Yesterday was the warmest day of this year so far. We walked up to the farm, pausing for ice creams which we had to stop and eat at the bus stop by the hospital as Sam decided to poo right there. We felt conspicuous in the empty street, like two yahoos oblivious to the social requirements of a plague year. Anyways, at the farm the husband inspected the new calf, born that morning, which hadn’t suckled yet. I watched from behind the gate as he rolled a cigarette and contemplated cow and calf; I marveled at how my life, so full of twists and turns, had led me to this moment, a woman from California regarding her husband, an Irish farmer. The mother-in-law arrived with a bottle of colustrum, which she fed to the calf, crouching in the dirt while the cow walked around them, lowing, in circles, the husband keeping it back with a pitchfork. Every field was a nursery, in which lambs and calves kicked in their play. Every blade of grass scintillated, and the haunting of nursing homes and hospitals and homes by death was worlds away.

<<