Saving Simon

by Jon Katz

  The farm had seventeen acres, enough land so we could walk around in the woods on our own property, but not too large for us to handle. And it was near Cambridge, a small town we both loved with a food co-op, a diner, and a great bookstore. The farmhouse had been built in 1849 and still had its original wonderful woodwork, as well as big, airy rooms. It was perfect for us.

  Standing by the side of the house in that moment, I understood why I had stopped to photograph Rocky so long ago. He had called me to the farm, drawn me there. A magical helper, doing his work.

  We called Kristin the next morning and told her we were interested. The first thing she said was what about the pony? If we reached an agreement on the house, would we keep him?

  Of course, we’ll take him as well, we said. Of course we would.

  He was the reason we were coming to live there.

  SIXTEEN

  The Triad

  When we decided to sell Bedlam Farm, we had three donkeys, two barn cats, two hens and a rooster, three dogs, and a part-time pony. Three of these animals—Simon, Red, and Rocky—converged on my life at the same time and were particularly powerful creatures. I often felt I was living in the middle of this almost mystical triangle. These three animals were connected to one another in ways that would further challenge and deepen my ideas about mercy and compassion. Together they taught me so much about how animals can heal and change a human being—me.

  All of my time on Bedlam Farm, all of my dogs, all of my experiences—lambing, sickness, loss, sorrow—had led me to Simon, and he had led me further along the path. The paths we were walking were not really metaphorical at all; they turned out to be quite literal experiences.

  If not for Simon, I would never have been open to Rocky. If not for Simon, I would never have been open to a stranger e-mailing me and telling me that God wanted me to have a border collie from Ireland in search of the right home. And for almost all of my life, I would have laughed at the idea that I would want a blind thirty-three-year-old Appaloosa pony.

  However, I was no longer simply acquiring animals because I had the space, or because something in me was using animals to work out issues best dealt with in other ways. These were considered decisions. I felt as if these three animals came to me for particular and important reasons. And all of them had to do with my idea of grace—of living a more compassionate, considered, and meaningful life.

  Simon continued to settle into the life of the farm. In most ways, he was now the dominant presence there. Before him, it had been Rose, the no-nonsense border collie who ran a tight ship and watched my back.

  Simon was the largest animal on the farm, and as his body healed and he attached to us, he became a charismatic presence. He was not only the biggest animal; he made the most noise. His bray was getting louder and more raucous by the day and could be heard for miles down in the valley.

  He was a celebrity now, in his own right. For years, people would come to the farm seeking a glimpse of the dogs, hoping for a photo with them. Now they were looking for Simon.

  One day, he and I were walking down the road when a minivan with Pennsylvania plates pulled up. Tourists, I guessed. A woman rolled down the window and stuck her head out. “We’re looking for Bedlam Farm, and we’re lost. Can you help us?” I thought she was kidding at first. I was standing in the road with a donkey, but she was seriously lost.

  I pointed up the road at my big barns and began to tell her who I was when one of the women behind the driver suddenly screamed, “Simon! That’s Simon!” The doors slid open and five or six women with point-and-shoot cameras hopped out and started taking photos of Simon, who was soaking it all up, happy to be scratched, petted, and fussed over.

  After they got all of their photos, they jumped back into the van and announced they were heading to nearby Manchester, Vermont, to do some outlet shopping.

  “Oh,” said the driver, waving from the window, “we love you too, Jon.” Thanks, I said, amused, and Simon and I walked down to the waterfall at the bottom of the hill.

  Rocky had entered my life in a different way. I felt he had summoned me. I knew the reason now, or at least part of the reason: to meet Florence Walrath and to find our new home. He was taking care of her beyond her death, settling her estate. Florence wanted someone to buy her home who would keep it mostly as it was and fix it up a bit. Rocky made it happen.

  He also brought Maria and me to something we both wanted—a place to make a home together. Rocky also taught me about communicating—how to talk to a blind animal, how to listen to one. If the donkeys were intuitive, Rocky seemed mystical to me, sometimes literally coming right out of the mist to make his way to the gate, guided by my voice.

  And then Red. Red is the dog I have been waiting for my whole life, and I have had wonderful dogs. He and I just fit like hand and glove. Red is never far from my side. When I go to a morning meditation gathering in my small town, he clambers up the stairs with me, greeting the meditators. He lies down when the first bell sounds and doesn’t move until the final one rings. When I sleep, he is at the foot of my bed. When I write, he is lying by my feet. When I am cooking in the kitchen, he is waiting by the door. He goes with me on the morning chores, gathers the sheep, and keeps them away from me while I take hay to the feeder.

  He had entered my life through the powerful portal of the human-animal bond. A dozen times a day, I look at him and smile, in the way of people who love their dogs and who are lifted up by them.

  There is always a reason why somebody loves one dog over another, why some would only get a rescued pit bull and others never would. Why some want a small dog and others a large one, some a mutt, others show dogs. There were reasons I had a neglected donkey, a beat-up border collie, and a blind Appaloosa pony in my life. Each had affected me. Simon broke loose some long-buried emotions in me, triggering a series of openings that spread into my life far beyond him. Rocky appeared to guide us to a new chapter in our lives, and taught me fresh lessons in mercy and compassion. And in Red there came the lifetime dog, the spirit dog, the dog to walk me through life, cheer me on, work with me, and inspire me in so many ways.

  With three such animals, anyone’s psyche, emotional construction, and innermost feelings were bound to change. Because of them, I met all kinds of people. I was herding sheep again, greeting visitors in the barn, sharing images of them with people all over the world.

  This was a powerful triangle, and I was right in the middle of it. In the following weeks and months I would come to see clearly that these three animals were, in fact, connected to one another, and all three of them were connected to me.

  I have long studied the human-animal bond. I wrote a book about it, The New Work of Dogs, and spent some time at the University of Kentucky talking with attachment theorists. I’ve read the pioneering work on animal fantasies and attachments from Dorothy Burlingham and Anna Freud and followed the writings of John Bowlby on the ways in which infants do or don’t attach to their families and to other living things.

  I know that our feelings about animals are deeply woven into our own emotional histories. It is hard for human beings to look back into our own lives to understand why we love the animals we do. Animals are mirrors of our own psyches and emotions; they are reflections of our needs, wants, and experiences. There is a reason we think animals are cute, trustworthy, or unconditionally loving. I have learned that if you watch a woman on a horse, a man with his dog, or the passionate people of animal rescue, you are watching mirrored reflections, psychological videos if you will, of each human being’s own potpourri of emotions—how they were treated in their earliest years, stories of nurturing, of soothing, of connection both good and bad. Our relationships with animals are reflections of us.

  I have known this for some time, and in my own life, I understand that when I am speaking to an animal like Simon and decide to tell him about something so critically important and seminal as the death of my mother, then something is happening that has little or nothing to do with
the animal, except perhaps that individuals like me sometimes trust them more than people.

  My mother was a complex woman—not, I have come to see, unlike her youngest son, me. She was creative, anxious, restless, and manipulative. She was, she felt, defeated in her many ambitions by hostile or unsupportive men, including her husband, my father.

  My mother always wanted more than she had, always wished for a different life. She ran a classy gift shop in Providence, an art gallery in Atlantic City during our brief time there, and was hostess of a vegetarian restaurant near Brown University back in Providence toward the end of her life. My mother always wanted to dance, to dress up and kick up her heels, but was married to a man who never wanted to dance or kick up his heels. They just didn’t belong together.

  She took out her frustrations and loneliness on her children, especially my sister and me, and we’ve spent much of our lives recovering. I loved my mother dearly and she loved me, but her relentless hostility, neediness, and many demands made it impossible for me to be near her for much of her life. She never saw any of the homes I lived in, and I would not let her anywhere near my daughter.

  I mention this not to belabor my difficult childhood or to get even with her. I know she did the best she could and she gave me every one of the gifts that I have in life, including my love of storytelling, which she encouraged in me every day. But if there was a reason I was talking to a donkey on a country path in upstate New York, opening my heart up to him as I related one of the deepest wounds in my life, it was her.

  People who struggled for connection with their mothers are the most likely to turn to animals for unconditional love and connection. Animals are safe and constant, and because they are dependent and can’t speak, they are empty vessels, containers into which we can pour anything we wish.

  This is where nurturing, memory, and need all collide. With Simon, I could be a mother and a brother. I could do for him what I wished had been done for me. I could give the very things I had needed and wanted so badly.

  On one of our evening walks, I began to tell Simon the story of my mother’s death. She had fallen on the floor of the bathroom in a residence for the elderly and was found in the morning when she did not appear for breakfast. They say someone filled her casket with flowers, a stranger. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had never told that story to anyone, not even Maria. I had never even permitted myself to think about it. My mother traded in guilt, that was her currency, and I could never think of her death without being nearly overwhelmed by it. Had I known she was dying, I would have rushed to see her, and I will always regret that I did not.

  I am sorry to tell you, Simon, I said, that I did not see her for some years before her death, did not even know where she was. No one in my family called to tell me. Perhaps they thought I didn’t want to know or would not care.

  Simon was listening to me carefully. I could see his big ears swivel toward me, his round brown eyes looking at me. With Simon, I never feel he understands the words, but I always feel he knows what I mean. And when I am with him, I can say things I can’t say to any human being. It just wouldn’t come out right.

  My mother was a beautiful woman, Simon, and she loved me very much. She taught me to tell stories, and she laughed at them and convinced me that they were wonderful. After she died, they sent me a scrapbook she kept filled with stories and photos and clippings of me and my work.

  I found myself on the path telling Simon the story of my mother, and as it came out, I realized I was finally coming to terms with feelings I had never spoken out loud.

  My mother’s dreams ended when she lost her hostess job, when the owner, her dear friend, died of cancer. After that, she lost her iron will and finally surrendered to the strong tides of life.

  It was like that for her. She kept breaking out and the world kept rounding her up and sending her back to jail. It drove her mad, Simon, made her crazy and angry and hurtful, and I could not be around her at the end of her life. I wish I could have been. I loved her dearly, but I couldn’t. People are like that: they make these decisions for all kinds of reasons they don’t always understand. Their lives are not instinctive and orderly like donkeys’ lives. I am sorry I did not get to say good-bye to her, Simon. A man should say good-bye to his mother.

  Of course, Simon neither understood the story of my mother nor cared about it. I admire donkeys and respect their intuitiveness, but animals do not, I believe, relate to this very human world of emotions—do not waste their time on guilt, regret, envy, or hurt. This was all about me. What was important about it, what was significant, though, is that Simon did bring it out of me, did get me to tell it, to speak it out loud, to consider it.

  I realized after our walk that I had work to do. Two weeks later, Maria and I drove to Providence. We found the cemetery where my mother and father are buried and on a cold, bright winter day, we found the grave markers.

  Life is ironic. My mother and father were almost never together in life, but there they were, side by side, together for all time. Maria stood with me, then left me alone.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said. “I want you to know that I am sorry about us. I love you very much and I know you love me. I forgive you for anything that needs to be forgiven. I have found someone to love and am very happy. I just want you to know that and to say that I’m grateful for the many gifts you gave me. I wish you had been happier in your life, but that was never up to me.”

  I felt as if a poisonous cloud had left me and was swept by the wind through the old Jewish cemetery and away. Wow, I told Maria, I see what they mean about donkeys. Look what they can do for you.

  Did Simon want to help me forgive my mother and move on—something that was decades overdue? No, I think not. Did he sense there was some feeling inside of me that needed to come out? Did he smell it and feel it instinctively? Yes, I believe he did, and if I had done him a great service in bringing him to my farm, he more than returned the favor.

  Because, I asked myself, if I could feel mercy and compassion for this beat-up donkey, why couldn’t I feel it for my own mother, who fought desperately for a meaningful life and simply could not figure out how to find one? In her bitterness and rage, she hurt a lot of people, and a lot of people, including me, hurt her back. If I couldn’t feel compassion for her, then what did that really say about me?

  When an animal guides you, emotionally and spiritually, it is not an obvious thing. Rather, they open doors indirectly, and then a domino effect sets in. They open up one part, and that experience opens up another. This was, in many ways, the lesson of Simon, his legacy.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Move

  We bought Florence’s farm and were committed to moving into our new home by Halloween of 2012. I’ve moved a lot in my life, always hiring movers. They’d come to the house, stuff everything in big cartons, and then unstuff them when we got to the new house.

  That was a long time ago, another world. We had little money to put toward the move, but our friend and carpenter Ben Osterhaudt, who did so much work on both Bedlam Farm and our new farm, said he would get a buddy with a trailer and move us in an afternoon. In the meantime, Maria and I began the first of what seemed like a thousand trips hauling stuff to our new home in our Toyota Highlander.

  The new house was much more intimate than Bedlam Farm: spare, less grand, but beautiful in its own way. We couldn’t take but half of our stuff.

  We talked about many things while we prepared for the move, but we were especially excited at the thought of Simon, Rocky, and Red living together on the same farm. With Lulu and Fanny there also, and Maria’s small herd of sheep, Rocky would finally have his herd, Simon and Lulu and Fanny their permanent homes. Red would have the life he deserved, and Rocky would have his Seeing Eye dog.

  Simon would have an equine buddy. We both loved the image. When you come out of a tough and painful divorce, as Maria and I both had, your sense of family is shattered. The animals were healing for both of us, and the idea of ou
r moving and re-forming in this cozy new peaceable kingdom was very much in our heads.

  We researched the animal move and planned it like a space launch. Ken Norman, our farrier, would move the animals. The donkeys first, then the sheep. It is not so simple to move donkeys where they don’t want to go, and none of our donkeys thought getting in a trailer was a good thing. We had done it once with Lulu and Fanny, and they almost took the barn—and the trailer—apart. Ken was big and strong and would throw a rope behind their rear legs and pull. Once he got them near the trailer, he would simply get behind them and shove.

  At our new farm, we had Ben build a pole barn right off the big barn. It was a cost-effective way to shore up the big barn and provide shade and shelter for the animals. The barn was cleared out, so now there was a stall available to house Rocky in bad weather. We built a skip barn—a portable sheep barn that could be moved back and forth—in the sheep pasture. We ordered two hundred bales of hay from Nelson Green, considered the best hay maker in the county.

  I ordered two heated hoses. Our budget didn’t allow for a frost-free pump right then, so I hatched an elaborate plan to install an outdoor frost-free faucet, attach it to the heated hose, and run it outside to the barn behind the farmhouse.

  We hired a tractor to clear the brush and some other workers to clear the pasture of debris. We ordered two truckloads of gravel for the feeding area by the barn.

  We also talked to two large-animal vets, some farriers, and several friends with horses to ask them how we could best acclimate the donkeys with Rocky. Rocky’s blindness meant he couldn’t really defend himself from the usual jockeying, bumping, and biting that went along with equine introductions.