It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Transition: The Last Weekend

The last weekend.  For ten years, I have spend anywhere from a quarter to half of my weekends “on call”: working and often away from home.  As a family, we learned early the folly of making plans on those weekends.  The best illustration of the sort of comedy of errors that could erupt came one Sunday morning at brunch.  We were scraping the last bites of French toast through syrup; I was wiping the foam of my latte from my lip when the phone rang.  A neurologic, rabies- suspect patient of mine had just died.  I closed the phone and said to Mike, “The donkey died.  I need to go.”

Not missing a beat, my husband hailed the waitress, and spoke the words that live in infamy to this day.  “Can we get the check?  My wife has to go decapitate a donkey.”

This is the last of those weekends, the last ‘we can’t make any plans, Christy is on call’ weekend.  After 5:00pm Monday, our clinic doors will close, and we will each walk away to different lives.  That’s the strange part for me, not my transition into a new career, but the knowledge that the whole thing will be gone.  In the past, when I have left a job, the business, the entity, remained behind, replacing me and continuing its daily work.  I find this sense of complete annihilation unnerving.

Recently, I was talking about this concept of transition vs. ending with a friend.  I tried to explain that while I’m generally pro-transition, I hate endings.  Not unreasonably, my friend asked, “How are they different for you?”

I couldn’t explain myself then, and I’m still not sure that I can.  I think it has to do with the difference between an individual and a concept.  I accept that for me, the individual, this is a transition.  I will move from veterinary medicine into writing, struggle, and grow.  But the concept, the entity that was my job, will vanish. 

This is the part of the discussion where my friend pointed out that all of the pieces remain: clients, animals, co-workers.  None of them are being wiped from the face of the earth – well, not unless I have any euthanasias scheduled in the next four days.  The individuals involved in this entity that has been our clinic are not ending, they are transitioning.  True.

For me, though, a composite relationship like this becomes its own entity, a synergistic being – more than the sum of those parts.  When the parts are detached, each reverts to its natural state, and something, the synergy is lost. 

So many pieces have made up this whole: stumbling to my truck half-asleep beneath the cold stars; foals slithering onto fresh straw; a decomposing calf delivered by pieces into a blackberry thicket as my second-trimester stomach threatened to rebel; our technician saying, “Do we want a little more sedation, maybe?” in the tone of voice that really means, “If you don’t stick some more drugs in this crazy-ass horse, this time I will walk away and let you die”; the same technician saying, “I have great faith in you,” because she never would walk away; our office manager calling with a “situation”, but rearranging my schedule by some mysterious alchemy to accommodate the situation; clients asking, “should I be worried yet?”; the folded invoices clipped to my message board telling me that someone is very unhappy with the bill, unhappy with my work, or just hates my sense of humor; the inevitable midnight pygmy goat C-sections where entire families unload from the pickup, parents wearing the expression that tells their sullen kids, ‘this stupid goat is your 4-H project and if I have to be here, so do you’; the client who brings me bags of alpaca fleece; the cowboy who can’t comprehend that I won’t finish our appointment by joining him in a beer (Sorry, but the secret truth, is that I hate Coors light!); the client who, after listening, watching carefully, and making me write detailed instructions, goes home and applies the layers of the horse’s bandage in exactly the wrong order;  the “good” clients who have called us out once in three years, but who solicit advice over the phone every few months; the clients who would sacrifice everything  (including house, spouse, and children) to care for their animals; people waiting to give detailed histories until I have my stethoscope jammed in my ears; farriers who show up by uncanny magic exactly when needed…

The pieces are myriad and, in some part of my mind, inextricable.  A family is more than the sum of its component members.  It is a web of interactions: good, bad, ugly, humorous, tragic, and uncertain.  In my mind, at least, this workplace, this practice has been a family.  Each of us will transition into a new phase, but those interactions will be lost. 

Yet, that isn’t entirely true, and I see the flaw as I type.  Memory.  Humans learn and grow from memory and experiences, and none of those are undone.  Maybe my friend was right, maybe the difference between end and transition is less than I would think.  Damn!  I hate it when I’m wrong…

Parenting -- Roman Style, or Romulus, Remus, and a Report

Well, at least I’m not putting her in a basket to be raised by a she-wolf. 

If that line made you say, ‘huh?’ know that today’s blog post is brought to you by my sixth grader.  Two major projects have occupied the sixth grade at Davis Waldorf this month.  In class, they have been working on their annual play.  Performed to great acclaim in two showings yesterday, it was an epic depicting the founding of Rome, written by their teacher, Dr. Tan.  At home, the kids have been working on their European country reports, due today.  Or, most of them have been working.

Our parenting style, especially with Caitlin and school, consists of monitored space.  Rules exist, behavior will be monitored, homework will be checked, but within that framework, Mike and I are largely hands-off.  With Caitlin and school projects, this approach has been primarily at her request.  We check her homework and keep abreast of her assignments, but she has stated multiple times that if she needs help, she will ask for it.  Despite her tendency to procrastinate, this has historically worked well.  We have trusted her when she says, “I’m on it,” and she has delivered.

“Is she really that serious?” a friend asked after the play.  “She seems so serious and focused.  She did in last year’s play, too.” 

Last year, in Demeter and Persephone, Caitlin played Demeter, and her wrath upon the abduction of her daughter was fearsome.  This year, one of her roles was that of Amulius, the wicked great-uncle of Romulus and Remus.  Amulius usurps his brother’s throne, killing his nephews, exiling his brother, and sentencing his niece Rhea to what he presumes will be a lifetime of virginity in the service of Vesta.  Caitlin’s Amulius was calmly, coolly, and suavely evil, in the grand tradition of Voldemort and Darth Sidius.  As her father pointed out, it was her ‘dream role.’

Serious?  With Caitlin seriousness is unpredictable.  She can switch from blasé to impish and back  in a flash of dimples or arch of eyebrow.  Focused?  “Aye, there’s the rub,” to quote my daughter’s favorite playwright.  Where her interest engages, Caitlin’s focus is a laser.  Where she is reluctant, the beam scatters into a dappled patch of sunlight.

For her country report, Caitlin selected Greece.  This choice derived from her love for ancient mythologies.  The situation began to deteriorate almost as soon as she learned (from her evil mother) that her report needed to be a researched,  factual paper on the modern nation of Greece, and that she couldn’t merely write and draw everything she knows or thinks she knows about Greek mythology.  This was going to be work, and the focus dissipated immediately.

Caitlin’s teacher, among his many talents, is a gifted composer.  Prior to the play, he spoke of the importance of studying the Roman Empire in the sixth grade, and how the study of Rome is the study of one’s boundaries.  Exceeding our boundaries can lead to war and destruction, yet pushing the boundaries leads to creativity and expansion.  Welcome to the paradox of puberty, the paradox of life.  During the play, the girls sang Rudolf Steiner’s “Destiny Verse” to music composed by Dr. Tan:

The wishes of the soul are springing
The deeds of the will are thriving
The fruits of life are maturing

I feel my destiny
My destiny finds me
I feel my star
My star finds me
I feel my goals in life
My goals in life are finding me
My soul and the great world are one

Life grows more radiant about me
Life grows more challenging for me
Life grows more abundant within me.

Caitlin’s voice sang from the group, clear, strong and confident.  I wanted to kill her.  At that point (6:30 pm the night before her report was due), her will had led her to the deed of a report that was scarcely 2/3 completed.  Her goals in life appear to be reading whatever she chooses and driving her mother insane.  During the next 14 hours, life would grow more challenging for us both.

During the first class meeting of the year, the hot topic among the parents was the country report.  Various parents and Dr. Tan brainstormed strategies for keeping the kids on task with a challenging project.  I sat smugly silent in Caitlin’s desk, reveling in the fact that my daughter is an independent worker.  Ouch. 

Even then, the mice of uncertainty nibbled at my brain.  I came home with a raft of questions for Caitlin.  Do you need help setting up a work schedule?  Do you know how to look up the information you need?  I’ll take you to the library.  You know you can’t use Wikipedia, right?

No, Mom, I’ve got it.  Yes, Mom.  Ok.  I know, Mom, you’ve told me like a thousand times!

Mike and I didn’t leave her completely to her own devices.  We pushed her to “go work on your report” every weekend, and as part of her nightly homework.  But, we didn’t stand over her, or poke our heads into her room to check her progress.  She showed us her map, and her lists of flora and fauna.  I helped her a bit with figuring out the definition of culture, and navigating the internet.  We discovered that the BBC’s world site is a great resource.  Progress seemed to be occurring.

Yet, Caitlin’s continued insistence that nothing of interest had happened on the Aegean peninsula in the last thousand years was a hint that not all was well.  Mike and I knew that she was behind the schedule we would have liked, but the years have taught us that while Aidan will work to direction because he wants to please, pushing either of our girls provokes rebellion and reversal.  We stayed out of it.

Fast forward to Thursday.  Driving home after school through sheets of rain, I asked Catlin, “What do you have left to work on for your report?” 

“Well….I’ve done…” The silence, punctuated by raindrops and the fluttering of her murmuring lips and counting fingers, carried us a mile and a half.

“Caitlin!  What do you have left to do?”

“Mom.  I’m trying to figure that out!”  More silence, more fluttering.

“What do you mean you’re trying to figure it out?  Don’t you know?”  So much for calm parenting.  At the red light, I looked in the rear view mirror.  Each hand displayed an equal number of fingers.  “You’re only half way done?  Caitlin, it’s due tomorrow!”

“IknowIknowIKNOW!”  Pre-teen cool had begun to crack.

I drew three deep breaths.  “Go home and work.  If it isn’t done, you get to explain it to Dr. Tan.”

She went home.  She worked.  But by the time we needed to leave the house for the play, three sections remained unfinished.  Against my better judgment, I fell into lecture mode as I backed the car from the driveway.  By the time we reached the school, Caitlin’s face had slumped into sullen mode and her eyes were black.  I pulled her into a hug.  “I’m sorry.  I’m really frustrated with you, but I love you.”

“Nice motivational speech right before the play, Mom.”

“I know.  Go do your play.  I know you’ve got that down.”

And she did.  Lines, singing, evil twirling of sword, every bit down cold. 

Rhea placed her twin babies in a basket, sending them down the River Tiber.  The choices we make for the benefit of our children are not always easy.  “Should we ask Rick for an extension for Caitlin,” Mike asked me during the intermission. 

“No.  She knew what she was doing.  She chose to goof around.  She needs to deal with the consequences.”

And deal she did.  In one thing, I am very proud of my daughter.  I fully expected a 9:30 meltdown that night.  It never came.  When the chips were down, Caitlin knew the deal.  She had goofed, and she buckled down and dealt with it. 

The report was completed and turned in.  I won’t vouch for the content, and if it is inadequate, I hope to goodness that her teacher takes her to task.  But, the lesson has been learned.  Caitlin pushed the boundary of time too far, and I think she’s learned discipline far more thoroughly from this episode than she ever would have from our words alone.

And, I am pleased to report: her brother escaped the episode un-slain.

Backstitch

The needle pierces the fabric, drawing the thread behind.  I pull the thread forward, and on the back side, reverse and bring the needle halfway back through the stitch.  What?  Wait?  Go backward?

There is probably a huge pedagogical heresy involved in drinking red wine and watching Battlestar Galactica while sewing placemats for a Waldorf kindergarten, but at the end of a mentally taxing day yesterday, this seemed like the best way to occupy my hands and ‘turn off’ my mind.  Of course, the problem and poorly kept secret, is that if my mind has an ‘off’ switch, I haven’t found it yet.  This, by the way, is not any sort of claim to intelligence, just a testament to my brain’s perpetual chatter.  When I’m tired it becomes even less regulated, as though thirty pre-schoolers have taken up residence inside my skull.

Sewing by hand calms the babbling hordes somewhat.  I think it gives them something to watch.  But as I sewed last night, I contemplated the backstitch.  As my career shift gets underway, I’ve been focused on forward momentum and rather obsessed about making some progress toward every goal every day.  If one piece gets left undone, I tend to believe that the day was a failure.  Yet, last night, I caught myself pondering the value of regression.

When I was younger, I always sewed seams with a straight or running stitch.  Always moving forward was faster, better, right?  While the stitches seemed more efficient to me when I was young, the seams pulled, twisting and puckering the fabric, and gaps appeared if stitches were too long or uneven.  As I’ve matured, I’ve taken up the back stitch – step forward, partial step back.  At first this regression frustrated me, but ultimately the seams lie flat, straight, and strong.

Pulling the thread straight through life, in a decades-long running stitch is human instinct.  We get frustrated by reversals in our fortunes, thought, feelings, and growth.  But sometimes we need that partial step backward – the regression – to show us where we have been, to anchor us to important moments in development, to hold our seam straight and strong.  We need the backward steps to teach us as we move forward.

Last stitch.  Pull the thread through the loop, around again to bind the knot, snip the thread, and flatten the fabric.  The placemat is an even rectangle, sage green print on one side, lavender on the reverse.  No puckers or holes mar the edges.  Done.

 

Madness. Sense. Expectations.

Much Madness is divinest Sense --

To a discerning Eye --

Much Sense -- the starkest Madness --

'Tis the Majority

In this, as All, prevail --

Assent -- and you are sane --

Demur -- you're straightway dangerous --

And handled with a Chain --

--Emily Dickinson

 

Shhh….I’m going to tell you a secret.   Try not to be too shocked.  Ok, are you ready?  Here it is: Our society has different expectations for women than for men.  Oh, goodness, are you okay?  I didn’t mean to just spring it on you like that.  I’m sorry.  I know what you’re thinking: ‘Really?  We haven’t figured it out by now?  Suffrage?  Women’s lib?’  No, sorry, the car has not pulled into the parking place.  The ignition hasn’t been turned off.  We’re not there yet.

I realize that you’re still reeling from the first blow, but sit down -- I have another one for you.  Art, of any kind, is a hobby, not a career.  Adults are supposed to have a practical plan, a secure career.  Then, in a well regulated fashion, they may indulge these dangerous whims.

The preceding paragraphs do have a unifying element – other than sarcasm.  Emily Dickinson had it right.  Humans take comfort in conformity.  We like the expected.  We label, identify, and categorize.  If we can label a thing, we must therefore know its nature, and thus, it is safe. 

Children are permitted to dream.  We tell our children, “You can grow up to be anything you want.”  We encourage them to ‘reach for the stars,’ to have heroes, to pursue their passions.  And, then we expect the dream to stop. 

Somewhere, 4^th, 5^th grade, perhaps, we begin to shift our children’s focus from the stars to more serious pursuits.  We no longer encourage them to believe that they can become astronauts, dancers, actors, painters, and star athletes.  After all, those shining spots in the firmament belong to a select few.  The rest of us toil in the earth.

We tell our girls, “You can have it all.  You can grow up to do anything a boy can do.”  We tell them the lie we want to believe.  While letting our daughters play with Barbies and discouraging them from joining the boys in their climbing, muddy war games, we tell them that they can compete with men on an equal footing – so long as they look pretty, and don’t act too pushy.  We tell them, “You can have a career, family, or both.  You are lucky.  Your generation can have whatever it wants.”  We don’t throw the switch until later, until a woman enters her 30s.  Then we begin the delicate (and not so delicate) probing into her reproductive plans.  I have yet to meet a childless woman over the age of 30 who has not been subjected to a battery of questions and comments regarding her lack of motherhood.  We tell our daughters that they can have a successful career and be good mothers.  At least, we tell them that until the baby crowns.  Once the sheets flood with amniotic fluid, the conversation shifts to the importance of maternal bonding, to the risks of working mothers to every facet of a child’s physical, emotional, and mental well-being. 

In the late 1980s-early90s, science was the career choice.  Those lucky enough to possess a decent aptitude for the sciences or for finance were assured the golden ticket – a safe, lucrative, permanent career.  Those who chose a liberal arts degree were guaranteed a position in food-services as a fried-potato engineer.  Being a good girl, and being blessed with an adequate, if only barely adequate, scientific mind, I chose the sensible path.  Writing was for dreamers, but veterinary medicine was a career.  Don’t get me wrong: I love animals, I love working with people, and I have been blessed to have a magnificently challenging and rewarding career for a number of years.  However, I have come to believe that while nothing worthwhile is easy, fighting to squish oneself into a shape that fits a mold is a sure sign that the mold is not the correct one.

Like the stepsisters in Cinderella, throughout vet school, I bound, stretched, and lopped off parts of myself in order to make the role of ‘vet student’ fit.  My stories and poems retreated from paper back into my skull while I memorized nerve pathways and formulae I have never used in practice.  Yet, like the blood seeping out of the glass slipper, the writer in my head had a way of oozing into my life.  Need a flyer?  I’ll write it.  Newsletter?  Ask Christy.  Educational handout?  I’m on it. 

When I began working in large animal medicine 10 years ago, the questions from clients said everything one needed to know about gender expectation.  “How long is this one going to last,” the ranch wife asked my technician after pointedly appraising me.  “Oh, is that the woman?  There’s no one else available?” was always my favorite telephone call.  “They sent you to pull that calf?”  The elderly dairyman wasn’t about to pull any punches.  As I proved myself willing to dig in, working through first one, then a second pregnancy, the gender comments diminished over the years.  Diminished, but didn’t evaporate completely.  

I think the award for all-time best I-can’t-believe-he-actually-said-that goes to a horse breeder of a certain age.  He and I were discussing an associate that had just started with the practice.  The man looked thoughtful after I assured him that the new doctor was a wonderful vet, and said, “Well, at least Tom hired a man this time.” (!)

Gender image is generally a bit more subtle than this.  I saw it most commonly when returning from maternity leave.  “Oh, we’re so glad to have you back!”  Then, in almost the same breath, “Wait.  Where’s your baby?”  Paradox: a veterinarian should be practicing; a new mother belonged with her baby.  The fact that both occupied the same body seemed to create a quandary.  Note that not one person ever asked my husband following the birth of any of our children, “why aren’t you with your baby?”

These sets of societal expectations have converged in my mind recently as I bid farewell to long term clients.  Naturally, the clients whose animals I have treated for so many years want to know where I will be going, what I will be doing once the practice closes.  My admission that I lack the resources to set out in practice for myself tends to be met with understanding nods.  Any delusions people once had about the wealth of veterinarians have cracked in the past year or two.  But the nods turn to looks of condescension or consternation when I explain that I have been freelance writing part time and intend to turn that into a full-time career.  Writing is an oddball ‘hobby’ for a vet, and it seems incomprehensible that someone would jettison a “practical” career for a risky venture like writing.  Then I say the magic words and relief sweeps across the other person’s face.  “Well, I’ve spent a huge chunk of my children’s lives on call and away from home, and as they get older, they probably deserve to have me around more.”  One sentence shifted me from flighty dreamer to good mother.

Madness: I am changing careers.  I am quitting private practice and starting a freelance writing business.  Sense: I am losing my job due to the economy, taking some time to be with my children, and doing some writing. 

Madness.  Sense.  I guess it all depends upon the discernment of one’s eye.  But, I know this:  the other day when Aidan said something about his future as a pro-football player, I opened my mouth to remark on the slim odds for becoming a professional athlete.  Then, I looked into a mirror.  My sensible path has turned out to be as much illusion as any dream.  I closed my mouth, smiled, and said, “That’s great, Bud!”

Hannibal ante portus

Broken boards dangle from the fence.  Gaps, like missing teeth, lie among the rows of bottles on the shelves.  My work boots went into the trash last week, uppers yawning away from the sole, swallowing mud over the tongue of my foot.  It feels like the last days of Rome as we finish out these final few weeks at the clinic in the knowledge that our era has ended, that we have lost, and the invaders have conquered the city.  Hannibal ante portus.  “Hannibal is at our gates.”

There are no elephants.  Elephants would be cool.  Instead, we simply opened the gates to “pink-slip” e-mails stating what was already known: essentially, ‘Large Animal is closing, and since you were unique, there is no place for you in the company.  We wish you the best.’  I wonder if this is what happens to politicians in the lame-duck period.  Do things begin to fall apart?  Does no one refill the stapler?  Is it hard to sort through the in-box or to go to ribbon-cuttings that are so ill-timed as to require the presence of the walking dead?  My truck could stand to be cleaned.  But there seems to be so little point.  Of our fleet of three, only one truck is operational at this point, and a colleague and I rotate it between us on our alternating days.  I could pull everything out, scrub and organize it, but by the next day that I work, it will again be “all humble-jumbled” as Sierra would say.  And so I content myself with taking out the trash, scooping up the syringe case that has rolled and jammed beneath the pull out drawers, and periodically scrubbing the instruments and buckets.

The pillaging and looting have begun as well.  The phone calls are changing tone.  Now, there is less mourning and more people looking to “stock up on supplies” or refill prescriptions, “before you close.”  ‘Where were you six months ago,’ we want to ask.  I received a card yesterday from a sometime client, telling me what an asset I have been to the community and how much I will be missed.  It would have been heartwarming, but for the fact that this particular person, by her own admission, routinely used other practitioners and only called us in emergencies, when none of her cronies were available.  We have had angry phone calls from people wanting to know who they are supposed to call now in the middle of the night since we were the only practice they could reach at those hours.   Clients who scorn routine work and pride themselves on only calling a vet “when it’s really bad” are crushed that we will no longer be available.  Again, I want to say, “Where were you?  How did you think we would earn a living?” 

I don’t ask.  It’s not their fault.  We bent over backwards trying to accommodate everyone: answered every phone call, squeezed in clients at all hours, complicating our own schedules even for cases that could have waited for the next open appointment.  We hadn’t raised prices in nearly five years, assuming that we were doing our clients a favor.  We dispensed hours of free advice over the phone.  We didn’t show that we valued ourselves.  In retrospect, how could we have thought that this attitude would make others value us?

And yet… All of this makes me sound bitter.  And some part of me is; I think bitterness is part of the process, part of the grief.  And yet, sometimes, there are moments like yesterday.  Moments in which, while being appreciated, I realize that appreciation was never my job.  It’s easy to forget, in the midst of anger, sorrow, and loss, that my job was never to be appreciated, nor to be loved or lauded.  My job was to make things better.  

I had two calls on the book yesterday.  The first looks straightforward in writing.  Three horses to vaccinate.  Dread dragged my feet; I stalled leaving the office as long as I could.  I know these three horses.  One is old, no problem.  And then there are the other two.  Both had been donated to this non-profit by a well meaning owner who had spoiled them until they became dangerous. 

One, the gelding, I have known since he was a foal.  In fact, I gelded him.  I suspect he holds a grudge.  Along the way, he learned to rear and strike when things aren’t going his way.  Apparently his previous owner thought that this was a cute trick.  It may have been cute in a 200 lb foal (personally, I think not), but it is downright lethal in a 1300 lb adult horse.  He isn’t needle shy in the truest sense.  He simply doesn’t like being messed with and doesn’t like the vet.  He and I have reached an arrangement over the years.  Once I take his lead rope from the ranch manager and we go for a walk, it is established that I am the boss mare, and then generally vaccination proceeds without incident.  However, part of his game involves trying to pull away as the handler passes the lead rope to me.  Yesterday, thanks to a 12’ lead, we moved past that stage smoothly.  Our routine then involves me asking him to walk, back, and turn.  I mix up the order and repeat the steps until I feel that his attention is engaged.  Then I pet and play with his face and neck until he allows me to take the roll of skin just in front of the shoulder in a move we refer to as a “neck twitch.”  Neck twitching a horse doesn’t hurt.  It provides a means of control, and in many cases, I have watched horses lower their heads and relax their ears as they are neck twitched.  With this particular gelding, typically, once I have a hold on him, he never even acknowledges the needle.  Unfortunately, since I am right handed, I use my left hand to grasp the roll of skin, and my right hand to inject the vaccine.  My left hand is the one that I broke this summer.  Yesterday, in the chill wind, I could feel my metacarpal ache, seemingly at every screw.  I lost hold of the neck twitch between shots.  Sure enough, my friend the gelding pulled away, and reared.  Repeat process.

With him vaccinated, we turned our attention to his “sibling.”  Now, the mare is barely trained – what we call green-broke.  And she is truly needle-phobic.  Not only does she feel the needle, she reacts violently to the sensation.  And, joy, oh, joy, she has the same escape mechanism as her partner.  Rear, and flail.  We try the usual desensitizing steps.  No go.  The neck twitch does not relax her.  She simply realizes that it is a prelude to the dreaded shot.  Finally, I rub her face, rubbing over her closed eyelid, and with her vision obscured, inject her neck in one quick jab.  She pulls away as I withdraw syringe and needle.  Great.  Vaccine done.  Wonderful, except that she is due for two.  She’s onto me now, and the challenge of giving the second shot is magnified.  Eventually, we get the job done.  The old gelding is a piece of cake.

As I walk back to the truck, the ranch manager and I chat about the closure of the practice.  He seems truly sorry, and there’s this weird sense of something floating between us.  A giant elephant painted with the words “LAST TIME” walks between us, and neither knows how to address it. I’ve seen this elephant a lot lately.  I want some good parting words, something meaningful, but not sappy.  And yet, we aren’t friends, not really, just Dr. and client.  But, Dr./client doesn’t cover the relationship we have had.  And thus, the elephant.  The ranch manager looks at me.  “Do you like Divinity?  The candy?”

I smile and he makes a dash for his truck.  Returning, he presses a plastic wrapped box into my hands.  I give him a slanted hug – awkward for us both, and dive into my truck, biting back tears.

My next call is a sadder one.  A young steer has gone down, as the result of a leg injury sustained some weeks ago.  The owner had been trying to manage on his own, with advice from a nearby vet, but the steer has continued to deteriorate, and the owner, not a “real rancher,” confesses to our office manager that he can’t bear the thought of shooting the animal himself.

Sure enough, when I finally crest the hill of his long driveway – after passing two lurking CHP cars, missing the driveway, and attempting to find a safe place to turn around on the rolling, two-lane highway – the gentleman is almost pathetically relieved to see me.  Given his house, hair, and bearing, I suspect that he is or was a businessman, and sure enough, a few sentences reveal that he has come to ranching late in life.  He shows me the steer, asking without asking, if he is making the right choice.  He is.  The animal has shed at least 150 lbs from the pre-injury weight that the owner describes, and of course he has lain down in the lowest corner of the paddock, in the slickest mud.  I climb over the panel fence, bashing a shin as my clay-slimed boot slips on the rail, and kneel next to the steer as the owner asks questions that he doesn’t want to sound nervous.  Do I have to hit a vein?  Will we need to halter the steer?  What’s the discharge from his eyes?  Do I think he’s started to develop pneumonia? Yes. No. Infection.  Probably.

I climb back over the panels and under the oak branches, retrieving from my truck: a pair of clippers, two IV catheters (if you grab two, the first one will work), a stethoscope (more signs of the fall of Rome – one earpiece is missing), and 60 cc of pentobarbital.  60cc is excessive; 35 would have done the job.  However, when it comes to euthanasia, overkill (pardon the pun) is no bad thing.  I explain the process to the owner, using words that are their own script, slide the catheter into the vein, and inject.  Seconds later, the flanks stop moving; the muscles stiffen and then relax.  I check for heartbeat and corneal response – none and none. 

My client has changed, even as his steer exhaled the last breath.  I can feel the exhale of relief, the sense of pulling together in the man.  He takes the clippers from my hand and offers to assist me over the fence.  His sense of normalcy, of control is returning.  As he asks a few more questions, probing for my thoughts as to what happened to the steer and what he could/should have done differently. 

This is what matters in the end, in these last days.  It doesn’t matter that some of my patients may have been unruly.  It doesn’t matter that the owner of the steer consulted with another practitioner throughout the injury, only calling me in the end.  What matters is that somewhere along the line, someone’s life is returned to normal: horses are vaccinated, suffering is ended.   What matters is the work.

Spring Fever

You can barely see them, jutting from the naked branches of the trees.  Tiny buds with nearly microscopic filaments, the first scouts of spring.  Soon the trees will explode into bursts of lace and perfume.  Spring is short here in the Central Valley.  February teases us with days of pastel sun and fresh bloom before plunging us back into the last deluges of grey.  The clouds of pink and white are ephemeral, soon dashed to the ground by storms and replaced with sedate leaves.

Those early petals and first sparks of February sun invade my mind each year, burrowing into my body and igniting a cascade of restless energy that builds inside me.  This time of year, I can sympathize with the kids who linger at recess and stare out of windows, dreaming of puddles, new grass, and tree houses.  I can sympathize with teens, squirming with prickly hormones, dreaming of fast cars and hot dates.

Spring is dangerous, deceptive in its pretty dress of virginal lace and flower.  The gentle colors and soft winds belie the Siren song blown on the winds, calling us into the wild.  An NPR piece leads with the statement that, “Almost no musical work has had such a powerful influence or evoked as much controversy as Igor Stravinsky's ballet score “The Rite of Spring”.”  Stravinsky knew what he was about.  Spring is not gentle or kind; it fills humanity with the darkness of creativity.  It pulls us into primal places where sense has no meaning or purpose.

We associate spring with new life. Our modern symbols include fluffy ducks and chicks, pastel eggs dotted with cartoon stickers, and plush bunnies.  These safe, plasticized trinkets seek to tame the fear of spring’s wilderness.  We prefer to forget that life is born of fire, passion, and pain.  Even in the Christian tradition of sacrifice and rebirth that is Easter, we focus on the rolling away of the stone, rather than upon the darkness of Christ’s Passion, where ‘passion’ means suffering.

To create – life or art -- is to break something: to break boundaries, to break rules, to break the barriers of propriety that we set upon ourselves and to delve into the wilderness of desire and madness.  The new shoot or bloom destroys its hard casing, abandons protection to grow.  In the mayhem of spring, nature calls to us to do the same – to cast aside our safe shells, to expand, to thrust ourselves fully into the ephemeral splendor of our lives, to call upon the wild power stirring within us.

Summer will come soon, bringing the lassitude of long, hot days, of shady leaves and sedate afternoons.  The heat will drain the restless energy from us, and we will be sensible once again.  But for now, the recklessness that is spring begins to stir.  Can you feel it?