Writing a Cow

When my son was a year old, he was obsessed with cows. Perhaps his cow-bsession originated from too many repeats of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” or maybe from visits to the local petting zoo. Either way, as a loving parent and a literary nut, I immediately acquired a multitude of books about cows which greatly enhanced my knowledge of the types of cows in the world (there’s a cow that has a white belt across her black belly) and my understanding of the various parts of a cow’s digestive system (there are too many). We had books about cows that type and cows that come home, and even one fabulous and funny book called The Cows Are Going to Paris, written by David Kirby.

The cow painting hanging in Uri's room

Uri is still fond of cows. He prefers not to eat beef because he feels it is wrong to kill such a beautiful creature. My boyfriend Dar loves cows too and has given Uri a gorgeous painting of some Holstein cows meandering in a meadow to hang in his room. When I drive out through the hills near our house, I watch the cows roaming, and I send out a wish that they are happy cows, raised for their milk. I guess you could say that we love cows in my family.

To me a cow is a symbol of a return to nature and a simpler life. It throws me back to childhood visits to the Kibbutz (the Israeli communal farm) or the Moshav (the cooperative farm), the smell of cows hanging in the air, their melodic moos carrying in the breeze. Cows symbolize, for me, an assurance against starvation, which I draw not from life but from literature. I remember Hector Malot’s touching and adventurous Nobody’s Boy, and the thin cow which alone protected Remy and his foster mother from poverty. I knew: as long as there’s a cow, there will be milk and butter.

So when Patricia MacLachlan, author of the wonderful Sarah Plain and Tall, said (and I think it may have been a quote from her books) at the SCBWI conference, “I can’t write anything better than a cow,” and again after that, “a poem as beautiful as a cow,” I felt a deep connection to that sentiment. What is there, in our world, more beautiful than a cow? She is a symbol of mother earth, nourishing, generously sharing her milk with us. In India the cow is a sacred animal, and in Feng Shui it is a symbol for prosperity and good luck.

But if a cow embodies the mother: patient, calm, accepting, what does it have in common with a conflict-filled, dramatic, fast paced book? For me, at least, Ms. MacLachlan’s analogy evoked a feeling rather than a comparison: that a writer has created something as pure, innocent, and perfect in its own way, as real, as true to its own nature, as a cow.

On Raising Cows

I love to travel, and today I am sitting no more than two hundred feet from the waters of beautiful Morro Bay. Darkness reigns outside, and the sky is sprinkled with hundreds of blinking stars. Of course I am not sitting out there -- it’s too cold for me -- but in a comfortable chair in front of the fireplace (which for some reason refuses to turn on). The window shutters are down, but it doesn’t matter. I know the stars and the sea are there.

The landscape around Morro Bay stretches seemingly forever, pastoral farms, hills and sea. I love the space all around me. I love the farms. I love the cows dotting the hillside. I love how, when the shadows of the trees begin to stretch, the cows all follow each other back to the barn, the food, and the milking. I love the lines of planted fields, the color of newly turned soil. And I love how everything here is framed by the ocean.

Having a cow farm had always been a sort of dream of mine. I’d like to have a huge vegetable garden, overflowing with flowery lettuce and broccoli, waves of cucumbers and pumpkin, climbing pea plants, and sunshiny corn. I’d like to have pecan trees like my Uncle Yigal had when I was a kid, rows of them, an elfin forest where the air is cool and musty, and the leaves collect on the ground, hiding the treasured fallen nuts. I’d like to have peach trees and apple trees. And of course, the cows. And maybe a goat or two. Or sheep. An alpaca, perhaps?

Maybe you would ask what is stopping me from having a farm like that. Nothing but my own mind, I think -- my fears, my beliefs about my limitations. I could have a farm. But how would I know how to take care of the cows? It seems like so much work! And I don’t like working so very much. And I’d need to be responsible, conscientious about  checking on the vegetables in the garden, picking the fruit when it’s ready, trimming trees and taking care of the animals! Yes, I want to be closer to the land and grow my own food, but... well, can’t I hire someone else to actually milk the cows?

Ah, the hypocrisy of it all! I can dream, but I do it best from behind my computer screen. I am better at writing about my cow farm, at imagining it, than I am at growing even the little bit of herb garden at my home. So maybe I won’t have a cow farm in this life. Maybe chickens and dogs are my limit. Or maybe, as I grow a little more to believe in the special powers guiding my life, I’d find a way to have that farm, milk those cows, and grow all the vegetables I could desire. One day. Perhaps.