The next few days Ian was very absorbed in the daily upkeep and routine of the cows. I hated to burden him with small details like the flies and the way the cows wandered off on their own. The other day we got a smelly surprise. We accidentally made cottage cheese. I didn’t laugh when Ian called it cottage cheese because I know how sensitive he is. Plus I didn’t feel up to arguing about how we’ve too much milk for it all to be consumed before it goes sour.

Also, Ian doesn’t need me to add to his routine while he is in training for the Dire Straits 500 Triathlon. It is important that he concentrate on how he will handle every moment during the actual competition and not think of too many extraneous problems. I told him that my presenting our household and general life problems was good for him. It should give him things to think about while he is running or swimming and bores temporarily. But he won’t see it. He says the sun shines too much for him to think of anything else during those miles. He is right again. If I were to tell Ian about my life, my needs, it would create a shadow over him and Ian can’t live with shadows, he likes to have the full Saturday morning sun on him.

Tonight Ian stayed late at the municipal pool. By the time he arrived and settled in I was in bed. I spent the early night hours lying in bed waiting for sleep to remember me. I compared my life to lots of things during that time. I could hear the cow’s tail wisp as it was thrown back and forth and hear the whisper from bird’s wings as they flap and flap while flying up above the cows, scared off by the rhythmic whip of the tail. The cows keep the birds and the flies and me at bay. We all long to understand why they’re here and why they’ve created such a silence between Ian and me. The fat, four legged creatures with their primitive mass recalls a time when all wet-winged animals banded together to evolve just one more inch to make life a little more refined. Even if it was only for the ability to produce milk or offspring with black and white patches. To that I thought, no one in our household was meant to be unsuccessful as competitors on God’s earth. Is that why the cows are here? For the opportunity to set their intrinsic eyes on what was never meant to lose? The circle of life is surely present in our backyard. You see the birds walking on the floor, sitting on the fence and then riding on the cow’s backs.

I heard Ian slam the kitchen door, then the refrigerator door, and then the bathroom door. The tip tap from his biking shoes set a clock on to tic then tock. I found the sounds as sweet as chocolate milk for breakfast and rolled over, yelling out to Ian, “Let’s have Oatmeal in the morning,” and set my tired soul to sleep.