Sylvia's Farm by Sylvia Jorrin Page A

Late yesterday afternoon, my grandson and I went elderberry picking along the stone walls. I’d been telling him about my grandfather Wolf’s elderberry wine. And how I must gather enough berries to make some. A woman stopped me on the road to ask directions. She’d never been here on Elk Creek before. “How pretty,” she said, delighting in its loneliness. I knew any delight I had had left me. For a while, at least.
    Time to find the ewe. Time to bury her. I’ll be brokenhearted until I do it. I got a small bag of grain. Just in case. Steele, Samantha, and I walked up the hill. She was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, from behind the rock pile surrounded by a ring of seven young trees, there she was. Stamp. Stamp. Stamp went the right foot. Stamp. Stamp. Stamp.
    The sixth anniversary of my mother’s death is next week. Each year my heart fails me around now. Life does not seem possible. All sadness becomes too much to bear. The suffering ewe had become entangled in my heart with the sorrow I felt at the loss of my mother. But the ewe was alive. More than alive. The ragged bleeding skin was gone. And in its stead was clean pink new skin. A bit swollen, but flesh, clean, healthy. Her eye was open. There was not a fly to be seen. She stamped her foot at me and roared a deep guttural roar at the dog. I hadn’t known how much despair had filled my heart until it lifted. And I was free once more.
    This morning I took another bag of grain up the hill. She hadn’t come close enough to me to eat yesterday’s. I also took a smallthermos of coffee in case I had a wait. She and I had to connect today.
    She was asleep under a tree I particularly love. It has a fallen branch across a stone wall. It is a perfect place to sit. The branch is just the right height for me. I was prepared to spend the morning if need be. She let me approach. I fed her grain in my hands. She has a funny Dorset face. Sturdy. Chunky. Homely. One eye is glazed. The other is alert. She ate all the grain from my hands. I climbed into the crook of the tree and had my coffee. I decided to name her Rose, after my mother. For the moment, all is well again.

RUGOSA ROSES
    R UGOSA ROSES , magenta to cerise, are still in bloom on the beach in Connecticut. Not many, but a few, here and there among the leaves. The rose hips are almost ripe. Some have become the dark orange that sets so well against the green leaves. The rest are still wearing a touch of light green, graduating to yellow and orange. I picked a few, just enough to fill my pockets, and make a glass of jam for my daughter. Enough to make a memory or two. And I couldn’t resist picking one perfect bloom to give my cousin Marilyn.
    Into another pocket went a shell. I don’t remember when I last walked on a beach. Silken sand. The ocean roaring into shore. A long time ago, I spent every summer day running on the sand, racing in between the waves. Children run into the water as waves pull away and run out again as waves return. Laughing. Tiny gestures of mastery and power. I’m faster than
that
wave. I’m faster than the ocean. We built sand castles and ate sandwiches and stayed out of the water, prisoners of our mothers’ fears. We wore little leather slippers so our feet wouldn’t get cut from the shells. I hated those little slippers. To this day I go barefoot beyond the limits of common sense.
    The sound of waves coming in crashes into this still quiet room, where the only sound is that of the pen crossing the page. I used to hold my breath and count how long the space was between the waves. The beach had been a bit of ordinary heaven. A familiar pleasure, too familiar to be grand. But grand it seemed the other morning, picking rose hips and filling my pockets with them.
    It wasn’t my beach. It was my cousin’s beach. Mine lay beyond the crescent of Crescent Beach, Niantic, at the place where the Thames River meets the Sound. On summer days,