volume one hundred and eleven
the first story i wrote
📍Written from Nashville, TN with two adorable dogs and one adorable cat sleeping at my bare feet which were aching to pop on their cowgirl boots and lead me to the dance floor.
My first pet was a bull calf named Mickey. I was no longer cute enough for my older sister to show me interest as she had an even younger, even cuter sister by this point. I wonder if that was any reasoning behind why I was the one to get the new pet when we arrived at our new home.
Mickey was my companion and my friend. I felt like he spent so much of my time with me. I told him secrets, I had many diary entries about him, my imagination took us places far more exciting than jumping over the moon, I told him stories that I made up, I thought about him sleeping outside as I tried to sleep at night in my bed and my young childhood holds many memories of him.
His large dark eyes felt like they were both never looking at me and at the same time following me, staring straight at me, hanging on to everything I said. The little patch of hair on the top of his head between his ears that curled as opposed to the rest of him that was fluffy and straight, gave him the distinct look of a baby. He was my baby. I would spend endless amounts of time just sitting by the fence consisting of three lines of thick wire, with him on the other side, too nervous to pet him unless someone else was there.
Mickey was named after Mickey Mouse, of course. He was cream-coloured with large caramel splotches all over him and little dark freckles on his pink nose.
Despite all these memories, I think I only had him for a week before he got pneumonia and left me.
My last memory of him was not in the paddock — among the long lush green grass, tree-covered hills behind him, and blue skies above — all of which live in the photographic evidence of his existence.
My last memory of him is my view from the kitchen window. I was barely able to see over the kitchen bench which was almost as tall as I was. I was staring down the yard to the shed, where he was with a blanket covering him to keep him warm, his head poking out, my Dad with him, my Mum by my side.
Dad is the only one in a photo that proves Mickey was in our lives. Perhaps we thought we would get more time with him and that more photos were to come, but there are none of him and I together. In this one photo, Mickey is so small that Dad stands over him, a leg on either side as Mickey barely meets his knees. Dad’s arms are wrapped to the front holding a baby’s milk bottle in both of his hands feeding Mickey. Dad is wearing his purple and blue tie-dye shirt paired with his King Gee shorts. His feet — were they bare or wearing thongs? — either way, nothing suitable for the long grass that would not long after this period, produce a red-bellied black snake as a surprise, or an area that held funnel web spiders ready to be discovered. We were always instructed to shake our shoes before putting them on and Dad walked around as if his feet (and the rest of him) were invincible.
In the photo, Dad’s face is turned to the camera, his eyes wide with pride, and his smile is open-mouthed and huge. His expression offers so much excitement and I wonder if he ever fed me as a child with that kind of enthusiasm. Without any photos to tell me so, I will never know.
Mum is there too. No doubt she is the one behind the camera, documenting the move from the city to the calm country life that had found this young family learning how to navigate the fact that there were no street lamps. We were now completely in the dark once we turned out the lights, but there were plenty of stars to be seen if we lay on the trampoline at night.
I don’t remember when my parents told me he had died. I don’t remember when he got sick or how long he was sick or how long I had with him before any of this happened.
I don’t remember him dying. In fact, I don’t know if anything I have said in this post outside of the photo is true or if they are the first stories I ever wrote. Despite not being in school yet, my mind could conjure them up. But the memories exist to me now, and they're ones I keep with fondness which doesn’t change whether the memories were created or kept.
Lovely reader, tell me about your first pet.
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here are three things I struggled with this week:
🐾 Saying goodbye to adorable pets I bond with never gets easier.
🐁 Refreshing the page over and over to see the same result.
🗑️ The more I travel it never ceases to amaze me that some places do not have recycling and composting systems in place for their trash. Just all in one place. Or sometimes extreme excitement (warranted) from homeowners who exclaim they “have recycling now!”
here are three blessings from this week:
🤠 Buying a double scoop to end the night — or so you think — then passing a place you want to dance. Dancing full of sugar. Bliss.
✨ Fireflies! I have never seen them until here! HOLY SMOKES!
☁️ Continuing to feel life on levels I have never known, the longer I am sober.
here are three goals for the coming week:
🪁 Sponteniety continued.
🧳 Packing for the next trip even though this one still exists!
📍 Doing a lot of things with friends experiencing them for the first time as they visit, while I experience them for the last time before I leave.
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you. Now I am (at the time of writing this, early and ahead of when it is scheduled) off to catch up on all my laundry from my travels then treat myself with an ice cream.
Pair an ice cone with fireflies and you’ve got a magic evening.
My first pet was a goofy loveable dog named Jack. We’ll cover that in Tuesday’s substack 🐾