Sometimes Calves Die

What we give up to become who we are.

And like the turning of summer into the crisp clarity of autumn, it breaks my heart a little – as if hearts could break.

Meanwhile, terribly soft rain at dawn, as in, that critical juncture where rainfall turns to mist. Six a.m. is a shroud, casting a blindness over suburbia's normal calamity. I sit under it, dampened, mulling confessions. Speaking of, I am so very jealous. How I have always longed to be your queen; how instead I will always be the servant handmaiden. Jesus says that is okay. He holds my hand over the high bridge. Yet even he has Mary Magdalene to thank.

Two of the black raspberry seedlings did not take and for a little while, I am confused and upset. Then I remembered staying with Uncle Pete on his farm for a week in the hottest part of summer. He taught me how to milk cows and avoid electric fences. He showed me the joy of waking at four a.m., even before the animals became restless for hay. He told me sometimes calves die.

My sister and I helped him deliver a calf that week – one that required a rope tied around its torso to be pulled from the birth canal. Mother cow was distraught during delivery, yet she remained chained to her feeding slot and could not turn back towards her almost-born calf. The calf was saved but the veil over my eyes thinned in knowing these cows were merely prisoners.

We named the calf “Honey” and when we asked about her a few years later, we also learned that Honey's only freedom was in death.

“Ya win some, ya lose some” they say – maybe; but I think it is our call to love with everything we’ve got.