Nanny Goat, Nanny Goat

When I was a tiny child my family lived briefly in a Ken Keseyesque converted school bus. My father used a draft horse to work in the woods, an early semiLuddite environmentalist. Love children on the lam from the rat race of California.

The entire backstory has been hiding, skeletal, in a closet until today. In fact the meager skeleton has been gaining strength in its secrecy, and is now fat and ghoulish beyond its worth.

Right now I am a little concerned that my dad will attend the coming out party. But who am I kidding? My father read this blog exactly once, and then called me to say famously, "This is your private stuff. I don't want to read about your private stuff."

Hunh. He probably doesn't want to read about his private stuff either.


So I was a little counterculture hippie child, clearly visible under a blue velvet empire-waisted wedding gown in a picture that held my beautiful teen mother and my pony-tailed father and a daisy-bedecked cake. They're not married anymore. Maybe because they didn't keep a piece of that daisy cake under their pillow for a year. I think I read you're supposed to do that. It probably shifted out of place when they had to move the bus. Anyway it all crumbled.

After the bus we had a stab at dairy goat farming with some other like-minded individuals. I do mean individuals. I must not have liked their individuality very much because family lore has me attempting to hitchhike solo into "town" to go "shopping" at a tender preschool age.

I had figured out that those weren't raisins all over the grass. I wanted to buy some proper raisins.

I can still remember goat milk. Mmm-mmm. Or, NOT.

You know what goat milk is good for? Making goat cheese. Chevre. Like Chevrolet, only more expensive per pound. Our current neighbors have a dairy goat farm. Grace Hannah loves their Nubian nanny goats. They love her too.

Grandma and Grandpa love her too. Grandpa has a very short haircut and a business that has nothing whatsoever to do with getting back to the land. Or schoolbuses. Grandma drives a Volvo and takes the girls to the Dollar Tree with alarming regularity in determined support of capitalism.

I've come full circle and flung that closet door wide open. See how that works?