked in hugs, smiles, laughter, in the munching together on the sweets that were hidden all over her small apartment. Our dialogue was our great affection for one another. Whenever she saw me, she handed me a paper bag filled with the shiniest pennies – sometimes a silver dollar – that she had saved for me in her store. Each penny was hard-earned but she saved the best ones for me.
My granddaughter Robin’s life will be nothing like mine, not in New York City, not in 2016 or beyond. Children have powerful new devices to amuse and distract them, they have little time to wander around a city and find their grandparents so they can hang out with them.
Minnie would be utterly astonished and bewildered at the modern life of a child, the ways in which they are supervised, their phones and pads, the fearful and claustrophobic ways in which they are raised. The helicopter moms and dads, the pressure they are under.
I think I learned more wandering around Providence by myself and hanging out with my grandmother than I did in all the years I went to school.
My grandmother did teach me about the power of love, I remember almost nothing of my childhood and rarely speak of it, but I remember every detail of her proud and expressive face and her cramped and stuffed apartment, and her funky old TV with its rabbit ears, and our walks to the movies and our time sitting at the TV and spitting at Nixon.
How she would have hated Donald Trump. His hair alone.
How sad that he has made the glory of immigration into such a nasty and fearful thing. My grandmother never raped anyone or took anybody’s job away, she worked like a demon every day to make her own life, and to encourage me in mine.
I always understood that if it weren’t for America, my grandmother would almost surely be dead, they eventually all did come for the Jews, and killed millions of them. I suppose that’s what make it all personal.
I never quite understood what she said to me, and cannot remember many of her words, but she spoke in the universal language of love, I knew she thought I was special, and so, in many ways, I thought it might be true. In the photo, I see her eyes, they said everything that needed to be said.
She gave me permission to be special, she taught me not to care what others think.
I think there is magic in love, it is a universal language, and I know that children understand it, and that it alone can mean the world to then. They need it. I don’t need to take Robin places or fly her to Disney World or make her the centerpiece of my emotional life or visit her every month.
I just need to communicate the idea of love to her. And trust. I hope to create some lasting memories of me in her consciousness.
If I can convey to her that she too is special, I will give her the same gift my grandmother gave me. The rest will have to follow and reveal itself. The donkeys will help. I imagine someone growing up in Brooklyn might see this farm as a mystical space. Or maybe it can’t compete with an IPad. We’ll see.
Our world has changed, and grandparent love will evolve, it will come to mean something relevant to its own time. Minnie’s spirit will always hover over me, inspiring me to be loving and open. She will be sitting proudly in her chair, looking the camera in the eye.
I will be sitting in my big stuffed movie chair with Mindel watching all of this unfold, the crinkling of the paper around our tootsie rolls rising above our laughter.
Deer occupy a curious place in the animal-human universe. The monk and writer Thomas Merton thought they were profoundly spiritual beings, he sat in his hermitage watching them for hours. Many people love their simplicity and intensity. Others hunt them and many find them pests – they are called the rodents of nature.
They routinely savage crops and flowers and many panic at the sight of humans and their cars and are often killed on roads. We have hit and killed two. They were here first, of course, it is us who invaded them. They do not ever look for trouble, they often find it, beset by human trucks, developments, hunters and by coyotes, disease and starvation
I respect the many good hunters. They are in many ways, the best friends of the deer. They cull their herds, kill them humanely, respect them for food.
They are understandably terrified of humans, they rarely seem to come to terms with them. We know people who feed them every day and get close to them, I do not believe it is ethical to feed undomesticated animals, and treat them as pets. I think that kills many more animals than hunters do.
I come down somewhere in the middle. I admire their beauty and the sometimes idyllic sight of them grazing in misty fields, but although they have long lived among humans, they have never really been domesticated or come to terms with their invasive and destructive neighbors.
This beautiful doe touched my heart, she was trapped in our fences today, she was throwing herself against the fence so intensely I was afraid she would break a leg or trap herself, then there would have been no alternative but to call the police and have her killed.
Our border collies have no interest in sheep, neither Red nor Fate gave her a second look, for which we were grateful. That would have made a bad scene a lot worse. I wished the doe would trust me a bit and let me open the gate, but the very sight of me sent her into a panic and I stayed back. When she came running in my direction and past me I took her photo. Otherwise, we were not near one another.
Finally, she jumped over the fence and got to her mother.
Maria loves deer, she believes they are beautiful and peaceful creatures. I see that, when you pay attention to them, they are lovely. I wanted this doe to get back with her mother, who was hiding somewhere on the other side of the fence.
We humans are the most destructive species on the planet, only dogs and cats and horses and donkeys (and some elephants) have figured out how to survive among us. Mostly, they do it by tricking us into thinking they love us unconditionally. The deer have not figured that out yet.
There are always stories on a farm, no two days are ever alike, and the animals challenge us constantly to alert, humane and informed. This morning, we awoke to find a doe trapped in the dog run behind the house, she was frantically throwing herself against the fences, especially when she saw the dogs (we didn’t know at first that she was there, fortunately border collies have no interest in running down a deer – if it can’t be herded, it is of no use to them).
Somehow, she had gotten in, but couldn’t get out.
First, stay calm. Second, don’t make things worse. We opened the dog gate into the pasture – she was frantic, throwing herself against one fence after another – and then withdrew. We were afraid if we got close, she would jump the outer fence and run into the road.
We remembered that she and her mother live out behind the far pasture beyond Lulu’s Crossing, towards the back of the farm. Maria went out and opened the side gates and the gates to the back pasture, I went out to get on the far side of her and steer her towards the open gates.
She ran back and forth and then, as I held my arms out, she managed to jump over the back fence, right where she and her mother usually hang out. We were sure the mother was nearby watching. We were grateful we had the dogs we have (and not Frieda) and we are calm and steady in animal emergencies and dramas now, we have had enough to be seasoned.
It all ended well. Usually, if they can get in, they can get out, but this young doe was throwing herself against the gates (even before we came out, we could hear) and could easily have broken a leg. Sometimes, deer don’t see fences or understand them. Another morning at the farm.
