I have Googled bovine menopause on the Internet. I found hundreds of thousands of references for bovine, hundreds of thousands more for menopause, and nothing for the two words in combination. I did however find one scientific treatise detailing how hormonal changes associated with aging in women were similar to those experienced by cows. The bovine model is thus an appropriate one for further research and analysis into aging in human females, the paper said. Now that is an interesting thought.
I lift the cat off my lap and lower myself back onto the ground. The flashlight still has enough juice to let me see—just—the far end of the corral. I search for Greta, a twelve-year-old purebred who has elder status in the herd even though she is not this year in calf. Dave wanted to sell Greta last fall. A lifespan of thirteen or fourteen years is optimum for domestic cattle; he thought it was time for her to go. But our daughter Susan pled to keep the animal on the farm one more year and Dave relented. After only a few moments, I find the cow standing beside the water trough.
Cows that fail to conceive, such as Greta, are called dry cows. It seems an appropriate word. Sex is wet. Childbirth is wet. What better choice for a lack of either than the antonym.
Years ago Susan wanted to set up a retirement home for cows, bulls, and 4-H steers. A place where the pastures were lush and green and where water ran freely. A place where old age could creep up on them so slowly and softly they would welcome its soothing touch. A kind of bovine heaven on earth.
“It’s a nice idea,” Dave said at the time. “But where would you get the money to feed all those geriatric animals?”
Economics, the enemy of philanthropic foolishness. Not to mention youthful dreams.
One cow, a solid red colour except for the white blaze on her forehead, walks towards the fence. This cow’s name is Annie. They all have names. Annie stops a few feet away and sniffs in the direction of my mittens.
“That’s right, girl. Come smell the old lady,” I say, extending my left arm. Annie backs away at first, but as the outstretched hand remains in position, she edges closer. Her wet nose touches the fabric of the mitten.
“See, Annie, you know me,” I say. With my right hand, I pat the animal’s neck. A second cow comes forward and then a third.
“You all want attention, don’t you? I guess this means it’s time for me to get back to work. Come on, girls, let’s go.”
Indeed I have spent too much time out here already. Dave might wake and, finding me missing, come out to see what is taking me so long. He might hear my words and I know with the familiarity that comes from thirty-plus years of marriage what he will make of it.
“Do you know what menopause is?” he will ask, the expression in his eyes belying the tone of his voice. “It’s hot flashes, mood swings, and women talking to cows.”
He’s behind the times. It’s post-menopause, not menopause. But as long as he doesn’t talk about facial hair, I will forgive him.
~ Susan ~
Carol had her baby on January 23, a little girl as expected. In the hospital the next afternoon, I found my friend nursing her daughter in a bedside armchair.
“Mommy love,” I laughed as I placed the pink flower arrangement I had brought alongside three others already there.
“You’ll see,” she told me. “I had no idea what it was going to feel like until I had my first one. Although,” she went on, as she moved her new baby from one breast to another, “there are apparently some women who don’t feel that way.”
“Really?” I asked. “I thought it was instinct that we love our babies.”
“There are exceptions. Perhaps some women are just not cut out to be mothers. Or there could be other factors at play—depression, for example—which interferes with the normal bonding process.”
I had never thought of that. I worried about being a good mother, never that I wouldn’t love my child. It came as a shock that there was any question about it.
Suddenly I felt incredibly stupid. I didn’t have a clue what I was getting myself into. Watching Carol position the baby’s mouth more securely around her nipple, I felt panic rise inside me. How the hell was I going to pull this off?
Carol and Bill named their baby Samantha, which amused me since that is our cat’s name. But it reminded us that we had better get thinking about a name for our own child.
I found Lachlan in my book and suggested it to Glen.
“It’s Gaelic, means land of the lakes.”
“Sounds kinda out there to me,” he said. “How about my dad’s name? Joseph.”
“But then we’d have to call him Joseph David or David Joseph. We couldn’t just name the baby after one grandfather. It would have to be both.”
I had already looked up David in the name book, of course. It means “beloved.” And Joseph means “God will increase.” Apparently our fathers are biblically blessed.
My mother-in-law, too. Joan means “God is gracious.” Only my mother’s name has no religious undertones; Sandra is a feminine form of Alexander and means “defender of men.” Or “unheeded prophetess.” I thought she would prefer the latter.
“And what if it’s a girl?” Glen asked.
“Good question. I don’t know.”
For some reason, my mind couldn’t settle on a girl’s name, couldn’t even settle on the idea of seeking a girl’s name. I would open my ancient name book or search for modern equivalents on the Internet, but somehow always ended up in the male section. Wishful thinking? Psychic powers? Was there a little penis in my belly making itself felt?
When people asked me whether I wanted a boy or a girl, I told them that it didn’t matter to me. Traditionally, I suppose, farm families blessed the arrival of a son since sons would carry on the family business. Sons were a way of ensuring the work would continue. But that’s not quite true anymore. Look at my family. Two boys and neither of them are farmers, at least not full time. The man’s role has changed, no longer protector and provider, the new role not yet certain.
Yet girls still have to fight for our place at the trough and we can fight dirty. I think it is because as soon as there are two of us in a room our hormones start competing. Our periods synchronize; ever notice that? And it doesn’t matter what the difference in our ages might be; the mother-daughter thing means nothing in biology. Perhaps that is subconsciously why I would prefer a son. So that I can have one of those special mother-son bonds, instead of one of those complicated mother-daughter ones. I think that mothers and daughters spend whole lifetimes trying to figure out what they want from each other.
Maybe if I were one of those women who couldn’t wait to dress her daughter in pink frills, it would be different. I’m not one of those women.
I think that Glen would make a good dad for a little girl, though. Father-daughter is special. I want that for him and for our daughter if we have one.
EIGHT
My name is Susan and I am in labour. I am eight centimetres dilated.
Focus. Things that come in eights. Legs on a spider. Hot dog and hamburger buns. Sides on a stop sign. Crayons in a box, a standard box. Hours in a good night’s sleep. Legs on an octopus. Behind the eight ball. Pieces of eight. A figure eight. A magic eight ball. A card game called Crazy Eights. An eight turned on its side is the Greek symbol for infinity. Who would want to do this over and over and over again?
Lynne and I went for lunch one day in early February. I had come into town for a doctor’s appointment.
Lynne looked awful. I don’t think I had ever seen her on a bad hair day before.
“What’s wrong?” I asked after we had placed our orders.
“He’s moving in with another woman,” she said.
I took a few moments to absorb this news.
“That was quick,” I said.
“No, you don’t get it. He was planning it all the time. That’s why he left his wife.”
&
nbsp; “So you weren’t the ‘other woman’ after all? You were the other ‘other woman’?”
Lynne started to cry and got up from the table. She walked towards the washrooms.
I had recently seen a movie about multiple other women, all of them ganging up on the man who had juggled them successfully for a surprisingly long time. It was a comedy but I knew Lynne wouldn’t find any humour in the reference. I was still trying to figure out what to say when Lynne returned, her features composed once more. At the same time the waitress arrived with our salads.
“I feel so stupid, Susan. Here I was thinking he left her for me, when it wasn’t me at all. I was just a diversion while he got his ducks in a row for his life with someone else. I was actually thinking about leaving Brian.”
That would have surprised me six months ago. It didn’t now, although I am not sure she would ever have gone through with it. Thinking about is different than doing.
I don’t remember falling in love with Glen. It was a slow slide rather than an abrupt descent. Before we were lovers, we were friends and we shared a love for the farm and our animals. Being with Glen has always seemed right to me, as if we’re two jigsaw pieces with interlocking edges. We fit.
“So what are you going to do now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I would like to yell and scream at him. I want to tell his new woman what he was doing. I wish I had never met him.”
If Lynne did make a scene, if she told the new woman that her man had been a bad boy, what would be the cost? Had she left a husband, too? Were there other women? How many families were implicated? It was too complicated for me. Give me my cows any day. They may not be monogamous but they don’t have to worry about ethics either.
The mature cows had started calving earlier that week. The night before my lunch date with Lynne, I had gone out to the barn in time to witness a cow placidly consuming her placenta, calf resting on the straw beside her.
Occasionally, a cow might not eat her placenta, but most of the time she does. Not sure why. Perhaps she is just hungry and it is conveniently nearby. Perhaps it contains some nutrients that she needs. I’ve read that it might be a way of hiding the evidence of the birth, some primordial defence mechanism against predators, which might smell the newborn. But maybe it’s just instinct.
When I was taking my business administration course in Winnipeg, I met a girl whose cousin had adopted a back-to-the-earth lifestyle in Hawaii. She married there and had a child. Part of the birthing ritual was a ceremony in which the placenta was buried in a sacred space. The family back in Manitoba was shocked.
I understand there are cultures in which cooked placenta is considered a delicacy. I also understand that placenta, both ruminant and human, is used in the cosmetic industry. I am not tempted by any of it, although my squeamishness seems silly to me.
I was squeamish about a lot of things; I blamed it on the pregnancy. Glen shot a magpie one morning and the bloody streak across a snowbank made me gag. Glen was proud. If you know anything about magpies, you know that they are not easy to shoot. This was the first time he had ever managed it.
Magpies are pests. They feed on manure and the insects that can be found in manure. They also forage for ticks and other insects on the backs of domestic animals. They pick at open wounds and scabs on the backs of livestock until they create a much larger wound that may eventually become infected and, in some instances, even kill the animal. Like ravens, magpies may peck the eyes out of newborn or sick livestock.
To add insult to injury, they steal the dog food right out of the bowl and they are quite brazen about it. That’s what did this one in.
But they are striking birds, especially when the black of their wings appears an iridescent blue and green in the sunshine. Nature gave them good looks to balance their bad behaviour.
We hadn’t seen as many magpies this winter as we usually do. In fact, local birdwatchers who had participated in the annual Christmas Day bird count reported lower numbers in many of the species that are commonly found in the area. One theory was that there were fewer birds because there were fewer cattle and therefore less grain pickings for the birds. There would also be less grain to attract mice. The fewer the mice, the fewer the predatory birds like owls and hawks.
The last decade has been hard on cattle producers and many have sold their herds. They’ve given up. Perhaps someday science will point the finger at cattle farmers for reducing their herds and lowering bird populations as a result. When we sell our animals, we take down the welcome sign for the birds. On the other hand, if we keep our herd or add to it, we get called on everything from methane gas production to e-coli contamination. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t. I’m getting paranoid.
I just want to take care of my animals and feed people.
We got a late night call on Valentine’s Day.
“Your grandmother died,” Dad said.
Dad’s mother was eighty-eight years old. She lived in her own home until she was eighty-three and then moved to a senior’s facility in town. She had had a massive heart attack that evening.
Grandma, I’m sorry I never liked your name. My name. I would take that back if I could. My regret is sharp and surprising.
Mom came home when she got the news. She loved Grandma. They could easily have been mother and daughter. I’m not sure I will ever feel the same way about my mother-in-law. Wish I could. It would be nice to have two mothers.
Sam flew home, too; Dad drove into the city to meet his flight the day before the funeral. Grandma always called my youngest brother “Little Sam,” even when he grew taller than both Dad and Jon. I guess the babies of a family are always babies in some ways. And Sam was very fond of Grandma. Not that all three of us weren’t fond of her, because we were, very much so. It’s just that Sam seemed to have a special relationship with her.
Grandma never intruded even though we pretty much lived in the same yard. She respected boundaries, although she would never have phrased it in those words. She was different than Grandpa, whose definition of boundaries stopped at the fence line. Grandma never gave her opinion unless it was requested; Grandpa always gave his whether it was requested or not. In fact, he was twice as likely to voice it if you didn’t want to hear it.
Grandma had told us often that she wanted a traditional burial. Grandpa was buried in a coffin in one of the local cemeteries, and she would be, too. She feared cremation because of the possibility that she could still be alive when the furnace doors opened. It was one of the few things my very practical grandma could be irrational about. She had her reasons. When she was a child, she had heard stories about scarlet fever victims in New Iceland who slipped into a deep coma and were pronounced dead, only to revive a day later. She told us about ropes that extended from the coffin to a bell on a pole beside the grave so that the revived corpse could alert the community. I’m alive, I’m alive. Get me out of here! Cremains cannot shout. Therefore she preferred to remain a corpse. There were many holes in this argument, not the least of which being that a body emptied of all bodily fluids and filled with formaldehyde wasn’t likely to shout either, but Grandma vigorously defended her position.
It was a large funeral, standing room only in the United Church in town. In movies and on television, you watch funerals at which the mourners number less than ten. I find that alien and sad: alien because I have never been to a funeral that small and sad because, I’m not sure why. Perhaps because so few people mark the end of someone’s life, although surely that life intersected with more than eight or nine others. Where is the family? Where is the community? What would it be like to be so alone?
There were many people at Grandma’s funeral whom I did not recognize, even though I suspected they might be related to me. There were others who were not family, but who had come home to reconnect with community members as they mourned the loss of one of their own. In many ways, it was like a reu
nion, a way of solidifying even temporarily the bonds of blood and shared history.
We sang “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling” and “The Old Rugged Cross,” the old standbys as my mother calls them. Actually that’s what Grandma was. An old standby.
She had been pleased to learn that I was pregnant. Motherhood, she believed, was both a woman’s duty and pleasure. Sex, on the other hand, was weighted more on the duty side. “Your grandfather liked it,” she said once, as if accepting him in bed was akin to cooking his favourite meal, a favour for the man she lived with.
Oh Grandma, I miss you. I don’t know how you lived with Grandpa all those years without some of that cantankerousness rubbing off on you.
Dad’s oldest sister gave the eulogy. Dad has three sisters and he is the youngest in the family. There was never any doubt that he would eventually take over the family farm. This was an era when daughters were never considered farmer material, even though if they married one, they would be expected to do all manner of farm chores.
Things were different now. It’s just as likely to be a daughter as a son who wants to farm. But parents cannot afford to give the farm away and children cannot afford to pay what it is worth. When Dad decides to quit, the farm will most likely be sold.
In the eulogy, my aunt talked about Grandma’s skills as a farmer’s wife and mother. Why are we always defined by our relationships with others, I wondered. If anyone deserved to be valued for herself, it was my grandma.
When I was younger, we had a collie at home. I found her one day on the side of the road lying in a pool of vomit, motionless but still alive. She died a few minutes later. I had never seen anything or anyone die before. One minute she was our dog, the next she was something that resembled our dog but yet wasn’t. I didn’t know how to explain it.
Later Dad said he thought she must have eaten something poisonous. I ran to Grandma’s house and thrust myself against her. “My dog is dead,” I cried.
The Waiting Place Page 8