Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [65]
Sometimes to keep the house quiet during the day when Anneliese is trying yet again to sleep I strap Jane into a red quilted baby sling Anneliese’s mother used to hold her babies. I checked the label and it was made in the 1970s. It has clunky stainless steel clips. But it works great, and I am able to write for long stretches with the baby asleep against my chest. Recent research has cast some doubt on the benefits of playing classical music for unconscious infants, but I have my own ideas, and today while she snoozes, we are edifying ourselves with a rotating mix of Dwight Yoakam, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Mark Chesnutt, Greg Brown, Loretta Lynn (for spirit), and Iris DeMent (for unvarnished holiness). And in the interest of imbuing more ineffable feminist sensibilities, I pulled Cinderella’s Long Cold Winter and replaced it with Shawn Colvin’s A Few Small Repairs. Jane sleeps peacefully, rousing only to move her lips and make a noise somewhere between snoring and drooling best described as snurgling.
Not so long ago I stepped through the front door to find Amy in the middle of the kitchen unrolling a flag-sized poster of me. It was from a book tour stop somewhere back along the line. My visage was full-color and big as a cheese platter. Amy held the poster unfurled before her, and I admit I savored the moment right up until she turned and laid it faceup on the bottom of the guinea pig cage. I am well aware that on a scale of one to Britney, I peg the fame meter roughly three notches below the lieutenant governor of Maine, but even so this was a severe calibration. “WHAAAAT?!?!” I said, theatrically feigning great dismay. Amy giggled and scattered wood chips over my gap-toothed mug.
Now it’s another cage-cleaning day. When Amy finishes, I help her place the guinea pig back inside with his bowls and purple plastic igloo. After securing the lid we return the cage to its customary spot in a corner of the living room and go outside to check the progress of the seeds we planted in the cold frame. The radishes and lettuce came up two days ago, and today we find the spinach sprouted. We’re in a run of cool breezy days but the sun is out and condensation has formed on the glass, so I prop it open to let it breathe. Amy and I meander across the yard and down a slight slope to a lane formed between a dense row of spruce trees and the south-side wall of the pole barn. The spruce block the breeze, allowing the steel to gather heat from the sun. We press our shoulder blades against flat spots between the vertical corrugations and slide down to sit and soak up the warmth. The buffer zone of spruce muffles the rest of the world. “There was a place like this out behind Grandpa’s barn,” I tell Amy, thinking of a nook between the silos where I loved to hunker as a child. There were weeds and a patch of sand. I liked to sift the sand through my fingers, the flowing tan grains speckled with bits of bright green shingle grit dislodged from the barn roof by generations of rain. I tell Amy I sought the silo spot on early spring or late fall days when you need a windbreak if you want to feel the sun.
“This could be your place like that,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, plucking at a weed stem. Even as she answers, I know I’m pushing a rope. She’ll have to find her own places. I mustn’t assign memories. We sit and visit, and as invariably happens I find myself stowing the moment for all the road time to come. The scaredy-cat part of me wonders if she will do the same. And if so, will the memory warm her or simply sharpen my absence? When we walk back up to the yard, there is a bluebird in the maple tree beside the corncrib. I point it out to Amy and she locates it easily. When pursuing the heat of the sun I must never forget it exists also to illuminate blue birds in