Grandma

Summer 1999

            She’s still here, on her father’s grave, where she wanted to be.  I picked up pieces of ash.  There were some big flakes, porous.  I wondered if this had been her hip bone… that, maybe a thigh, or a piece of skull.  I sifted through the fine ash with my fingers, letting the dust from it float in the slight breeze.  Grandma’s dust.  I breathed it in, amazed that the ashes were still here, a year and a half after we had spread them on this grave.  I had thought they would filter down through the soil, wash down with the rain, and mix with whatever remained there of her father’s body, my great-grandfather, who I never met.  I could have taken some of the flakes of ash, to keep part of Grandma with me.  But she would not have liked that.  She’d asked Dad to put her here, and she wouldn’t want parts of her taken away, to Chicago or to Egypt. 

“Lord have mercy,” she would have said.  “Don’t you go takin’ me half way across the earth when I’m gone.”

I wonder if she ever left the state of Maryland in her life; maybe for brief forays into Pennsylvania or Virginia or West Virginia, certainly no further.  The gravestone says

FOX

JESSE FOX

July 13, 1867 – June 2, 1949

_________

MARTHA L. HIS WIFE

June 24, 1872 – April 14, 1916

I glanced at the next tombstone, barely legible.

REUBEN                    ROBERT

Died Jun 29, 1919       Died April 11, 1919

Twin children of

Jesse B. – Martha L. Fox

            When were they born?  Grandma was twenty-one when her brothers died, three years after their mother.  Were they killed in World War I?  I don’t remember Grandma ever talking about them, and now I can’t ask her. 

            I rubbed a ring into Grandma’s ashes, to carry something of her essence…a silly gesture, since she is in me with the force of a thousand memories.   She loved me, even when I was a narcissistic young woman, and didn’t visit her enough.  Sitting by her ashes I felt her all around, approving even though she couldn’t have understood much of my life…. or maybe she could have in her own uncomplicated way, and I just never appreciated that.  I remember sitting in her kitchen when I was pregnant with Sara, she standing at the stove stirring milk into a pan of tomato soup. 

“What do you think of the name Nadia Grandma?”   I had spent months agonizing over names that would be easy for my family and my in-laws.

“Oh, I’d never remember that name,” she responded.  She brought the soup to the table with a plate of saltine crackers and looked at me.

“He’s a good man, your husband.  He must come from good people.”  

She couldn’t pronounce his name or fathom the place he came from, or the nature of his faith.  She just knew.

I found another marker, to the right of Jesse and Martha’s, a flattened stone in the ground.

RUTH M.

1898

What is this Grandma?  I wondered.  Did you have this stone put here?  Is this for you, Ruth Mercer, with the year of your birth?  Why didn’t you tell us?  Why didn’t we see it when we sprinkled your ashes? 

Who else could it be for?  We must add an inscription to the stone, I thought, with the year of her death, 1998.  She lived six months short of 100 years. 

The site is so beautiful, on a hill surrounded by rolling farmland, and the blue mountains to the west; a simple stone country church, “Mt Tabor Evangelical Lutheran.”  I went inside and found a plaque on the wall reading “100^th Anniversary – 1875-1975.”  Built ten years after the Civil War ravaged the land and families around here, when Jesse Fox, my great grandfather, was eight years old. 

The stained glass windows in the sanctuary were donated in memory of various people, by their families.  The names match those on the tombstones outside – Krise, Stambaugh, Barrick, Keilholtz, Hankey, Valentine, Long.  No Foxes though.  I doubt the Foxes ever had the money to donate a stained glass window.  They were subsistence farmers.  Alone in the sanctuary, I knelt on the floor and said a prayer in Arabic.  Grandma can understand it now.

            I drove from the cemetery in Rocky Ridge through farm fields to Woodsboro, where Dad was born and went to school, toward Frederick and Hood College, where my parents met.  Dad took care of the horses at the college stable.  Mom was one of the students.  His people had all been farmers.  She was from a business family in New England.  I looked toward the Blue Ridge Mountains.  My whole early history:  conception, birth, childhood, adolescence, all happened in view of these mountains.  I admired them, rising slowly from the haze as I drove toward them, farms turning into woods, until I was swallowed by trees and shadow. 

Every year, at least once, I fly into Baltimore or Washington from Chicago, rent a car and drive west, through Frederick and over the mountains to Hagerstown, where my parents settled after my birth.  These are old mountains, not awesome and breathtaking like the young chains in the west.  They’ve been worn and softened by geologic ages. 

As a child I used to have a dream, so vivid it felt real every time.  I would leave my body and fly in exhilarating freedom, out of my bedroom window, up over the mountains, above the peak at Black Rock, dip and then rise again with the land, looking down at the trees and streams, over the opening in the blanket of woods where water crashed down onto rocks at Cunningham Falls, to the edge of the forest where deer would graze with their fawns.  I would arrive at the place above Frederick and hover, knowing that Grandma was down there.  I always wanted to go further, but the dream ended there every time.  I never got beyond Frederick. 

Khutbah #4:  The Chicken in the Egg

Surah 3:  Al-Imran

Verily, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the succession on night and day, there are indeed messages for all who are endowed with insight, [190] and who remember God when they stand, and when they sit, and when they lie down to sleep, and thus reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth;

“O our Sustainer! You have not created any of this without meaning and purpose.  You are limitless in Your glory!  Keep us safe then, from suffering through fire! [191]

A very dear friend shared a wonderful metaphor with me a few days ago, about one of God’s miraculous creations, the egg.

Let’s focus for a moment on the wonder of the egg.  Eggs are marvelous creations.  They are exquisitely calibrated with purpose and meaning, to sustain the growing chick within.  The shell offers just the right level of protection – strong enough to protect the growing embryo, but not so strong that the chick will not be able to peck it’s way out at the appropriate time.  The embryo grows for an appointed number of days – 21.  If the shell is broken to soon before it’s time, the embryo dies.  If the new chick is not able to peck it’s way out of the shell at the appointed time, it will die.  The egg and the chick co-exist in their respective roles of protector and nurturer, and growing life within.  They follow their God given roles without question or challenge.

Surah 22: Al-Hajj  (The Pilgrimage)

Art thou not aware that before God prostrate themselves all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth – the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the mountains, and the trees and the beasts? [18]

Revelation tells us that all of nature, including all the beasts, follow the will of God without question.  Now imagine, for a moment, what would happen if the little chicks in their eggs had been given the gift of consciousness and free will.  Imagine what could result.  Perhaps they, now endowed with creative intelligence, would sense that there are others like them outside their shells, and that there is a wider world beyond their own.  They might develop technologies inside their eggs, so that they could communicate with each other.  Imagine that some of the chicks who had incubated for 15 days developed the equivalent of iPhones, that could send them pictures of the world outside.  They would see the most marvelous green grass, and blue sky, and multicolored flowers, and a beautiful mother hen feeding them delicious grains.  They might get so excited and agitated that they would roll around and knock up against their shells and possibly break them open before they were fully developed, and they would die.

Imagine that some of the other unhatched chicks who had incubated for 15 days had developed only simple cellphone – like contraptions, that they could only use to talk to each other.  They had all sensed another world outside of their shells.  But the only reality they knew was inside, where they had everything they needed – food, warmth, and safety.  How could they trust that there was really someone out there who would feed them, and how could they possibly survive without their protective shell around them?  “Why give up this perfect world we have?,” they might decide.  And so they would be overcome by fear and refuse to use the egg beaks that have formed on their little heads to help them peck open their shells at 21 days.  And they would use up all their food, and grow too big for their shells, and suffocate and die. 

Surah 3:  Al-Imran  (The House of Imran)

And no human being can die save by God’s leave, at a term pre-ordained. [145]

We are similar to the baby chick in it’s egg, in that we have a number of days in our physical bodies, on earth.  Our number of days is ordained.  But unlike the little chicks, our consciousness includes the gift of free will.   Our challenge is to use that free will to glorify our Creator, even though we cannot not possibly understand the nature of our Creator from within the confines of our physical “shells.”  This is our ultimate challenge.  And we have become very, very skillful at finding ways to “go astray.”

Surah 22: Al-Hajj  (The Pilgrimage)

And many human beings submit to God consciously, whereas many others, having defied Him, will inevitably have to suffer [in the life to come], and he whom God shall scorn [on Resurrection Day] will have none who could bestow honor on him; for verily, God does what He wills.  [18]

What does that mean – that God will scorn those who defy Him?  The image we project is of a judgmental deity, ready to punish any who do not follow His will.  But remember that the Quran was revealed in 7^th century Arabia, in language that would be understandable, not just linguistically, but culturally to the people of that time and place.  They did not have words or the understanding for concepts like “consciousness” or laws of “cause and effect.”  And so I must study these admonitions in Quran for their deeper meaning, for the meaning they convey to me.  And I understand them like this:  there are several places in Quran where God points out that people who have sinned have not harmed God at all, they have only harmed themselves, as in

Suran 2:  Al-Baqarah

And [by all their sinning] they did no harm unto Us – but [only] against their own selves did they sin.  [57]

 We “sin” by separating ourselves from God, in a myriad of different ways.  We have developed a plethora of technologies that we use to help us accomplish just that.  And the worst sin of all lies in taking our accomplishments and our ability to achieve  more and more too seriously – to think that we can solve all our problems ourselves, in this physical realm.  We can come to think of faith as an historic relic of human civilization, better left so that we can move on and conquer the next seemingly unachievable task on earth.  This is like the chicks with the “iPhones,” – they could “see” the better world out there and were convinced that they could take it on of their own volition.  And they were lost.  When we lose our faith that our Creator - God determines our destiny and will guide us to the next stage when we are ready, we are truly lost. 

We also “sin” by being like the chicks with the cellphones, who convince each other that there cannot be any better world than the one they are in.  We cling to what we know and trust as if that were all there is.  We worship the practice of our ancestors, the beauty of our earth, our bodies, our senses, and our creations.  We lose our innate intuitive understanding that all this is but a pale reflection of the greater Reality that is God.  We cling to this world and become corrupted and deceived by it, and we only harm ourselves.  We can cut ourselves off from God to the extent that when our time comes to leave the physical world, our spirit is so immersed in this one that we cannot move on.  To me, all the metaphors in Quran that describe hell would encompass that sad fate. 

God tells us that nature is full of signs for those who believe.  The metaphor of the chicken in the egg can be seen as one of God’s signs to us, to trust the process and purpose of incubation in this life… to appreciate the gift of our eggs – to use our intelligence and creative abilities to take care of our eggs, and to help each other do so, and take care of the physical world that supports us.  And never to forget that there is a broader Reality, Creation, and Purpose that we are part of, and will move on to when it is our time.

Surah 32:  As-Sajdah  (Prostration)

He governs all that exists, from the celestial space to the earth; and in the end all shall ascend unto Him on a Day the length whereof will be like a thousand years of your reckoning [5]

Such is He who knows all that is beyond the reach of a created being’s perception, as well as all that can be witnessed by a creature’s senses or mind:  the Almighty, the Dispenser of Grace [6] who makes most excellent everything that He creates. [7]

Surah 54:  Al-Qamar (The Moon)

Behold, everything have We created in due measure and proportion [49] and Our ordaining is but one act, like the twinkling of an eye. [50]

Khutbah #2  Transformations, Personal and Cosmic

We all know our lives are transformed by the birth of our first (or only) child.  Suddenly, our own self is no longer the sole focus of our most intimate attention.  My own transformation began when I was about two months pregnant with Sara.  I remember the time and place when I felt her soul communicating with me – “I am ready to come into the world, I have chosen you to host me.”  Projection?  Maybe, but that’s not what it felt like.

I felt the transformation of my self again when she was ready to be born…when the whole focus of my whole being was on pushing her out into the world. 

For almost 25 years, she has continued to transform the way I see the world.  I follow what she does, and wonder. 

From the age of about 8 until college, Sara wanted to be a marine biologist.  She was obsessed with the ocean, and fish, and dolphins.  That made sense to me – not just because her granddad took her on a boat ride in the Keys when she was 8 and the boat was surrounded by a pod of dolphins, but also because the ocean is culturally neutral.  We would travel to Egypt every year to visit her father’s family – across the ocean and back – across the cultures and back.  She knew from the beginning that she was not fully one thing or the other - however you define that “thing.”  The ocean was safe.  She had dreams about being underwater with the fish, in their world, where she could just “be” and not have to “be – ware” of how she acted or what she said or didn’t say to who.  Maybe she was intuitively responding to a primordial connection - the earliest manifestation of life on earth, before culture, before human beings. 

God says in Surah Al-Ambiyya (The Prophets), Ayah 30:

Are, then, they who are bent on denying the truth not aware that the heavens and the earth were [once] a single entity, which We then parted asunder?  - and [that] We made out of water every living thing?  Will they not, then, [begin to] believe?

And in Surah 24, An-Nur (The Light), Ayah 45:

And it is God who has created all animals out of water; and [He has willed that] among them are such as crawl on their bellies, and such as walk on two legs, and such as walk on four…

And in Surah 25, Al-Furqan (The Standard of True and False), Ayah 54:

And He it is who out of this very water has created man, and has endowed him with the consciousness of spirituality and strength in social relationships…

In college her interest in the natural world was extended to encompass the creatures of the earth which came before – several evolutionary iterations before, the record of the fossils… the evidence of the ongoing transformation of God’s creation….the evidence to match His message, from Surah 11, Hud, Ayat 6-7:

And there is no living creature on earth but depends for its sustenance on God; and He knows its time-limit [on earth] and its resting place [after death];  all this is laid down in His clear decree.

And it is He who has created the heavens and the earth in six aeons; and [ever since He has willed to create life,] the throne of his almightiness has rested upon the water.

Now, in graduate school, Sara’s focus encompasses geology - the historical trajectory of the earth itself.  And thus, she has again changed my perspective of history and time, and the transformation of the earth.  And when I look in the Quran, I find that God shared this, in Surah Yunus (Jonah), Ayah 6:

Verily, in the alternating of night and day, and in all that God has created in the heavens and on earth there are messages indeed for people who are conscious of Him.

Sara is making a career of studying those messages.  Subhan Allah.  One of her former professors at the University of Chicago, Neil Shubin, published a book recently called “The Universe Within,” about the connections, not only between all life, but between life on earth and the elements of the universe.  I quote:

Through eons on earth, seas have opened and closed, mountains have risen and eroded, and asteroids have come crashing down as the planet has coursed its way through the solar system.  The layers of rock record era after era of changes to the climate, atmosphere, and crust of the planet itself.  Transformation is the order of the day for the world:  bodies grow and die, species emerge and go extinct, while every feature of our planetary and celestial home undergoes gradual change or episodes of catastrophic revolution.

Rocks and bodies are kinds of time capsules that carry the signature of great events that shaped them.  The molecules that compose our bodies arose in stellar events in the distant origin of the solar system.  Changes to Earth’s atmosphere sculpted our cells and entire metabolic machinery.  Pulses of mountain building, changes in orbits of the planet, and revolutions within Earth itself have had an impact on our bodies, minds, and the way we perceive the world around us. 

God shared this, in Surah 51, Adh-Dhariyat (The Dust-Scattering Winds), Ayat 47-48

And it is We who have build the universe with [Our creative] power, and, verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it.

            And the earth we have spread out wide – and how well have We ordered it!

I heard on the news this week that the first craft humans sent into space in the 1950s, the Voyager, is now outside the bounds of our solar system.  Voyager is in interstellar space, outside of that system which is composed of material from our sun.  To quote one astronomer, “Voyager is not from the material in which it now finds itself.”  What more will we learn from the data it sends back about the nature of transformations?  About the birth and death, not just of planets, but of stars?  The fact that our earth, even our sun, are created entities, with a beginning and an end, is now part of human consciousness – not just in faith, but through verifiable scientific investigation.  But rather than being terrified by that awareness, we can take comfort in anticipating our greatest transformation to come.  For God has shared with us the nature of that which endures – the truth that can save us from destruction, from ourselves.  God also shared this with us, as in Sara’s favorite Surah, Az-Zalzalah (The Earthquake):

            When the earth quakes with her [last] mighty quaking,

            And when the earth yields up her burdens,

            And man cries out, “What has happened to her?”

On that Day will she recount all her tidings, as thy Sustainer will have inspired her to do.

On that Day will all men come forward, cut off from one another, to be shown their past deeds.

            And so, he who shall have done an atom’s weight of good, shall behold it;

            And he who shall have done an atom’s weight of evil, shall behold it.

Khutbah # 1

Having failed to change the policy of our local mosque regarding the separation of the women's and the men's prayer areas, (the former of course being vastly smaller, in the back, and blocked from a view of the minbar by a grey wall), a friend and I decided to start our own Friday prayer.  The first was at my house and included myself, my friend and her three children.  I thus gave my fist khutbah, and led prayer for the first time with non-family members.  She asked me to post the khutbah, and so I comply, to the best of my ability.

The topic that has been most on my mind recently is war.  It started this summer while I was in Maryland, helping my mother recover from heart surgery.  My parents live near the Antietam Battlefield, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the U.S. Civil War.  I noticed a sign as I drove through Funkstown, the little town about a quarter of a mile from their house, announcing that there would be a re-enactment of the much smaller "Battle of Funkstown" while I was there.  I had seen a re-enactment or two as a child, but never as an adult, so I decided to take a short break between hospital visits, and go to see the re-enacters.  They had set up camps in the local park...one campsite for the Confederate soldiers, and one for the Union soldiers.  They had tents just like you see in the pictures of the Civil War, except they were cleaner.  They had uniforms just like the soldiers had worn.  I've been told some of them even wear wool underwear, because they want to be as close to authentic as possible.  I spoke to one of the Confederate soldiers, and he told me he's been doing this for years.  It's a great hobby.  Pack up all your gear in a trailer, take off on the weekends, go to another re-enactment, and play pretend war.  Funkstown was awash in Confederate and Union flags.  I missed the actual "battle," but I was told the armies skirmished back and forth the main street of the town for about three hours on Saturday morning.  I pondered over this.  Why do grown men get so much meaning out of re-creating war?

After I returned to Chicago, the situation in Egypt descended into chaos.  Police opened fire on the encamped demonstrators who were protesting the deposition of Egypt's first democratically elected president.  Hundreds were killed, a curfew imposed, and yet demonstrations continued, and more were killed.  How could this be happening in Egypt, my adopted country, two and a half years after the revolution deposed a thirty-year dictatorship?

And then, more escalation in the civil war in Syria, with evidence that the government used chemical weapons on civilians, killing over a thousand.

When I was young I believed that humankind was supposed to be progressing toward a more peaceful world.  World War II had ended, Vietnam finally ended, even the Cold War ended.  We were supposed to be evolving as a species, I believed, and that evolution should inevitably be toward peace.  More democracy, more prosperity, more peace.  And now, here we are and wars keep coming, new ones.

Why?  Sure, every war has it's economic and socio-political reasons that are analyzed and debated.  But what about the broader metaphysical question?  Why war?  Why have we not been successful at eliminating the human propensity to kill for what we want or think we need?  I looked to the Quran, to see what revelation has to say about war.  I found this in Surah Al-Imran, Ayat 169-174:
But do not think of those that have been slain in God's cause as dead.  Nay, they are alive!  With their Sustainer have they their sustenance, exulting in that which God has bestowed upon them out of His bounty.  And they rejoice in the glad tiding given to those who have been left behind and have not yet joined them, that no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve:  they rejoice in the glad tiding of God's blessings and bounty, and that God will not fail to requite the believers who responded to the call of God and the Apostle after misfortune had befallen them.
A magnificent requital awaits those of them who have persevered in doing good and remained conscious of God:  Those who have been warned by other people, 'Behold, a host has gathered against you; so beware of them!' - whereupon this only increased their faith, so that they answered, 'God is enough for us; and how excellent a guardian is He!' - and returned [from the battle] with God's blessings and bounty, without having been touched by evil: for they had been striving after God's goodly acceptance - and God is limitless in His great bounty.  [Translation by Muhammad Asad]

And this is what those words said to me:

1/ Revelation reminds us  our physical world, beautiful and compelling as it is, is but a pale reflection of the greater Reality Who created it.  Quran reminds us of that in several ayat, notably in Surah 29, The Spider, Ayat 63-64:
But most of them will not use their reason:  for [if they did, they would know that] the life of this world is nothing but a passing delight and a play - whereas, behold, the life in the hereafter is indeed the only [true] life: if they but knew this!  [Asad]

2/ Revelation reminds us that we shall we return to that greater Reality - our Creator - Allah - as long as we remember and cherish our connection.

3/  Revelation does not tell us which side is right and which is wrong in any of our current earthly battles.  We all believe we know, but we cannot see the whole Truth because our experience of Reality is limited to our three-dimensional frame of reference.  Each side in a battle believes that they are in the right.  Only Allah can know all the dimensions, all the reasons for the course of human history.  But revelation does tells us that each one of us, individually, is responsible for our intention, for what is in our heart.  And it tells us that if we are forced to fight and die, or be sacrificed for a cause greater than our earthly selves, for the greater Reality of  God, we need not grieve and we need not be afraid - neither for ourselves or those who have already died in that intent.  They, and we, will be returned to the greater Truth.

After the khutbah I asked the children "So why do you think people like to do re-enactments of battles?"  And the oldest one reminded me of the many battles that have been fought throughout time, that war has always been part of human history.  And the thought occurred to me that maybe when we are not in the middle of a battle, when we are not fighting or fleeing for our lives and calling on God to protect us, maybe we feel a need to remember that sense of danger, of immediacy... that sense of nearness to death... that sense of nearness to God.

Edward the Goat

Edward the Goat

“Oh darn it, not again!  Give me back that spoon!”  My mother yelled at Cheetah.  Our small, tan and yellow spider monkey was waving a wooden spoon in his right hand as he clung to the side of his cage with the other.  He chattered back at Mom in high-pitched squeals.  My two brothers and I had just sat down at the kitchen table for supper.  

“I’ve had just about enough of this darned monkey!”  Mom huffed.  “Why did your father have to make this cage so big it won’t fit anywhere but right beside this stove?”

It was the sixth time in two days that Cheetah had reached through his cage to grab a spoon from one of Mom’s cooking pots.  He would usually find some food sticking to the spoon’s surface, and proceed to lick it off.  But this pot had been full of peas, and they had flown through the air when Cheetah flipped the spoon and dragged it through the cage’s wires.  Now he had nothing for his effort, and he was as annoyed as Mom. 

“Your father keeps bringing home these animals because he feels sorry for them,” Mom complained as she stooped to pick up peas.  And then I’m the one who ends up dealing with the consequences!”  (Of course, we knew she loved Cheetah as much as we did.)

Dad did have a habit of bringing home new animals.  It was a good thing we lived on a farm, I thought, and could always find a place to keep them.  Dad had found Cheetah in a garden store, all alone and curled up, looking miserable in a tiny cage.  Dad could not leave him there, any more than he could leave a stray dog beside the road.  He’d brought him home in the tiny cage.  Then he’d carefully measured the back door, into the kitchen.  He’d built the biggest cage he could, that would still fit through the door.  But, it turned out that the back door was bigger than all the other doors in the house.  Cheetah’s new cage was too big for all the other doors, and so it was confined to the kitchen.  And the only place it would fit in the kitchen was right beside the stove.  Seven-year-old Jim scrambled from his chair to help Mom gather peas from the floor.  He picked them up, one by one, depositing each pea in the bottom of Cheetah’s cage.

“Don’t give those peas to the monkey!”  I admonished.  At ten, I was always feeling a need to educate my younger brothers.  “He’ll just keep taking Mom’s spoons if we reward him for it.  He gets his own food.”

        

“It doesn’t matter if he gets them or not,” eight-year-old Dave answered.  He always had an answer for me.  “He’s already learned the trick.  He won’t stop doing it now anyway.”

Cheetah had dropped the spoon, and was scurrying around in the sawdust, popping peas into his mouth.  Jim reached his small hand under the cage’s wires and grabbed the spoon, before Cheetah could even notice.  Beaming, he handed it back to Mom.

        

“Thank you Jimbo,” Mom finally smiled, in spite of herself.  “You’re my hero.”

Just then, we heard the crunch of tires in the driveway outside.  The crunch sounded deeper than usual, like the stones were groaning under the extra weight of a truck with a heavy load. 

        

“Daddy’s home!”  The boys cried out in unison, jumping up from the table.  Dad had left early that morning in his big truck, the one he used to haul horses.  He had gone to a horse sale.  It was April already, and we needed more horses for the spring session of our horseback riding school. 

        

We ran outside, and up to Dad’s truck as he rolled to a stop in the driveway.  We started asking questions before he could even get out of the cab.

        

“How many horses did you get Daddy?”

        

“Are you going to unload them now?”

        

“Can we see?”

        

Dad ignored our questions.  “Is dinner on the table?”  He asked.

        

“Yeah, we were just starting to eat.”

        

“Well then, let’s eat first,” he said.  “I just want to unload this goat, and we’ll get the horses later.”

        

“Goat!”  We cried in unison.  “You got a goat?  Why did you get a goat?  Is it a boy or a girl?  Are we going to have goat’s milk?”  I remembered having goat’s milk at a friend’s farm one time, and I had not liked it at all.

        

“It’s a male goat,” Dad answered.  “He came from a race track, so he’s used to horses.  As a matter of fact, I do believe he half thinks he is a horse.”  Dad walked to the back of the truck and began to unhook the latches.  He lowered the ramp and we peered into the back.  Several horses were tied securely into the truck’s stalls, but at the front of the row stood an enormous white goat.  He wasn’t enormously tall, but enormously wide.  In fact, he was nearly as big around as he was up and down.

        

“Man, how did he get to be so FAT?!”  Dave exclaimed.

        

“Well, he used to go into the race horses’ stalls at the track and help them eat their food,” Dad explained.  “In fact, that’s why the track owner had to sell him.  One of the thoroughbreds just got fed up with sharing his dinner.  He got all riled up about the goat, and the owner complained.  So he had to go.  His name is Edward.”  Dad walked up the plank and untied Edward, and hooked a lead shank around his neck.

        

“Can I lead him, can I lead him?”  Jim begged.  Dad handed him the rope, and Jim tried to pull the animal down the ramp.  But Edward planted his hooves in the straw-lined truck bed, and leaned back with all of his big round weight.  Jim was a skinny kid, and he could not budge that goat.  I tried a tug myself, and so did Dave, and then we all three tried together, with no luck.  The goat was not going to move. 

Finally, Dad squeezed himself between the goat and the horse beside him, planted the bottom of his boot firmly against Edward’s rump, and pushed him down the ramp.  The goat bleated pitifully as Dad dragged him by the rope toward the barn.  He kept turning his neck to look back at his traveling partner, a tall chestnut thoroughbred. 

“That horse has been retired, from the same racetrack as Edward, and they’ve been friends for years,” Dad said. 

We put Edward in a stall in the barn and went back to the house to finish dinner.  We could hear him bleating as we sat around the table, all the way from the barn.

        

“A goat?”  Mom asked a little loudly when we told her what the noise was.

        

“Dick,” she said to Dad.  “What on earth possessed you to buy a goat?  What are we going to do with it?”  She had said the same thing about Cheetah.

        

“Well,” Dad took his time answering her, as he usually did.  “I bought a nice thoroughbred from a fellow who was retiring him from the race track.  He had this goat  - it was born at the track and had always lived there.  And the goat’s right partial to this horse... always slept outside his stall, followed him around, ate with him and everything.  The fellow offered to throw the goat into the deal.  I figured he might at least keep the horse calm in the truck.”

        

“Can we ride him Daddy?”  Jim piped up.

        

Dad chuckled.  “Well, I don’t know that he’s ever been ridden before.  But I guess it can’t hurt to try, as long as you can get your legs around that belly.”

Jim tried to ride Edward the very next day.  We all ran to the barn after breakfast.  Edward was standing at the end of the thoroughbred’s stall, where he’d spent the night.  We rigged up a halter for him from a rope, and led him out of the barn.  Jim took a running start, ran toward the goat, threw himself over the broad white back, and then tried to swing his right leg over to the goat’s other side.  Edward was not amused.  He immediately took off running, as fast as he could go.  His enormous barrel flounced around on his short, jerky legs and Jim bounced right off.  Then Dave had to try (they were always trying to outdo each other).  He couldn’t stay on either.  I couldn’t even get my leg over the goat’s back before he bounced me off.  Daddy, hearing our squeals of laughter, came out of the barn as Jim was sliding off the goat’s right side yet one more time.  Wide-eyed Edward trotted madly toward the end of the barnyard.

        

“I believe that’s about enough,” he said.  “You kids have got that goat all upset now.  Better just get in here and get these stalls clean before the riders start coming.”

        

Every Saturday in those days, children and their parents would come from all over town to take riding lessons from Mom and Dad.  Us kids all helped with what we could do.  My job was to feed the horses.  The boys cleaned the stalls.

Dave and Jim were just finishing their job, throwing the last pitchfork of manure and straw into the wheelbarrow, when the first of the riders arrived.  Dad and I began to get the horses to be used in the first class out of their stalls, and hook them to the crossties that ran the whole length of the barn’s aisle.  You could fit four horses there at a time, head to tail.  The others would be groomed in their stalls.  The first class of the day was for the more advanced riders.  They would clean their own horses, and put on the saddles and bridles. 

        

Within half an hour, the riders were all ready to go.  Each person led his or her horse out of the barn, and they all formed a line behind the barnyard gate.  Dad went to the head of the line, opened the gate, and told everyone, as usual, to walk on the side of the road and not cross it until he gave the signal.  Dad and Mom always worried about this part of the riding ritual, more than anything else.  The riding ring where they gave the lessons was on the other side of Beaver Creek Road from the barn.  And there was a hill just above the riding ring.  So cars driving on the road could not see what was ahead of them until they got to the top of the hill and looked down... down toward the riding ring to the left, and the barn to the right.  Mom and Dad had put signs up all along the road saying “CAUTION!  HORSE CROSSING!”  But some drivers would ignore the signs and come speeding over the top of the hill.  Mom and Dad worried that someday a driver might be going too fast while the horses were crossing the road, and would not be able to stop in time.  Edward was about to change all that.

I held the barnyard gate open as Dad and all the riders went through it.  I began to swing it closed as the last rider went through, but I was too late.  Edward had already dashed through, and was now loose on the road. 

        

“Daddy!”  I yelled, “The goat’s out!”  Dad looked back at Edward, who was walking calmly toward the riding ring, behind the last horse. 

        

“What the heck,” he said.  “Just let him come.  I don’t suppose he can hurt anything.”

When Dad was sure there were no cars coming in either direction, he yelled the standard order, “Cross over!”  The well-schooled riders and horses immediately crossed to the other side of the road in unison.  But Edward had a different idea.  He crossed halfway over, and continued walking in his place at the end of the line, but now in the middle of the road.  Dad went back and tried to push him over to the other side.

        

“Get over!  You dumb fool, you’re gonna get run over!”  But Edward just went on walking, right down the middle.  Dad tried kicking him in the side with his boot.  But it was like kicking an over-inflated inner tube.  The boot just bounced back.  So Dad gave up and went back to the head of the line.  The riders were all giggling into their hands.

        

“Alright,” Dad said to Edward, “have it your way.  But don’t blame me if you find yourself flattened by a speeding car.”  I was wondering if the car would bounce off.

Sure enough, he had no sooner said this than a red sports car came over the top of the hill.  Its’ tires squealed and the smell of burned rubber filled our nostrils as the surprised driver slammed on his brakes to avoid smashing into the goat.

        

“What the blazing.....?!”  We heard the driver exclaim from the car’s open window.  “Hey mister!”  He yelled at Dad, “Get your blasted goat out of the road!  Are you trying to get somebody killed out here?”

        

“No, no, I’m awful sorry,” Dad answered, trying not to sound as if he was beginning to enjoy this.  “I’ve tried to get him to move over, but he just won’t budge.  He’ll follow us to the riding ring, and we’re about there - you can see for yourself.  But you’re welcome to try pushing him aside, if you like.”

The man got out of his car, slammed the door, and walked up to Edward.  He placed a well-heeled boot against Edward’s side and pushed.  This time Edward did not just ignore the assault.  He turned, and lowered his head into butting position.  The man backed up fast, and got back in his car, muttering under his breath.  Edward maintained his place in the middle of the road, until the horses finally arrived at the riding ring gate.  Then he followed the last horse through.  The man slammed his foot on his gas pedal and took off, squealing more rubber onto the road. 

That night at dinner, we all laughed as Dad told Mom the story. 

“That goat could turn out to be mighty useful after all,” she concluded.

And she was right.  From that day on, Edward would follow the horses to the riding ring every time there were lessons.  He was not allowed in the ring with the horses, so he would wait outside the fence until the lessons were over, and then follow the horses back to the barn.  He always walked right smack in the middle of the road.  And the drivers who used the road grew to expect him there.  They stopped zooming over the top of the hill, at least during the times when riding lessons were given.  We all felt safer, thanks to Edward.

        

But the drivers were not happy.  They would call the house and complain about the goat.  Dad would tell them to think about taking another road.  But they did not want to have to go out of their way because of a goat.  Then, one day, Dad got an idea.  He was patching up another of Edward’s horse bites.  Edward had continued his bad habit of walking into the horses’ stalls - the straight stalls that were open at the end - so he could share their dinners.  Well the horses did not like to share their dinners (not even Edward’s old friend, the thoroughbred).   They would let Edward know they were annoyed by biting or kicking him, wherever they could reach.  Edward’s head, neck, back, and sides were always covered with wounds.  Dad was always putting medicine on them, so they wouldn’t get infected.  The  medicine he used was the same kind he used on the horses.  It was called Gensen’s Violet, and it was bright purple.  It looked pretty funny on Edward’s white hide.  One day Edward was particularly stubborn about leaving a horse’s stall, and he got a particularly large number of bites in return.  By the time Dad had patched them all, the bottle of Gensen’s Violet was almost empty, and the goat almost looked spotted.  So Dad just kept going, painting purple dots all over Edward until he was transformed from white to pinto, with purple spots.

The next day Edward followed the horses up the road in his usual manner.  The first driver to come over the hill stopped his car and got out, and walked over to Edward to get a closer look.

        

“Is that thing for real?”  The driver asked in astonishment.

        

“It’s a real goat, if that’s what you mean,” Daddy responded, deadpan.  The driver’s mouth twitched, then broke into a smile, and then he started to laugh.  Dad laughed too, and so did all the riders.  The driver shook his head, and walked back to his car without another word.  He kept shaking his head and laughing until Edward followed the horses to the riding ring, and he could drive away.

We didn’t get any more calls complaining about Edward after that.  In fact, it seemed sometimes that people would drive their cars over the hill at riding time on purpose, just to watch the goat.

Things went along like that for a while with Edward.  And I wish I could tell you that his story with us ended happily.  But it was not to be.  His eating habits finally did him in.

This is how it happened.  The thoroughbred was bought by a family whose boys had been taking riding lessons for over a year.  They wanted a horse of their own to keep at our farm, so they could ride whenever they wanted.  The horse’s life stayed pretty much the same, except that now only those three boys rode him, and they spent a lot of time with him in the barn.  And this presented a problem.  Edward didn’t care who owned his old friend.  He still went into the horse’s stall, and the horse still chased him out, with hooves and teeth.  Only now, sometimes, there were one or two boys in the stall along with them.  And Mom and Dad knew that, sooner or later, one of those boys would get caught between a hoof and that goat, and that would not be good.

And so, with much regret, Dad decided that Edward had to go.  We watched teary-eyed when he loaded him back into the truck in which he had come, only this time he was alone.  Edward bleated pitifully the whole way down the road as they headed off to the sale barn.  When Dad returned, he told us that he had found a good home for Edward.  He had sold him to a man who had a goat farm.  Edward would finally, for the first time in his life, be with his own kind. 

We didn’t hear any more about Edward until the next spring, more than a year later.  Dad came home from another horse sale, and sat down to dinner with an unusually sad look on his face.  Cheetah was no longer in the kitchen by then.  Mom had insisted that Dad make him a smaller cage, and he had been moved to our playroom.

        

“I ran into that old guy I sold that goat to, you remember, Edward?”  He said, “I asked him how Edward was doing, fully expecting to hear about how happy he was with all those goats.  Well, you won’t believe it.  That darned goat up and starved himself to death, just refused to eat.  Imagine that.  I told the old fellow I wished he’d called me.  I would’ve taken him back.”

I cried a little that night, thinking of Edward.  But then I imagined how happy he must be, up in heaven.  Up there, I thought, he could be a horse as much as he wanted.