Rural Dreams

Just Baby and Me

Steve and Aidan went to Long Island for a 24 hour visit that turned into a 48 hour visit and has now morphed into a three day visit (however many hours that is). A day to myself is a treat. Two days is surreal. I'm afraid three days is a bit depressing. I mean, my dog is gone. It's just baby and me.

The thing that is most awful is my diet. I don't have meals, I just eat when I am hungry. Or bored. Or sad. I've eaten most of some candies that I got for my birthday. My rationale is that I am saving Aidan from their evil seduction. I just threw away the last three in disgust. This morning I ate two bowls of cheerios with sugar. I had the same thing last night for dinner. I had tried to make myself some rice but I burned it horribly. The house still stinks from it.

Mostly I've been reading. I read all of Summerhill over the last two days. What a wonderful book. There is some weird dated stuff in it, but mostly I find it agreeable and inspiring. It almost felt like a spiritual book to me.

I keep having this back and forth about home schooling vs free schools. This is a luxury afforded me because there happens to be a free school in Albany. I had sort of a eureka moment while reading Summerhill that the component that I am yearning for in homeschooling is community - and free schools provide that. There is a big home schooling co-op here that may provide the community that I am seeking, but I don't think so. Time will tell.

I have spoken to a few people about Wes who agree that it sounds like he was poisoned, based on experiences they had or friends of theirs had. He probably ate a poisoned mouse. I happen to know that bait is set out for them in the house he was staying. Catching and eating mice is a trick that Roxy, our disappeared cat taught him. One person I know had a beagle that survived rat poison with immediate care. Based on how long Wes lasted, I suspect that he might have had a fighting chance if I had been quicker to arrange a visit to the vet, so I am kicking myself a bit. Other people have told me that there isn't much you can do and that the vet bill would have been huge. I'm not quite sure how to feel about that.

The whole thing has had the peculiar side effect of making me clutch at Will and Aidan (when he is here) a bit, grateful that some bizarre accident hasn't taken them from me.

Most people ask how Aidan is taking it. He cried when I first told him and wanted to leave Montauk with me, but I suspect that it was more that he missed his wooden trains than Wes. I think it is more about death in general for him. The night we got home he asked me about my dad, who died before he was born. Wes was really more my baby than Aidan's companion and there was almost a bit of sibling rivalry between them. When Aidan was a newborn, I remember sitting crosslegged on the floor with him in my lap and Wes trying to climb into my lap too and almost sitting on the baby. Wes was never particularly protective of Aidan though I think he was a bit with Will. When I would set Will outside while I hung laundry or dug around the yard, Wes would lie down next to him.

Will is the most fabulous baby. I pop him into the sling and go into a store and it's like a movie star walked in. He smiles this incredible engaging smile at everyone and pretty soon there is a little crowd around me marveling at this thing on my chest. I don't know whether to smile at people or just ignore them because it's not me that they are coming over to see.

He's asleep now, probably for the night. I'm going to try to have eggs and toast for breakfast tomorrow.

Wes Dies

We went to Montauk for two weeks and left Wes with our friends who farm. We said he was going to doggie farm camp where it would be his job to chase deer and woodchucks. He loved going to the farm.

While we were gone, he got sick and died. We got a call about a week into it that he was throwing up a lot and seemed listless. Then he stopped eating. We made an appointment for the vet but our friends found him dead the morning he was supposed to go. They didn't think he was going to die. He was six years old.

They buried him at the farm and we left Montauk that morning. Now we're here at the house and his absence is conspicuous. It's hard to accept that he's dead because we had no experience of it. He was buried by the time we got here. It's like he just disappeared. Poof - gone.

Not knowing why he died is driving us crazy. I also feel terrible that he died without us. The people he was with were very fond of him but I wonder if he felt abandoned. I know that if I had been with him I would have recognized the severity of his situation. From a distance I thought he might just be throwing up from eating dead things at the farm.

We got Wes the day that I found out I was pregnant the first time. I miscarried and got pregnant again and Aidan was born a year later. Much of Aidan's babyhood consisted of the three of us lying in bed, me nursing Aidan and Wes pressed up against the other side of me. I have always wanted to make a quilt that depicted our cozy bed like this.

It's so hard to imagine our lives without him. I see him everywhere I look in and around this house.