Rear View

I’m sitting in the car. It’s freezing outside. I’m on a hilltop, parked outside a gate. I’ve backed up to the gate because mama always said, “Always think of the getting out, before you think of the getting in.” My son is feeding a friend’s animals. I am waiting for him. It’s been ten minutes. …

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Together Forever – Thwarted

I. Today the Rancher separated the 3 calves from the mothers to wean them. They are across a fence from each other. The mothers moo forlornly for their young who are frolicking carefree in the next field. Even while they chew, the heart-sick mother’s moo. It’ll be a long week hearing their pathetic bellowing. II. …

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Panacea for Bashful Pupils

I bolted towards dad as soon as I saw his car in the parents’ parking line at Muthaiga Primary School. There weren’t any cars left. I hopped in beside him and settled into the edge of the seat with my massive orange rucksack still on my back. My feet barely touched the floor and my …

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Meant to Belong to a Herd

Part I: OXYTOCIN I took a magnificent Dementia class by fellow occupational therapist Teepa Snow. She taught a contact technique to use on people with dementia. She elaborated that it led to the release of Oxytocin, a hormone produced in mammalian brains. I call it our herd hormone. I later learned it controls social recognition …

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I Don’t Need You

“How do you do it?” her new friend gasped incredulously. My kid sister Jackie was at a children’s birthday party and had just shared that she was a single mum. She got this reaction almost every time. This time an extraordinary sense of ownership welled inside her. “I do it just fine with the Lord.” …

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If You Believe

If you know anything me, it’s my feelings about cows. You can find contributing factors here: https://thukumainen.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/wild-about-cows/. And to think I am married to a man who calls himself a rancher. Very sad. I posted that blog a year ago and my feelings haven’t changed much. Shortly after that, Emma who’d grown up on a …

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