i'm ready to go home.

 

i want to go home. i have had enough with this living out of boxes. with keeping our animals in a continuous state of flux. with not having a proper place to lay down with rose. with not having my favorite snacks, my favorite teas, my favorite chocolate milk. with not having our routine. with not having each and everyone of our animals set in their ways of the day. 

i miss the land in north carolina. 

i miss my cousins. 

i miss the jordans.

i miss fostering piglets in the back shed.

i miss our herd of goats, even though i spent countless, needless hours chasing them around the farm.

i miss the landscape of cattle behind our home.

i miss bella and rose sharing the same pasture. growing old and fat together.

i miss the light in our home from 15h to 16h30. every blessed day.

i miss walks with pigs across the farm.

i miss ineptly trying to photograph little farm beings.

i miss harvesting exclusively for dinner.

i miss the mud caked legs of my favorite run.

i miss that bed.

i miss the call & response of the turkeys.

i miss the laundry line.

i miss the counter workstation i'd write from while nick made breakfast.

i miss our summer table by the pond.

i miss my feathered and bristled coworkers.

i miss billy cat and rocco kitten. 

our billy cat died unexpectedly yesterday morning. he was hit by a car. even though we so purposefully lived away from the road. there was something so overwhelmingly destructive about his death. that unraveled nick and i as we were barely keeping it together. its been so very difficult not having rocco-kitten with us but billy's remaining presence was keeping us sane. he, rudy, nick, and i were the core four of our mottled backyard farm. we were able to keep a nominal sense of routine. of normalcy. of peace with the four of us in the tent. we love all of our animals. but we depended on billy's companionship with an intensity we've previously only reserved for rudy. and then, wednesday night, he never came home. never came back to the tent for his midnight check in. never came for his early morning breakfast the next day either. 

he was found on the road. stiff. wet. much blacker than i remembered him. his face had been hit by the car. it looked as though it had been quick. but he was so un-billy that i had to check his nose to make sure it wasn't him. but it was. his nose was missing the same piece it had always missed. 

i still was quite sure we had the wrong cat when we buried him under the apple tree up on the hill overlooking the farm. when we said our few words and laid quartz rock and cosmos on his grave. i was even more certain when we left yesterday for boston that the farm would call us later that day....or maybe even today. with the good news that billy was alive and well, sleeping under the bed in the guest room. and we would all wonder humorously at the macabre blunder of burying someone else's cat.

but they haven't called.

and i find myself overwhelmed with missing north carolina. where we used to have all the creature comforts that the tent lacks. where we used to have two loving kitties that spent their afternoon on the bed. spent their nights in the carolina hills. and spent their mornings eating thawed liver from the freezer.

we're hoping to find a home this week-end. which is why we are here in boston. but it feels now like we missed our chance. they may just be two cats to the outside world. but they were the definition of our family and of our home. and now we don't have them. and now i just want to retreat to the farm in north carolina and go back to my cousins. back to our pigs. back to the 500 acres we called home. back to a time when we had everybody and everything just so.