Goat
A Free Written Draft When Tired
(Yes, that’s an excuse from collapsed self-esteem)
1.
The new kid goat ran loose in the big field at the bottom of the farm, the odd child out, alone among my uncle’s sheep. As I carefully climbed over the electric fence he spotted me and ran to greet me, his eyes filled with more joy and excitement than I’d even have expected in the face of a goat. I walked towards him and he sprinted towards me. Just a child. Innocent. Full of trust and thrilled by the possibility of friendship. We met and I held out a hand but he brushed into me demanding first a cuddle then a game. We chased each other, embraced each other and though a goat cannot smile I imagined him with a wide grin across his face.
That evening my uncle expressed pride and happiness in the goat. “He’s a keeper. The children in the village can come and see him and we’ll almost treat him as family. It’s rare to find a goat that affectionate.” And so we drank tea from the cracked, olive green pot that had been my great-grandmother’s and ate extra slices of my aunt’s bread and her fruit loaf.
As dad drove us home I fell asleep thinking of the kid and how I could be more free with him than with my family or myself.
2.
We returned to the farm a few months later. I was eager to meet my friend again.
He was no longer my friend. No longer anyone’s friend. My uncle told us that this miracle of an animal wouldn’t come close to anyone. Not any more. One night he had got stuck in a fence so badly that in his struggles to escape he had bent both horns backwards. My uncle had to rescue him but the rescue caused immense pain and the horns had to be removed totally afterwards. Now the kid goat was terrified of people. No longer a friend he couldn’t be kept. My friend would be sent to auction and the abattoir.
I decided to save the goat. Befriend it. To sit quietly until it could learn to trust again. So after lunch I went and sat in the big field on an upturned plastic trough. The goat was there. Sitting. Far away, staring at me, looking like it would rather spit on me than be loved.
I sat. Silent. I sat. Called gently. Slid myself down to the grass and waited with one hand outstretched. Waited. Almost crying for his fear.
Slowly, slowly he got up. Slowly, more slowly he took steps towards me. Paused. Took more steps until he was six feet from me. He sat down again and stared at me. I called. I talked in words he wouldn’t understand. In a tone he perhaps might. I sang lullabies and he stood again and ever so slowly, inches at a time, he approached. I held out a hand and he touched it before backing away, then came and touched it more.
By the time I walked away we had embraced. Perhaps we both cried that day.
My uncle was impressed. Surprised too. He didn’t think that goat would ever again approach a person or allow a human touch.
3.
Another season. Another visit to the farm. Another chance to spend time coaxing a goat back to confidence.
I didn’t get that chance. He refused to be near anyone else. The decision made, he was sent for slaughter.
I wept.
A couple of hours on one day will not restore what trauma stole.
4.
There is no slaughterhouse for me. No death penalty for my trauma though I could have sentenced myself many times and mostly did not want to continue living.
Others in this crowded mind held the memories for me. They hid them so well that I could not believe I was ever stuck in fences or had my horns wrenched from me. Then they hid themselves, ashamed of what we are and what we endured. Perhaps they will never tell me the story of my life.
A couple of hours on one day will not bring restoration.
This is the work of years. Mostly a work of survival not of liberty.
Pieces of the darkness are gone. Fragments of the past are remembered. I live, we live, in radical self acceptance as a woman.
Yet I know this:
Razor cuts sever these eyes:
You would have to wrench them
From the actor’s façade
Before the black hole left behind
Could contain the tears she cannot face.
5.
I thought of the goat tonight. The first time in many years. He could have been saved with a healer’s patience. Mostly I have to save myself.
This memory tonight, after the joy and light of Skimstone. I had to leave quickly, half-way, for my health and did not tie a message onto a barrier that can be broken. No message of what I would do tonight, in the next days, years. No message of the changes, the intentions, the dreams. Nothing of how to seek life in more abundance, how better to “live adventurously.”
As I left I knew my message: To return to writing and so combine seeking silence in my meditation with seeking words, intentional words beyond emptiness or the sudden outpouring of wisdom and foolishness, mostly foolishness, that I offer on social media to be unread and forgotten. Mostly I am unseen now. Writing must return. I cannot yet face the morning pages but I need to find a way. I deserve it, to see my creativity as meaningful again.
Skimstone is a place full of wounded goats. The vulnerable. The marginalised. The hurt and the hurting.
The goat had two hours with someone who was, on that day, a healer.
Skimstone doesn’t give two hours on one day. It gives commitment.
Skimstone restores the kid goat to become what it always could be.
I see this every time. Even at an AGM, something which in any other place is a mix of the blandness of limbo and the pain of purgatory but which here is an expression of joyous gratitude and excited vision.
Skimstone is the turning towards humanity.
