6:30 p.m.

Children fed, one sinkful of dishes done. Don will wash the second sinkful as a consequence for making me tell him twice that it was time to come in for supper. Usually we don’t have him help much because he has to bath and make his school lunch by 9:00 when I like him in bed (since he has to get up at 6). It takes him at least an hour to eat supper, and he gets around so slowly, gauging his routes between furniture, walls and countertops so that he usually has something to hang onto. I’d like to have him participate more in the cooking and cleanup — all things he needs to be able to do — but haven’t figured out a way to squeeze more activities in and still let him have room to do what he wants for part of each day without demands being made of him.

Now that the yard has dried up and he can use his crutches again, he has been heading straight out to the pigpen when the bus drops the boys off at 4:00. He was excited yesterday because he could finally get at the old quackgrass, which he likes to pull by huge handfuls and give to the pigs. He did this until 5:30 yesterday, when I told him to start heading for the house.

A most beautiful calf was born yesterday morning in the stall next to where I am feeding the sick one. Its mother was a small heifer, accidentally bred because a castration had not succeeded and Pa didn’t realize it until it was too late and four heifers had gotten pregnant.

The calf, whose mother is very small herself, was creamy gold and tiny and full of life, leaping all over the stall yesterday, playful and sweet. Unfortunately, when Pa went out to the barn this morning, she was dead. He guesses her mother must have laid on her, as her chest appeared to be slightly crushed. He was down about that when I first went over there this morning to heat milk for my patient. It was disappointing, as she was such a sweetie.

The breathing of the sick calf was so laboured yesterday morning that Pa did not think it would make it through yesterday, yet it has. Today its breathing is clear, though shallow; it doesn’t blink, though its eyes run; it doesn’t move, but to lick its lips and suck and swallow when I go out with the bottle of milk and start talking to it. Everyone’s hornswoggled that it’s survived this long. Once yesterday and once today it swung its head up and around when its body was repositioned; otherwise it lays there as if dead.

The dead calf has been dragged into the stall where my patient is, and laid there all day. I cannot bear to look at it, but I must feed my little guy so I turn my back on the corpse and try to ignore it. It will be taken out to a field and left for the coyotes, crows and magpies. I hope that happens soon.

I asked Pa to put the sick calf’s mother in with it last night, thinking it would at least be comforted and so would she, and she might do it some good by licking it — improve its circulation at least. No one but me seemed to think it would make any difference or even that she would bother with it much, but they put her in a large area with him anyway, and when we went out last night at 11, she was laying beside him in the stall and had been licking him. This we were glad to see.

She is very protective, but since she was laying down there would have been time to get out before she could get up, if she’d decided to chase us. She didn’t. Surely she must have some sense that we are trying to help her baby. Or would she? Maybe she thinks we’re hurting him. I can’t tell how smart these creatures are. They’re very aware of what’s in their environment, and for quite a distance. That’s just required sensory equipment for them. But are they empathetic, intuitive, logical? I don’t know. Some of them aren’t clever enough not to crush their newborns, so what am I to think?

Lord, listen to me: talking about cattle.
I like to watch them from the other side of the fence, that’s all. I’m not interested in raising them or taking care of them. But this sick calf needed feeding, or he might be hungry as well as sick and alone, and I can’t let that happen.

I have wished a few times that I or someone here had the courage and resolve to end his life. I’ve imagined myself doing it with a rifle, and if he starts to suffer, I will do it if no one else will.

I am horrified by the thought: what if he IS in pain, and we can’t tell? He looks so ... sad. I hope he is not suffering in silence.

He seems hopeless and pitiful lying there like he is, poor thing. I sometimes wish he would die and get it over with. I feel so sorry for him. But at the same time, I want him to get better. He doesn’t appear to be suffering, and he does still want the milk; he responds to my voice now, but barely, by moving his lips and tongue, an ear. God I wish there was something more we could do for him.

9:40 p.m.
Kids in bed, house all dark, fire lit in the basement, everything quiet but for Don and Barney occasionally shifting in their beds in the room right next to me. I’ll be rubber-booting and warm-jacketing up again in less than an hour to go give the calf one last drink of milk for the night.

My little sidekick insists on coming with me whenever I leave Ma and Pa’s. They have a heck of a time keeping the Beckster indoors at all, and when she sees me she always wants to accompany me, whether it’s outside or back “to your house, Kaffy.” (Calfy. How appropriate right now.) She is cuter than a button and I don’t often resist her request, and feel hardhearted when I do.

When I don’t want to take her with me, I tell her that I will come and get her next time I go feed the calf, that I need her to carry the bottle and tube for me, and “Be ready!”

****************************************

Pa just phoned.
“Kate?” he always says in this loud, gruff voice.
“Yep,” I say back, thinking “Who else would it be?”
“Were you going to go feed the calf again tonight?”
“Yep, planning on it. Why?”
“I put his mother in the barn but not in with him; I’ll come out with you and get her moved.”
“Alright. You might as well show me what to do then, if I’m going to be keeping this up for a while. Then you won’t have to go out this late.”

He’s tired. He’s always tired. But he’s out there at six or seven o’clock most mornings and plugs away till past sundown, with breaks to sit at the kitchen table or hook up to his oxygen machine and take a short nap. He lumbers around the yard in dusty overalls, always on his way to do something.

“Yeah okay.” Then he adds, “I think I’m going to have a bath tonight. I fell in the muck. You know how deep it is. I’m covered from head to toe.”
“Oh no!” I exclaim and start to laugh. “Did you get hurt?”
“Just my dignity,” he says. “Lucky no one was around to see.”

****************************************

The ugly couch and chair are gone! A guy Loverboy used to work with came and got it this evening. "Thank you!" said he. "Oh no," said I, "thank YOU."

Rejoice, Rejoice, ReJOYOYOYOYOICE
It's gone LA LA LA LA LA LA LA
ReJOYce!!

xoxoxoxo
etc
Kate