A day at the park

Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over - one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably, I have belonged to you, from the first.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, 9th, 1923

This past weekend was so beautiful that we decided to take the boys out to Susan Park. This is a St. Louis County park that has a very large fishing pond as well as a couple of barns that house an assortment of farm animals. We were able to get a good look at several horses, one of which was the biggest yet friendliest draft horses I’ve ever seen, cows, Shetland ponies, sheep and a couple of goats. One of the goats was so pregnant that when you viewed her from either the front or the back you could watch the kid/s moving within her belly. AWESOME! I tell you. I then realized that it was about this time, twenty years ago, that I spent a week at Heifer Project in Arkansas at the height of the goating season and was witness to dozens of goat births. I still point to that week as the seed that grew into my calling to midwifery.

The boys were drawn to the water. They spent most of their time throwing things into it, fishing things out of it or jumping over rivulets of it. Aidan, at one point, leaping as he ran, told me that the air was “like heaven.” Amen, brother. It was good to soak up the sunshine, feel the wind on my cheek and know that spring is coming… soon.