Getting My Goat

Getting My Goat
My son Nate and his wife work hard and play hard. They live close to the vest, off the grid and on the produce from their organic garden. Alternately tired and amused, they hike, bike and ski with their two boys in the mountains of New Hampshire.
Take a hot morning in June, teacher retirement season. Make it a Thursday. The phone rings.
“So, how about we celebrate your retirement this weekend, Mom? Thirty years of teaching, let’s do it up big. The boys are hungry. They can’t get enough fried calamari. How ‘bout it?”
“You don’t need to ask twice! I’m on my way. Make reservations at Bellini’s. And have Anthony ready to sing a lusty aria.” Staccato outbursts of joy snapped in the background. I couldn’t wait to get there.
“Oh, and Mom? Expect to be surprised. The boys and I went shopping,” my son teases. The tiny hairs on the back of my hand quiver. I wish I could read his face. I might get a clue about this mysterious gift. Not your typical clock or apple for the teacher, I bet. I know Nate. His choice will be something heady with promise and imbued with meaning.
On the drive up, I chuckle when I think about all the retirement shindigs I’ve been to lately. I had a front row seat when my neighbor retired and his son gave him a trip to the Yangtze gorges and the Great Wall. At my uncle’s retirement party, his son surprised him with a membership at the country club, a chance to work on his short game with the pro and a fully-accessorized cart. My teaching partner celebrated her thirty-fifth year and her son handed her keys to an SUV, loaded with options and a full tank. I wonder what Nate has in store for me.
I arrive to find a rocking chair intricately crafted from cardboard and duct tape, decorated with pictures and scrawls by my grandsons. The boys and their dad are masters of design, adept at creating a world of fantasy with the infamous sticky gray tape and the remains of refrigerator boxes. Their artful handiwork produces pirate ships and castles, puppet theatres and parking garages. The boys rush down the stairs, tumbling over each other, pushing and prodding me to try out the “rocker”.
“Oh, my!” I gasp and sit gingerly between the brown corrugated arms of the “chair”.
“Look,” I say, “what great drawings! I see a super hero aiming his light saber at the alligator. I love how you wrote your name in red.”
I inspect each drawing and read every word, a vocabulary of love crafted just for me. Perfumed by peanut butter, the boys fill my lap with jars of homemade jam and relish to savor back home. A simple family scene. Then life stumbles in.
“So, Mom. There’s one more thing.” My son places a hand on my knee like a trump card. “Come on, boys. We’ve kept this secret long enough!”
The surprise of my life waits just outside. A handsome little guy, part alpine, dusky brown, knobby-kneed. Four elegant hooves are tossing grains of sand all over my path to retirement. It is goat I had always wanted. I am crying. What surprises me is that my son is crying, too.
All my life I could hardly talk enough about it. As a child I relentlessly pestered my father.
“Dad, I’m learning all about goats in school. Do you know that a goat is a ruminant animal, like a cow only smaller? It just grazes and chews. The best part is that it devours weeds and poison ivy. Forget chemicals! You and the goat have a lot in common, you being an environmentalist and all.” Instead, Dad got me a rabbit and we ate it at Christmas.
I yearned for a goat as a newlywed.
“Honey, you know that I’ve always wanted a goat,” I chatter like a caged jay. “Mr.Whiterock has a goat named Jack that is so clever. It can open the gate with its horns. It lifts the lid of the feed bin, too. Jack can even scratch its own back with those horns. And get this,” I say, as if this were the best inducement of all, “Mr. Whiterock wants to give it away.” Instead, my groom gave me a Labrador retriever that consorted with porcupines and brought home a telephone.
Over the years, Nate had heard my wish-upon-a-star tale often enough. He grew into a strong and healthy man, a curious and remarkable person. I wonder when the notion took root. Was the idea fermenting as he toted California tourists in his rickshaw around Balboa Park? Did it roil around in his imagination as he rode his motorcycle across the beach where dogs roam free and Christmas trees are anchored in the sand? Was it nurtured along as he practiced mindfulness and read Li Po? Did it churn in his mind at the end of Highway 8 where he shared mounds of burritos and refried beans under cover of tinfoil with the lost and displaced? Maybe it simmered during his appearance at traffic court where he was chastised and dismissed. Or at center court, when Janet Reno handed him his diploma. Lots of fertile territory for the revelation of small things and outrageous delights.
Then, one day, the indulgent idea wriggled free and the scheme was hatched in the shadow of the White Mountains.
How innocently we map our own destiny.
Folly?
Hardly.
The boys and I named the kid Sweet Tom. He isn’t just a clothesline vagrant. He is joy on the hoof. On spindle legs Sweet Tom lurches into my heart. I mix warm lamb’s milk for his bottle and he presses against my palm for bits of grain. We walk through fields of wild flowers and on trails hushed by spruce needles. He rummages in the raspberry bushes and snarls his tether line into a jumble of knots. Sometimes Sweet Tom roams free and munches on azalea leaves or snaps off low branches of trees in the yard. He wobbles in wide arcs. As he nibbles the pachysandra that grows alongside the basement steps, his knee caps jiggle and the high thin clack of hooves sounds from the metal cellar door.
I hug Sweet Tom’s gangly body and recall the boy that used to be. Like the goat, Nate was shy at first, until you gained his trust. He was frolicsome and had a gentle disposition but he also knew the power of a good head-butt. I rub Sweet Tom’s blunt horns, shiny as hard candy. Young goats form strong bonds with their mothers and the rest of their “tribe”. I remember how my son and I stuck close to each other for comfort and security.
Sweet Tom’s ears stick out like helicopter blades and I scratch his bony head. As I read down the left side of the newspaper, Sweet Tom chews up the right. I grin like a second grader when he gnaws on my rope hammock. I throw up my hands in mock despair when he grazes on the blue forget-me-nots like a trucker at Hometown Buffet or insinuates his hard spininess between the clematis and the deck. Who cares? I am so lucky to have this tenderhearted soul. He soothes me like an old photograph.
Sweet Tom scuffs his feet like a schoolboy and hunkers down in the barn. He stretches his shoulder muscles and bends to the comfort of the sweet grass. His deft nose sifts the air. The bales of hay stacked against the stall smell like love.
The kid is a pile of bones and a scruff of fur. But he is gift both unique and rare, this hooved spectacle. A mother’s desire sated by her son’s good heart.
Perfect?
You bet.

Story ID:	823
Written by:	toni giarnese (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Musings, Essays and Such
Location:	new hartford usa
Year:	2006