Difficult Creatures

 

We call our RV the Whitehawk, because that is the brand that it is, and, well, also I like birds. But perhaps after three weeks of travel, it is time for that name to change. My cousin Natalie named our RV the Icebreaker, upon saying bon voyage to it and the stinky Mitchells it carries. And indeed, I believe that there it is something glacial about our passage as we tow it across the country, driving the speed limit (or 5 under to burn my gas more efficiently!) while Americans of every stripe rush past me.

We visited my family this month, Jehovah’s Witnesses from central Michigan. We arrived on the eve of a craft fair, to a piece of land crowded with sheep, chickens, dogs, beehives and people busy packaging laser cut merchandise.

Their yard had been a swamp until the Father of the house filled it in with backfill from a basement and planted it with grass seed. I had to be careful not to run over the head to a well, which looked like little more than an easily crushed clump of grass. From there, I had to commit a three point turn and thread my truck up and through a pair of oh-so-thin apple trees so I could back the RV up next to the house. My cousin asked if I wanted to park it even further, down a hill and around a bend next to their RV, but it was a prospect I did not dare attempt.

It was more than enough to not crush those apple twigs like matchsticks (seriously, they were planted very recently, one of my rearview mirrors could have easily decapitated one of them) I did not wish lose control of the RV as I backed up down a hill of wet grass and careen backwards into a pond that I will rather sardonically describe as fetid. Even if I somehow skirted the pond, the RV would likely maim a sheep, and surely kill at least a couple chickens.

We parked, disembarked, and went inside to find a house filled with the smell of burned wood. We showed Leo and Xander the toys (the girls were out) and said our hellos. My cousin was excited to see us but also seemed a touch overwhelmed with us trampling into her house, loud, stinky, and asking questions when she needed to be prepping for the fare.

The Hensons quickly gave us the rundown. Natalie has an Etsy shop she fills with laser cut awesomeness and leather goods that Justin makes. They had a fair the next day, and were loading a trailer with sweet merch from said Etsy shop this very night. Other than that they were free.

Oh, well, in two days, someone was coming for the sheep. Yes, they had a lot of chickens, no they were not all laying. Yes, we could eat as many eggs as we wanted anyway. Other than that…

Oh, well, Justin works installing floors and working dumpsters and had Meetings some nights. Other than that they were totally free!

I thanked them, assured them we would get out of their way for the evening and immediately failed to do exactly that. For before we could retreat to the RV, Great Aunt Mary showed up with the Henson girls. The ice cracked a bit.

We introduced Leo and Xander to Rory and Viv, and were off to the races. The kids took about four seconds to accept that they were cousins. Then they raced around to play, shrieking with abandon. Aunt Mary got down to business with Natalie, Justin headed for the hot tub with my Uncle Dave, and I sequestered myself in their office so I could direct a couple episodes of Mesa Segura.

I tried to focus on a google video conference despite our lead actress having misplaced the date and being absent. My Uncle Dave came in, patted me on the back, gave me a thumbs up when I told him that the meeting was for business (a white lie, unless you become my patron on patreon!). I felt terribly uncomfortable, locking the family out of their own room while I bossed people about on the internet, but the wifi was good so…

I finally emerged, said my hellos, a few goodnights, and slithered into the hot tub just as my Uncle was leaving. I said farewell, sad I had spent a few hours so close to him without being able to share a moment, and got in the hot tub with Justin.

Just. Justin.

He grinned and there was something menacing to it, like a bull sensing another, lesser male near his favorite watering hole. We got to talking.

I asked him about running dumpsters (a delightful euphemism that means he bought a couple dumpsters, and drops them off places for people to fill, then he tows them to the dump).

He asked me about ghostwriting.

I asked him about chickens. He asked me about the RV.

He told me he didn’t swear. I told him I could stop if he minded, I’m used to code switching for children. I can handle it, he assured me.

I don’t think either one of us knew what we were in for.

I told him it was extremely generous of him to open his house to us (we didn’t have a way to dump out waste in the RV when parked at their house, so the adults needed to go inside in order to not fill the tank). He told me that was what it meant to be family, and that to make sure we minded the pond with ithe kids, as he hadn’t got a chance to get take care of it yet.

I tried not to mention the barking dog in the far back of the yard.

But he mentioned her all the same.

She was there to guard the 4 sheep, who were leaving soon. Sheep! I exclaimed. Wow. What animals they had! Justin told me that they had already raised goats, pigs, cows, and maybe turkeys. Later, Natalie told me that Justin’s fascination with livestock got so bad that sometimes people would greet her with, “what did he bring home this time?”

In the end, our stay was defined by four less than cooperative creatures.  By themselves, each was agreeable enough, but together they became an unruly herd.

On our third day there, I found myself trimming a brisket from a cow that the Hensons had raised some time ago.

I was using their knife, a shortcoming that Justin would remediate later. I found out that his (Grand?) father was a butcher, and that the man knew how to sharpen a blade. I would later give Justin my knife, a blade that one of the finest sushi chefs in Tokyo had insulted as an expensive souvenir, and asked Justin if it was indeed that. He would deem the blade good, thin steel, and sharpen it to such a keen edge, it could slice through leather, a feat which would have been impossible before he had touched it.

He also made a custom leather holster for it, with such ease and quickness, than when he presented it the next morning, my brain processed it as too perfect to have been a custom job. Obviously, he had had a sheath lying around, and had stuck the knife inside. A kind gesture, but nothing compared to literally crafting the knife its very own sheath out the spine of a field journal. I would fail to thank him properly for this gift, in that moment, simply because it looked too good. A regret, that Justin would later tell me about with eyes large as the dog’s that was currently begging me for (another) morsel of deckle fat. I fed the dog a scrap and looked up to see that my wife was outside, holding up a towel in an attempt to stop a sheep from running her over.

I eyed the dog warily, then stashed the brisket in the fridge and went outside to see what all the hubbub was about.

It turned out that today was the day that the four sheep who lived in the back of their property, amongst their two hundred chickens and two beehives, were to be picked up and sold. Which meant that they needed to be herded up to the front of the yard and put in a small pen that Justin had constructed out of cattle panels earlier that morning.

Despite there being four adults and a bonafide sheep dog complete with herding instincts, this proved to be a less than simple task. By themselves, each sheep didn’t seem particularly skittish, but together, they had enough collective intelligence to tell that something was amiss. Justin and Dax (the dog) would herd them against a fence, but rather than following it to the front yard, the sheep would make a break for it and try to cross the yard and retreat to their pasture at the back of the property.

This was where Natalie, Raquel and I came in.

When the sheep tried to make a break for it, we were supposed to dissuade them of this notion. This became increasingly difficult as the sheep found gaps in our meager defenses and ran past. Back and forth we herded the sheep, from one side of the yard to the other. We got them out front once, only for them to double back, snaking between the storage containers and dumpsters Justin had on the side of his house (a literal side hustle) and to return to their place at the back of the yard.

We managed to single one out from the rest of the herd (the black sheep, HA!) and got a lead on her neck and led her out front.

This made the job only slightly easier. We managed to guide the other three sheep (two females and a big ol’ male) up to the front of the yard, and then the buyers showed up. This spooked the sheep even further, and they darted past. I got right in the way of one of them, and it leapt into the air, striking me with its hoof, a blow that might have broken a tooth had it been aimed but a bit better.

At this point, Justin was bright red from both exertion and (as he would willingly admit later) being outsmarted by a couple of sheep. He somehow chatted nicely with the Sheep Man as I guided the big ol’ male further up into the yard.

The Sheep Lady slipped a lead on the sheep, and called for the Sheep Man. This hulking individual—easily 6’6” and built like a farmer—straddled the sheep, slipped his arms under its front legs, and lifted it up, much the same way I would lift up a toddler with a poopy diaper. He carried this absolute unit of an animal to his trailer, and plopped it inside. He then grabbed the black one, and deposited it in the trailer without so much as breaking a sweat. Sheep Man was tough.

That left only two. Justin, Dax and I herded them to a corner of the yard. We approached step by step, inch by inch, while Sheep Lady encouraged us and calmed the sheep. Finally, there was nothing to be done but grab ‘em.

Justin lunged for the big one and I went for the little one. While Justin slipped a lead around the neck of his sheep, I sat hugging mine, unsure of what to do with it, until Sheep Man came and lifted it up like it was nothing but a kitten, and loaded it in the trailer while Sheep Lady led the last sheep away.

This task finally completed, we got back to the even more difficult job of managing the creatures that actually defined our stay: our children.

Not that any of our kids were particularly difficult by themselves, but together they formed their own little obstinate herd.

Had it just been our two eldest and one of the younger, I think it would have been fine. It was awesome to see Leo be introduced to his cousin Rory, accept the relationship, and launch into full scale pretend play mode.

Xander and Vivian (almost two and barely three, respectively) did not fare as well.

Vivian was not quite certain why Xander was allowed to play with all of her toys and would repossess those which she did not think Xander needed to play with.

Xander learned to fight back against this (normal) behavior by shouting, “over there! Over there!” As he gestured for her to get lost. It was horribly embarrassing, I must admit, but there was little to be done for it, because there were always dishes to be done, or brisket to be trimmed or sheep to be herded.

There was just something about the four of them together that caused chaos. Multiple times, I found Leo playing with the two youngest without issue, or Xander with Rory and Vivian, but once they were united, they refused to play by anyone’s rules. But we managed.

We did so well in fact that we all accepted an invitation to my other cousin’s house to play with her three-year-old.

“Cousin Party,” my cousin Emily’s son Arthur deemed it, but I felt like it was more of a cousin train wreck. We arrived, crammed the RV in their driveway, and had just got settled when Natalie and crew showed up.

The Moms taking pictures of all the kids together.

Now, instead of four cousins (2^nd cousins? We never figured it out) there were 5 (plus a cute lil’ twelve-week-old). Like a hurricane, they scattered Arthur’s carefully arranged hot wheels to the winds. They demanded bubbles, dumped out puzzle pieces, rifled through books, and just generally became a menace. When pizza showed up, they devoured it and demanded more. When mac and cheese appeared they swallowed the noodles whole.

We found an old picture of us when we were their age, all of us staring at a television set, looking blessedly silent despite our messed up hair and bags under our eyes.

“Cousin life is rough,” Raquel declared upon seeing that photo, and upon seeing our kids, we all agreed.

But despite all the chaos, our visit still felt too short. Natalie had seemed wary when we first arrived but told us once we left that the house seemed too quiet, and the dishes were no longer washing themselves. Flattery, to be sure.

Emily also lamented us not staying longer and invited us back.

I laughed, said we’d try, certainly would if California lights on fire in February and blocks our passage to the West.

It was great to get everybody together, an accomplishment I take full credit for, since they had not met each other’s kids despite living just over an hour apart. Natalie named our RV the Icebreaker, and it certainly fulfilled its function, bringing the youngest generation of the American branch of the Mitchell family together, if only for a few chaotic hours.