Goat Musings, Part 5

The rest of the story

I can’t doubt that the other children grumbled about the milking and feeding chores—they grumbled about most things they were asked to do. But my memory hangs on this incident, of course, because it’s impossible for a mother to forget something like this, your son saying, "Okay, you're telling me to leave. I'll leave." I mean, he doesn't say it, he just does it.

I think the other children did not know about his attempted escape. At least I never spoke of it to them. It remained between him and me. We never mentioned it after that night, and if I know him, he said nothing of it to anyone. I think it’s safe to tell in public after thirty years.

I found out a few things the night he left: I adored that boy and was so so happy to see him; I did not want him to leave again, and I didn’t want to squeeze him in a vise like that again. That’s clear to me now, but apparently I am too stubborn for anybody’s good. I say that last part as I recall that I probably made him pull himself out of bed next morning, drag the goats up to the milking stand, and place his hands on the teats of that big grumpy Cookie. It would not have made any difference to the goat if someone else had milked her, but I guess it mattered to me. I was in the middle of something and wouldn’t back down. More’s the pity.

The word “regret” comes to mind as I write, but it is much too late for that.

This boy of mine was not the kind to step over the lines, those boundaries families establish, though he might occasionally push against them, as he tried to do that night. He was a good boy with a mother who—I see clearly now, these many years later—held the lines a little too firmly sometimes. Like when our family fasted two meals once a month on Sunday, and I expected my children to do so after they reached a certain age. It was harder on this boy than anyone else. More than once he got sick and threw up right before dinner time. My memory is cloudy here. It seems reasonable to suppose that after seeing how hard this fasting was on his small system, I would relent. I hope that’s the case, but obviously I’m not sure.

And I’m not sure what he learned that night he left home over the goat milking. I would like to think he learned that I loved him. I hope to goodness I told him so.

But perhaps he learned that goat’s milk was very important, and he may have felt that it was more important to me than he was. Perhaps he learned that leaving home—an extreme and desperate move and, I’m sure, a difficult one for him to make—was not enough to move his mother. Maybe all he learned that night was that I could be hard as nails. That’s the way I see myself as I look back on the moment and wish I had been wiser, more flexible. The truth is I didn’t know the best thing to do. I did what I thought a parent ought to do: hold the line and teach the child. I wanted him to be responsible, to do his part, be a member of the family, and I thought I was teaching him all that. I may have been wrong. I may have pushed him away. It’s hard to know.

And that, in my mind, is the hallmark of being a parent, goats or no goats: it’s hard to know what to do, how to teach, when to give in and when to hold firm. I used to say being a parent was like driving in the fog. I’ll stand by that.