It was such an exciting childhood to have farm animals, even if at times it was a bit scary. We had a large horned milk cow named Opal who would charge at us if we displeased her, and an overly protective rooster that would jump onto our shoulders and peck at our heads if he was in a bad mood when we went into the hen house to collect eggs. My favourite animal experience on the farm, aside from growing up with a black lab named Satan, was having my very own duck.
Perhaps you question the memory of a child so small, but if you ask my mother she will tell you that I remember more about my early childhood than she does. I remember everything. I remember my painful ear infections that resulted in middle of the night hospital visits while wearing footed toddler pajamas. I remember my best friend's grandmother's extremely large boosoms darting out toward me in torpedo shaped bras veiled in cotton gardening blouses while she watched after me in her garden when I was only a preschooler. I even remember asking myself my first existential question at two years old after I threw an empty bottle at the bedroom door from the crib in frustration over my mother's lack of a refill service. I laid on my back, took a deep breath, stared out the window and wondered, "Am I REALLY here, or is this just somebody else's dream?" after which I began to imagine that I was just a character inside the dream of another being's consciousness. I repeated asking myself this question through out my childhood and I could never determine if life was actually real or just some sort of a story being told by another.
But back to more important topics like my pet duck. He was ADORABLE. He was a baby duck, just a tiny little creature whom for some reason after he cracked open his egg, believed that I was his mother. Every day when I went out into the farm yard this little baby duck followed me round. I'd sit in the sand pile with my cars and my sand castle building toys. We had no box, just an open pile of sand from one of my father's unfinished cement pouring sessions. The baby duck would sit with me adoringly while I 'worked'. When I would go into the house at the end of the day, my mother would return the duck to his proper flock. Neither the duck nor I realized that my family's plan was for his family to eventually become duck dinners. Free from this knowledge, the baby duck would trustingly follow me down the driveway to visit that nearby grandmother with the torpedo boosoms in her garden full of pansies, or he would go down into the field with me to play chicken with the large horned milk cow. It was true love for both of us, for me and my duck.
This is an unceremoniously short story because one day, I accidentally stepped on my duck. I killed the damned thing. I was heart broken. At the tender age of two, I made a mistake and somebody died. My baby duck was dead. He was irretrievably deceased after only one moment of absence to my otherwise constant baby duck conscientiousness . I can still feel the pang of remorse, the horrific realization of my crime, the obsessive desire to go back in time in order to take back my terrible misstep and to save the life of my beloved pet duck.
I would like to say that I really learned my lesson on that day, and that I never made a mistake like that again. I'd like to say that stepping on that duck made me a better person or some such thing. But the truth of the matter is that I still step on ducks. I don't mean to, I try very hard not to, but occasionally it happens and an accidental metaphoric duck crushing event transpires. A dead duck is every bit as upsetting to me now as it was to me when I was only two. I wonder about the purpose of it. Why do ducks have to die? Why do we accidentally step on delicate things that break? Then I lay on my bed and I take a deep breath and I look out my window and I wonder, "Am I really here, or is this just somebody else's dream?"
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| The sun setting at a campsite on the Izu Peninsula in August |
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| Me watching the sunset over the ocean 42 years after the first dead duck |
