The Grand Experiment

Chili et al

And just like that, it's over.

Since my last dispatch, the week proceeded apace, and I wavered between focusing on the task at hand and imbuing every chore with the gravity of "the last time I'll ever ... ," every menial thing infused with sentimental weight. This tendency to lend great importance to small things, to obsessively commemorate, was an impulse I had as an OCD child and have more or less tried to snuff out over time, but in the face of such an emotional peak, it comes roaring back. 

Thursday was my last day with the vat, cutting curd for Bonapartes. I went into the morning hoping that I could make my peace with the cheesemake, feeling finally as if I'd conquered it physically and mentally. But things never work that way -- the pH was super high when I got in, so I had to busy myself with other things, checking and rechecking over the course of an hour and a half, gripped with anxiety that Laini would come in and need to get to the vat to dump milk and rush me through my last cut. It was less than ideal: messy, rushed, strained, as things always tends to be when you desperately want them to be tied up with a nice, neat little bow. 

In the afternoon, things unfolded in the usual way. Laini asked me if I had "one of those Amazon accounts," because she needed me to order her a new digital scale. I joked with her that setting one up was not that complicated and she shot back that she didn't have time even to go into the house between making cheese, milking and going to the Farmer's Market, so she certainly didn't have time to set up an account on the internet.

 "Ask me if I can go in the house tonight! Ask me!" 

"Can you go --"

"NO! Ask me if I can go in the house tomorrow! Go on! Ask me!"

"Can you --"

"NO! You'll see when you start your farm, there'll be no more of these 40 hour work weeks. You'll see."

My amusement at her rather comedic self-pitying was overshadowed by the fact that it was the first time I'd ever heard her acknowledge that my pipe dream might actually become a reality, when for months she's tried to convince me that I'd be better off opening a "grab and go" food shop to sell all the baked goods I always made a habit of bringing her. (She even went so far as to come up with a name for it  - "Van Gogh Grab and Go," or something to that effect --  evidently it would also require that I plaster impressionist prints on the interior walls to further the pun.)  

Thankfully, I have been loaded down with more than the usual amount of milkings due to Abby's absence this weekend -- eight in one week, with just one break on Thursday night -- and though it's been taxing, I have been happy to get such a concentrated stretch of time to give the girls many hugs (and occasionally shriek at them to get the fuck up on the stand Ballet and eat your fucking grain you assholes srsly though). I did a small amount of crying when Placer nuzzled me against the neck and breathed loudly into my ear and pressed her big brown eye against my cheek as she does. I teared up yesterday saying goodbye to Debbie at the general store, filling up my tank and buying my last assortment of luxury liquids. 

"You're such a sweet person," she said. 

Little does she know.

Today was my final day in the cheese room, my last morning driving down the Mines Road, through a thicket of golden leaves crusted with a sprinkling of snow. The Hazen's Notch pass is closed again for the winter. The air smells of wood fires. It was my last day swishing La Petite Tomme forms in dairy soap, wrapping the (hopefully correct Jesus goddamned Christ) Sweet Carolines and LPTs in the cave, lifting the Sweet Emotions, sweeping up sawdust and bleaching the racks. I said goodbye to the cave, which has been the secret witness to oceans of my self-doubting tears and best and worst thoughts.  I put a hand on some of my last Pyramids like I was comforting a stricken friend. 

Last night and today, Laini seemed distant, melancholy, and at first I thought perhaps she might be sad that I was leaving, or upset that I was abandoning her. But I learned that it was because her sister, who recently took ill, was going to have to face an aggressive and painful treatment, and that it was weighing on Laini. As I washed the last mats I'd ever wash, Laini told me about her sister, told me about her crazy conniving cousin and about how as a a child they'd been "best friends." She chatted animatedly about the soap opera drama that is her life, that is everything, seemingly, she touches. She casually mentioned that she has Tourettes syndrome.

Life went on. 

Life goes on. 

She was on the phone when I left, so I took a last look around, hearing her describe the stink of buck musk to whomever she was speaking to. I said goodbye to Alan, cuddled Gertie, who was trembling from the cold and from the fear of gunshots of nearby hunters. I said goodbye to the girls, clustered around their favorite rock, Chili in the forefront, Rock and Roxy nuzzling each other, Delphi triumphantly teetering on the top. I tried to sear it into my memory, this scene of the girls kibbitzing and congregating and fighting and canoodling, seen from afar as I walk up the hill and up close, against the backdrop of the sunwashed blue sky, with green grass still visible under the leaves and snow. I rolled my window down as I drove up the hill and said goodbye to Ruby and Asa the cows, said a prayer for them, feeling a strange sense of duty to do this since I won't be around when they are sent to the slaughterhouse and I want to pay witness to them. 

Tonight I will have my final milking shift. I will most likely cry a lot. I will hug every single girl and kiss her head and tell her I love her. I will leave Barry a card telling him thank you for teaching me. I will climb the stairs to Laini's house and hand her a bird's nest and a card that will not nearly do justice to all of the things I feel for her, but will, I hope, let her know just a little bit how much she means to me. 

And then, as she has advised me, I'll run quickly in the opposite direction. 

My emotions are raw, and my heart feels a little bit broken, almost like it did when my pal Shifty died this  past spring. I am trying to let myself feel these things and simultaneously distill the lessons that I've learned here so that I can take them with me when I start my new job. I want to be keenly aware, perceptive, dutiful and industrious. I want to be tough.  I want to stifle all the paralyzing self-doubt that I feel sure undermined me in many ways over the last thirteen months and proffer an image of confidence and competence that was always out of my grasp at Lazy Lady Farm. 

I hope that I can keep trying to be my best self there, but I worry that without Laini to strive for, I'll falter. 

I hope upon hope upon hope that I do her proud.