My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

  I learned there are things you can do with a llama. They can be taught to pull a cart, and to haul packs when you go camping in rugged mountains. But I didn’t need my new pet to be useful. Mostly, I just planned to stare at him, fascinated. The horses, however, were not as amused. They kept their distance, kicking up the dirt and whinnying. They scurried to get away every time the llama ventured close.

  “They act like Dalai’s a leper. Poor guy is all alone.” I complained. “Don’t get any ideas. One fancy yard ornament is enough,” Mark said, turning his attention back to another book on house building. One llama was certainly enough to satisfy my curiosity for came-lids, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for a herd animal forced to spend his days alone.

  My horse, Dixie, finally gave birth two days later, and my concerns over Dalai’s single status were put on hold.

  The foal came on April 15th. We considered naming her “Taxes,” but chose “April” instead. I’d been spending a great deal of time around the pasture in anticipation of the baby horse’s arrival, but as luck would have it, I missed the delivery by only a few minutes. Mark called to tell me he stopped by the pasture to discover a newborn carbon copy of Dixie, still glistening wet, standing on wobbly legs under her mother. I was washing my car, but the minute I got his message, I raced out to the land, white suds flying off my vehicle like snow.

  April was sturdier than expected, with long legs, a slim body, and a soft brown coat. She looked like a deer with a big head. Frisky and remarkably self-sufficient, she stuck close to her mother, but only a few hours later, she had enough confidence to bound a few yards away, exuberant and curious about the world.

  The other horses accepted the newcomer with admirable tolerance, but Donkey seemed most pleased. Donkey and baby April became fast friends, kicking up their heels and instigating games to bring action and entertainment to the quiet pasture.

  Our job now, according to the books, was to “desensitize” the new colt. Each day we tried to make contact. We would devote a half hour to catching the colt so we could put a halter on. I’d tug at the rope while Mark or one of the kids would push the colt’s backside, a task not unlike attempting to get a parked car to move. Suddenly, the colt would dart forward, yanking us off our feet and we’d be running at the end of the rope as if we were attached to a speeding whirl-a-gig ride at the county fair.

  “Imagine having to do this with a wild, frightened, adult-sized horse,” I said when April had given us a particularly hard time.

  Everyone nodded. Dabbling with animals and working the land certainly made us thankful to be living in an enlightened and cushy age where the definition of hard work was setting up a new computer rather than living off the land, literally.

  Adding both a young horse and a llama to my ever-growing ark meant additional chores were suddenly piled onto my already task-ridden days. The feed bills escalated, now hovering around two hundred dollars a month, which is less than many women who retire with a million dollars might spend on a personal trainer or other hobby interests, but still I felt guilty about the costs, so I stopped nail and hair appointments to compensate.

  Meanwhile, Dalai’s hair had grown into Rastafarian dreadlocks that looked torturously hot, so I purchased a pair of wool shears and Mark and I spent three days trying our hand at wool shearing. We were left with blistered hands, an insatiable wool itch that hung on for days, and a llama which looked like a poodle run over by a lawn mower. Still, we felt a great sense of accomplishment. I put the wool aside thinking I could use the fiber for something, but I’d have to read up to figure out what.

  In the meantime, April’s skeletal system would not be well-formed enough to put weight on her back for two years. The cost of feed and maintenance for those twenty-four months of growing, not to mention the labor involved in preliminary training, meant we’d have to make a hefty investment in our baby horse long before we ever could ride her.

  Caring for three horses, a llama, and a donkey was already more than I could handle alone. Adding a colt to the mix almost put me over the edge. Mark reminded me we could sell a six-month-old weaned colt for a modest sum, but April was a member of the family now, and I loved the romantic notion that she was born on our land and would live there for all her days.

  To me this new pet was like the biggest dog in the world, with an appetite and vet bills that paralleled her massive size. I dreamt of the day I’d ride her all over our fifty acres, yet when she was eighteen months old, Ronnie offered to buy her, and damned if I didn’t say yes. The time to begin training her was near and the fact was, I was too old, too inexperienced, and too much a beginning rider to do the job of a seasoned cowboy. I could go to Amazon and buy all the DVDs, books, and videos on the market for training a horse (and I certainly tried), but an academic understanding of the process wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans when a powerful horse started flipping out while I was onboard for the first time. April was going to a good home and that was all that mattered.

  Every time an animal is removed from the pasture, the dynamic of the herd changes. When April left, Dixie was agitated. Donkey was lonely. My other two horses started acting aggressively as they reestablished positions in the hierarchy. Dalai still kept to himself, all alone after 18 months. So, when I read an ad in the paper for a female llama, registered and going cheap, I couldn’t resist. Days later, the second llama joined the herd, and Dalai’s lonely days were history. Apparently within an hour of unloading her into the pasture, the new llama had not only become friends with Dalai, but she was pregnant. I now had an exciting new adventure to look forward to. A baby llama!

  On the Internet I discovered llamas gestate for eleven months. Did I mention time moves slowly in the country?

  “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  WHAT BLOOMS

  Things bloom in the country. Flowers. People. Ideas. Doubts.

  Some days, I felt myself atrophy, as if my heart and mind had been shot with Novocain. The lack of intellectual stimulus, beyond that gained from my reading and experimenting with animals and organic living, felt like I was slowly dying at a cellular level, leaving me so imbalanced internally I was crumbling from the inside out. Other days, the calm and serenity of the beautiful hillsides, the slow pace of living, and my newfound leisure felt as though I had discovered the missing element required for internal peace. I was discovering my best self, learning to live mindfully, and discovering reverence for a softer existence.

  This dichotomy of joy and discouragement wouldn’t have tortured me so much had I less time to ponder my singular existence. My husband was too distracted by his house project to pursue the plans and promises we had made to each other. I ached with a sense of loss, not for the life we left behind, but for the life I perceived as just beyond our fingertips. Everything I ever dreamed of for happiness seemed as right in front of me, only behind a window. I stood on my side of the glass with my hands draped around a donkey, waiting for my husband to slide the window open. The problem was despite a litany of heart-to-heart talks regarding love and money and our need to be together and explore a more expansive life as a couple, he refused to recognize the pane between us, much less what was on the other side. So, I clung to evidence of my children’s contentment as validation that, despite our personal stress, our choices to move to the country had been for the greater good.

  Kent had spent the first twelve years of his life in a dance school where male influence was in short supply. He now had friends who camped and swam and played sports. My son had become a modern version of Tom Sawyer, and I watched his masculinity explode to the surface like a geyser just breaking through the earth’s hard crust. So delighted was I with him coming into his own that I wanted to fall to my knees and tha
nk God each time he asked me to pack a basket of food for a campout with the guys.

  Not having to work all the time meant I spent more time with Neva than I ever had with my other children during their tender prepubescent years. We cooked muffins together, chased chickens, collected eggs, and made gifts of jewelry or jam for her teachers. We puttered around in the garden, went to the feed store to gaze at or buy spring chicks, and spun honey off the bees’ comb together. Before the family woke each morning, I’d crank up the four-wheeler to go to the barn to feed the horses, and almost every day she would come running out in her pajamas to beg a ride. I’d help her onto the seat behind me, relishing her little body pressed up against mine, the warmth of her hands and the soft pressure of her tiny arms clinging to my waist. We talked over the roar of the engine as we checked on the bees, zoomed by the garden to spy out what was growing today, and more often than not, stopped to pick blackberries.

  Things were not as promising for Denver, however. As much as my younger children thrived among the country’s lulling charms, my eldest still seemed tortured by the lack of stimulus and opportunity available for a young adult. She was unsure what she wanted to do with her life, but she knew she wanted more than what Blue Ridge offered. She continued to long for the opportunity to date more cultured boys, establish a career, and get a job that paid enough to support an apartment of her own. She yearned for the carefree, fun existence of the twenty-one year olds she’d gone to college with, to be back in the world where young people gathered in clubs and at parties and hung out with diverse friends arguing liberal philosophy because they had yet to be bogged down with a family, a mortgage, and responsibilities. She wanted to backpack across Europe. Join the Peace Corps. Find a career. Fall in love.

  “I’m missing my youth,” she reminded me, with no small touch of drama.

  I might have made a joke about her youthful angst, except that I agreed she was missing out on the best years of her life. Everything about the country life that fed my soul and offered me opportunity for personal growth was different for her. I was retired and ready to rest and reflect. She hadn’t yet lived, and I agreed with her that a dynamic woman on the cusp of life did not belong parked in a quiet corner of the world.

  “We need to give Denver money to help her get out of here,” I told Mark.

  “She shouldn’t have quit school. Her life is her problem now. We have financial limits, you know.”

  I wanted to point out that the house he was building was the cause of those financial limitations. Our child needed help, and I desperately wanted to allocate some of the money we’d spent a lifetime earning to her education, in whatever form her dreams took. As her parent, I wanted to give her a loving sendoff into the world.

  “If she’d stayed in school we’d be paying for her food and dorm. Why don’t we give her the money we would have spent, had she kept on course? She can also cash in the rest of her college plan. That will give her a nest egg to move someplace with more opportunity.”

  “You always make things too easy on the kids. Obstacles and hardship will teach her what real life is all about.”

  “Real life is also about families sticking together to make dreams come true for each other. We have more money than most families I know. Our resources shouldn’t be allocated toward just one person’s dream.”

  Mark bristled at the implied criticism. “I’ll agree to give her money if she moves out. She’s past twenty. It’s time.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from reminding him that when we met, he was living with his mother at age twenty-three. He had accepted help from my family and his to get his start in life, and every phase of development we went through thereafter, such as buying our first house, growing our business, or funding life emergencies, required assistance from family. Wasn’t it our turn to pay this kind of support forward?

  Denver agreed that if we gave her a small nest egg of her own she could become independent. She took the money and enrolled at a folk art school called Penland to study silversmithing and jewelry design. I was delighted that my artsy daughter was exploring a new skill, but secretly wished she had gone further from home, where life’s grand diversity would call to her louder than any country whisper. But when the six-week course was over, she returned to Blue Ridge, got a small apartment, and took up with a country boyfriend whose greatest talent seemed to be spitting chew.

  “Please, let’s allow Denver to live with us to save money so she can afford to get out of here,” I implored.

  “Daughter or no, I won’t have anyone living in my house who won’t follow my rules. I have made clear that food can only be eaten in the kitchen in my house, and yet she still eats in her room. I won’t have it, I tell ya,” Mark said.

  “It’s my house too,” I argued. But we both knew that was no longer true. Somewhere along the line this expensive cabin monstrosity had become Mark’s house. We lived on Mark’s money. With Mark’s rules. He was the man now, and as such, we were all subject to his choices. Denver was going to have to find her own way out of Blue Ridge, because my hands were tied. My resentment over not being allowed to invite my own daughter back home simmered inside and for the first time, I began questioning the fairness of our new dynamic. Mark felt entitled to control all the money that had been accumulated through our joint effort, but this money would never have existed had I not been the business person I was.

  I shared my frustration with Kathy. Each time we met for lessons now, we spent the first few minutes gossiping about our lives. I marveled that two women with such unequal opportunity and resources could share what turned out to be the same stresses and concerns.

  Kathy would talk about how hard she found paying the rent on her tiny shack could be, and I would think about how we couldn’t afford the mortgage on our ever-expanding behemoth of a log home on 50 acres since Mark had taken out a mortgage for four times the amount we originally discussed.

  “My eldest is dating someone that is all wrong for him,” Kathy would fretfully say.

  “So is mine.”

  “I worry about whether or not my son is learning enough in school.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Gas is getting crazy expensive, but still I like to drive my kids to school to be there for them. My youngest is late for school all the time.”

  “So is mine.”

  “My husband is so proud of me. He came home with flowers yesterday to surprise me. That man loves me like no other.”

  I sat quietly, shocked to realize I was actually envying this illiterate, destitute woman because she had hit upon a subject where I couldn’t pipe in with “me, too.”

  One day, as I was setting up my notes and workbooks for Kathy’s lesson, Carol, the director of the literacy program, stopped by to talk to me.

  “You know, Kathy is the greatest example of success we’ve ever had as a beginning reader. Her test scores are amazing, and all you have to do is look at her to see what a difference you’ve made in her life.”

  “I can’t take credit. She’s just a wonderful student who works hard. She does what it takes. She keeps showing up.”

  “She keeps showing up because you make the lessons fun. You are never preachy or dry. You come to the table as a friend rather than acting like you’re superior.”

  I smiled, thinking Kathy was my friend, the only person in my world I could talk to now. I didn’t feel myself superior in any way.

  “I was wondering if you would share your experiences and ideas and what you’ve learned from working with Kathy at a meeting next month for other potential tutors.”

  I wasn’t convinced I had much to offer, really, but I agreed, and the next thing I knew, I was assigned a new role as trainer to all the new reading volunteers. I felt at home contributing something of value to my community like the old days.

  “A woman at the high school has asked me to come talk to teenagers about the importan
ce of staying in school, keeping clean, and resisting drugs,” Kathy said weeks later. “She was wondering if you would come with me, so together, we could talk to them.”

  “Why do you need me?” I said.

  Kathy’s new teeth gleamed beneath a subtle smile. “Please? I can’t do it alone.”

  So the next week I found myself waiting my turn to speak to the teens in the remedial high school classes. Kathy talked about the frustration of living as a non-reader. She talked about becoming a meth addict, losing her son, and going to jail. She talked about church, and how being involved in religion was central to her recovery. She took out her false teeth, showing the kids the mug shot taken on day she was arrested. Then she introduced me as the woman who helped her crawl out of darkness.

  Kathy’s honesty and real life experience was an impossible act to follow. I shared my theoretical opinions about education, but in the audience’s eyes, I was just one of those transplants that the true residents of the area tolerated rather than respected. I was glad to meet the kids, however, mostly just for the chance to witness Kathy in a leadership role.

  Overnight Kathy became the poster child in Blue Ridge for overcoming drugs and illiteracy. She began giving talks at the prison. She started volunteering at a woman’s shelter. She was recognized at her AA meeting as the most inspirational participant.

  “Will you come to my counseling group for drug offenders and meet my counselors?” Kathy asked as casually as if she were inviting me to lunch. “I’ve told everyone about you.”

  She seemed to be leading me deeper and deeper into the process of healing our community, and I felt honored to have a karmic purpose at long last.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Days later I was sitting with a dozen ex-meth addicts, half of whom also couldn’t read. I listened to story after story of struggles with addiction and life upheaval tumbling out of the mouths of my neighbors. The brother of my daughter’s best friend was among the group, as well as the father of my son’s best friend. Three women in the group talked about how they wanted to straighten out their lives so they could get their kids back from foster care. These confessors were not yet seventeen, my son’s age.