Illustration by Ophelia Cornet from the book Evan and the Skygoats, written by Vanessa Vassar. “Little Rain” song clip by PHONOROID from the album Two Many Frames. Sounds and production by Axel Manrico Heilhecker. Words and vocals by Vanessa Vassar. Copyright Clandestine Records. AMP Music Publishing.
Small Things and Goats
It is the small things that have helped me survive these months, just as they did more than a decade ago with the passing of my daughter, Sky.
The tiny bagworm floating from an iridescent thread in a parking lot, the exquisite composition of a blooming wisteria plant, the solitary song of a crane or the chance shape of a heart found in a desert cactus— these have held and centered me back into myself over and over again—just as playful goats did when I tried to make sense of the loss of my daughter all those years ago.
Juxtaposing these tiny wonders, the immense Covid-19 Pandemic coupled with traumatic national and international politics have continually shifted into confusing stop/start/stops. I often began to write only to leave my work unfinished so that I have many fragmented pieces to remind me of my own stop/start/stops of this year passing.
Are there gifts that come with these intense times? I wrestle with myself to even admit that I have habitually granted myself the time to slow down and experience the miniature when I’ve traveled, in an unfamiliar environment, in a designated destination. But what if I do this without journeying to a foreign place, without the prompting of a painful death or a global plague?
Not necessarily to ignore the big, but to find respite in the small.
I leave you with Strangers*, a short piece I wrote for The Sun magazine and a radio interview with Dr. Ted Wiard on The Golden Willow Radio Hour where we deliberate the importance of the little things.
And wishes for you to find your own small healings exactly where you are.
Skykisses forever,
V.
*Please scroll down to find my piece on their website.
Holidays, Grief and Goats
January 14th will mark ten years since my daughter, Sky, passed away. Her illness came on suddenly, lasted only a few days, and shocked every person whose life she’d touched.
Exactly one month after her passing, I experienced my first holiday without Sky. It was Valentine’s Day, 2010 and I had no understanding of how I might prepare for a holiday after the loss of someone so beloved to me, even a holiday that I normally thought of as being rather insignificant. I cried in bed. I cried in the bath. Finally, I sat at our kitchen table crying until I made my way outside and walked randomly around Old Town Albuquerque. I kept my head down and tried not to look at holiday decorations or anyone smiling.
Up until that year, Valentine’s Day had never been especially important to me past my childhood card exchanges. At university, I’d even written a column for our newspaper detailing the history of Valentine’s Day and so, in my mind, dispelling the myth that this holiday should somehow be the ultimate day to express one’s love.
But Sky had changed all of that for me during her short lifetime. Through her, Valentine’s Day had come to mean a day to sweetly celebrate, exchange handmade cards, candies, kisses. She especially liked to dress in pink and red.
Sky treasured the holidays and her joy in preparing for them was contagious. She delighted in creating art, designing cards, baking cookies, knitting scarves, and pressing cloves into tiny tangerines she then gifted to family and friends. I often joked that her patience in making things had skipped a generation.
In that first year of grieving the loss of Sky, I frequently listened to the radio just to give my mind a break from its constant replay of her death. But around each holiday, reminders in the form of commercials and specialty programs broke into my radio airwaves. Mother’s Day was especially painful but even St. Patrick’s Day was surprisingly difficult when I remembered Sky planning carefully the night before what she could wear that was green and pinching me playfully in the morning if I’d forgotten.
The first year of holidays and celebrations after Sky’s passing was definitely the toughest for me. I couldn’t help but look back at where I had been the year before—inevitably with Sky—and I didn’t know how or where to be without her. She had been my only child and, though I was lucky to have two amazing stepdaughters, an incredible nephew, Sky’s friends, and my own beautiful friends and family in my life, it was as though we were all free-falling together—with me falling the hardest and the fastest. People looked to me for answers on how to be, what to do, how to act, what to say. I understand now that this was a show of respect as others acknowledged my loss to be the greatest. But ten years ago, I had no idea what to do or how to be. Ten years ago, I wasn’t an expert at grieving.
But if I accept this gift of time, this decade I have lived since my daughter’s passing, I realize that even though we are, each of us, alone, we also have more shared experiences than we realize. We are all born into this world and we all die and leave this world. Some of us live very short lives and some of us live to be very old. But we all die. So why don’t we have more conversations about this inevitable outcome? Why don’t we bond through tragedy and pain rather than often avoiding it and the people who’ve been hit the hardest? Can we change this outcome one book, one conversation, and one person at a time?
If you are experiencing loss and grief during these holidays, I hope that our book Evan and the Skygoats will help you understand you are not alone with your loss. And that dreams and joy can come back to you after and even during a time of intense grieving.
I also hope that the list of Love Thoughts for Someone Grieving I’ve included at the end of the book will present ideas that might stop your freefall of grief even if only for a few moments.
You might start with my first two points:
1. Be gentle with yourself.
2. Listen to yourself to know what is best for your personal healing.
It’s important to know that what is best for you will be constantly changing and may be different from another person grieving, even if they are grieving a similar loss. Give yourself permission to make plans for the holidays with the understanding that you might need to step away from or even cancel these plans up to the last minute or even during a planned celebration. You may not be an expert at grieving, but you are an expert at being you. Listening to yourself will be the best gift you can give yourself as well as those around you during the holidays.
If you find yourself in the role of supporting someone else’s loss, I hope you’ll read my Love Thoughts for Those Supporting Someone Grieving—also found at the end of our storybook Evan and the Skygoats. Read Point 5 and consider saying, “I love you” or “I’m thinking of you” rather than “Happy Holidays” to a grieving person. Thoughtful communication and gestures go a long way in comforting the child in all of us.
You may also want to consider starting new traditions that let you spend time with those you love without forcing past patterns. You might go for a nature walk with thermoses filled with hot cocoa or tea instead of sitting down to share a traditional meal. You might write a beloved’s name in the sand or spell it out with pebbles in the snow. You might search for heart rocks or build an altar for your beloved. Look for activities that feed your soul and comfort your heart in this new now of you.
Last week, Sky’s dear friend Sofia stopped by and brought me three extremely thoughtful belated birthday gifts. The first was a heart rock painted with the night sky as in Evan and the Skygoats. The second was a photo book of heart rocks because, as Sofia said, “You find hearts everywhere.” Here’s a piece of foil in the shape of a heart I came across in the Cutbow Coffee parking lot a few days ago. Sofia is right. It’s crazy how many hearts like this one literally cross my path each day.
And the third gift was a cookie cutter in the shape of a goat.
If you’ve read Evan and the Skygoats or any of my Journal posts, you’ll know that my own personal healing started on a goat farm with sweet and silly goats, so you’ll understand what an especially thoughtful gift this cookie cutter was.
A few days ago, with my goat cookie cutter in hand, I joined my mom and my son (the real Evan born to me three years after Sky’s passing), in baking cookies. We were very silly, cutting goats and adding cranberries and blueberries for eyes. My mom pulled out her star and heart-shaped cutters and Evan even invented something he called a “blueberry roll”—which was basically just a blueberry rolled in cookie dough but incredibly tasty and our favorite of the day.
My nephew, Nathan, was working on updating our computers in the living room and wandered into the kitchen and joined in our cookie making. Evan’s grandfather came in for the tasting and a new version of an old tradition was born.
And so, in the midst of these winter holidays, I wish for all of us peace and love.
And I send to each of you…
Skykisses forever.
V.
Cranes, Coffee and Goats
It is a warm autumn afternoon in Albuquerque and I find myself laying in front of our small adobe house on a banco and under the blue and white of the sky. I have wandered outside to wait for my son, Evan, to be dropped off by his grandparents and I have found a small triangle of shade on the banco for my face while the rest of me absorbs the sun.
After a time, I notice the cranes. They fly quite high up in the distance with distinct calls and a variety of flight patterns which they repeat again and again. In lines and Vs numbering 7 or 12 or 22, they swirl into circles that join them all together before breaking off again into shorter lines and Vs.
I am thoroughly mesmerized.
Surrounded by four trees and a few houses, I have a large window of leaves, branches and stucco walls through which to observe their choreography. Many minutes pass before I notice the smaller birds in the trees around me. They chirp and sing, dart in and around the branches, and rustle the leaves. They become the orchestra and the cranes the dancers in my personal theater.
And though I can hear the hum of cars with the occasional punctuation of a truck or motorcycle, the sounds of nature define my rest. I even hear the intermittent dry leaf drop to the ground with only the slightest touch of a passing breeze.
I am reminded today, as I lay here, of the first years after my daughter, Sky, passed away. So many of my hours thereafter were spent laying, walking, falling, kneeling and finally leaning into the natural world. I hoped that nature would absorb some of my pain. Often, it did.
In her last year with me, Sky and I had several conversations about religion, spirituality, the meaning of life, and where we go after death. She wanted to understand through me but, I explained to her, each of us must discover these answers for ourselves. I encouraged her to go beyond my words and visit church services with her friends and to read anything that spoke to her soul. On one of her last Sundays with me, we attended The Church of Beethoven where we heard poetry and music over steaming mugs of coffee and hot chocolate.
Sky’s memorial was held there a few weeks later.
Once during our last year together and driving home with Sky next to me in the car, she asked where I thought she would go if she passed away. “I don’t know,” I replied, distracted by the evening traffic. “Maybe you’d turn into a field of flowers.” Sky smiled and looked out of her window.
The last house where Sky and I lived together was at the base of the Sandia Mountains. I often referred to our view of the everchanging sky as a beautiful theater. We had a running joke between us where I’d say, “Look at the beautiful sky!” and she’d laughingly answer, “Thank you!”
In this picture of Sky, she is “flying” with the geese in a field. The Sandia Mountains are behind her. This photo was taken by her sweet friend, Sofia Resnik, ten years ago for one of Sofia’s school magazine projects and just a few months before Sky passed away.
Sofia has since grown to be a beautiful woman and is the Editor in Chief of the international fashion publication, Zephyr Magazine. She has also joined me and her mother, artist and illustrator Ophelia Cornet, in working on our children’s book, Evan and the Skygoats, as Design & Editorial Consultant.
Leaf Storm Press released Evan and the Skygoats a few weeks ago and our first reading was at Bookworks in Albuquerque. For this event, Ophelia created a kids art project by tracing the cover of Evan and the Skygoats for each child to color. So many young people sat on the floor in front of the audience simultaneously listening, watching and coloring as I read and Ophelia showed the pictures from our book. The kids also joined in during our Q&A with such thoughtful questions and profound comments that many of us adults were impressed beyond expectation. My heart was full.
Here is another story from a few weeks ago…
I am at one of my favorite Albuquerque coffee houses, Cutbow Coffee. So much of the work on and around Evan and the Skygoats has been done here and a few of the staff and regulars have become sweetly familiar to me.
It is almost lunchtime so their coffee rush has ended and owner, Paul, and I chat for a minute about coffee before he asks about our book. He has heard that it deals with grief but he doesn’t know any of the specifics. When he asks me to tell him more, I’m surprised that I’m surprised by this natural progression of our conversation. Tears come to both of our eyes as I explain that the story is based on the loss of my daughter when she was 13 years old. We share a painful moment. I know he is a parent too.
And then I mention the additional book theme of healing with goats and one of our beloved coffee baristas, Zoe, who is also working behind the counter exclaims, “Goats—I love goats!” We have a lively exchange and she tells me she hopes to someday live on a farm and raise goats. I show her photographs of Electra, Evening and Ebony—the real goats who became the Skygoats in my story. She says Nubians are her favorite.
How amazing it is to me that these creatures continuously help me to navigate my world, even by only their mention, as in an unexpected conversation. I have thought that this theme follows me everywhere but, as I write this, I correct myself and acknowledge that I carry this theme with me everywhere—this theme of the goats in my story, of creatures living with and around us, and of all nature helping me to heal.
When people ask me the age of the intended audience for Evan and the Skygoats, I tell them that it is for children ages 3 to 103. Because living in beauty and finding hope, even as we grieve, is a universal experience that can be wished for after any loss. And a thoughtful children’s book should speak to all of us—children as well as their families, friends and teachers who read to or with them.
This is my wish for Evan and the Skygoats. I’ve also included a list of Love Thoughts for Someone Grieving as well as a list of Love Thoughts for Those Supporting Someone Grieving at the end o'f the book. One of these thoughts is “Slow down to watch other creatures on our planet earth.” The gift of these beings on our planet surrounds us always, even in the most unlikely of places.
Skykisses forever.
V.
Ophelia Cornet in her studio
P.S. A few weeks after my conversations at Cutbow Coffee, Paul offered us a reading and signing of Evan and the Skygoats at the coffee house. Additionally, Illustrator Ophelia Cornet will show some of her framed original book illustrations. Her art will be up at Cutbow Coffee for two weeks beginning at the Book Reading, Signing, and Illustration Art Show this Sunday afternoon, November 17th at 1 pm.
Samantha Daitz
P.P.S. After the reading, Evan’s sister, Samantha Daitz, will gift us with her voice and a song on her guitar.
Samantha has been performing and speaking on behalf of the Sky Velvet Vassar Music Foundation as their Spokesperson since she was eight years-old.
Read more about their mission and events here.
P.P.P.S. Exceptional musician and Sky’s beloved cello teacher, Lisa Donald, will perform at Cutbow Coffee before our book reading. Evan began studying cello last year with Lisa Donald. I took this photo of them during his very first lesson. Evan now continues his cello studies at school, studying with concert cellist and amazing teacher Nick Upton. Evan will play a song on his cello at the Cutbow Coffee event.
Evan and Lisa Donald
Panic, New Beginnings and Goats
There are many questions I’ve heard parents ask when a child dies. Most are about the beloved child. But when a bereaved parent does finally accept the idea of the continuance of life, what I hear most often is: “Will I ever be me again?” or “Will I ever be the same?”
A child is born from us and can feel like an extension of our own bodies and souls. Most of us want to care for, protect and pass on all we can to our children. So the death of a young person doesn’t feel like the natural order of things. It only feels very, very wrong.
If I accept the idea that the only constant in the world is change, then I accept that with any shift in my life I will grow and things will be different. I’ve often heard these same questions from new parents or even from someone who is going through a difficult breakup. “Will I ever be me again? Will I ever be the same?” As I sit here writing this journal post almost a decade after the passing of my daughter, Sky, I can only answer these two questions with a “yes” and a “no” respectively.
Many years ago I lived in Berlin. During this time I traveled, directed music videos, recorded music with my band, Phonoroid, and gave birth to my daughter. In this photograph I am holding Sky, 8 months old, while on tour with Phonoroid.
Those years feel like another lifetime just as my years with Sky in New Mexico feel like another and my years since her passing feel like yet another. Much of who I was before my painful loss was forgotten by me in the midst of my all-consuming grief. But now, and especially working on our children’s book, Evan and the Skygoats, I am finding my way back to that creative part of me. It is a truly amazing unfolding of memories and new beginnings.
Various Artists. Released July 12, 2019.
Here is another new beginning...
A few weeks ago I discovered that our Phonoroid song, Panic, had been re-released on a jazz compilation entitled Blue Intuition. Hearing the entire album for the first time, I wonder if Hans Peter Salentin’s trumpet solo on Panic is the reason our song is included on this jazz release. I love being a part of this project along with musicians like Abdullah Ibrahim. I even recognize the song Bit o’ Water from one of my favorite French film soundtracks.
I listen to my own lyrics and realize that the words mean more to me now than when I wrote them many years ago.
After every ending there comes a new beginning
And in between there are moments of panic
When Sky passed away, I couldn’t imagine any new beginnings. There was a long list of things I thought I’d never do again— never buying another article of clothing, never writing another story, never dancing, singing, laughing and certainly never having another child. During those first days of missing Sky I once cried for 18 hours without pause. I remember wondering how a body could produce so many tears, how a soul could endure so much pain.
The first time I recall singing again was two years later. I was in Sky’s Uncle Peter’s car driving home from Santa Fe. He played a Marvin Gaye song on his car stereo and suddenly we were both singing. At home that evening I even danced. My heart was opening again.
A few months later I learned I was pregnant with my son, Evan. My sister, Velina, took me to buy new clothes to fit my growing belly. By this time I’d checked off almost everything from my never-do-again list. And new beginnings that seemed impossible in the first days, months, even years of my grief had begun.
I was and am still me.
After I listen to Panic on the new jazz compilation, I look for this Phonoroid CD. I find a copy and I open the booklet to find forgotten polaroids of my yesteryears. The first I took of Musician and Phonoroid Producer Axel Manrico Heilhecker as my train was pulling away from our nearby recording studio. The second is of me by a Berlin canal during a music video shoot.
Through a series of steps beginning with our Publisher at Leaf Storm Press gifting me VanessaVassar.com and Lou Design Studio creating my website, I’ve reconnected with many people from my past including Axel. We’ve now decided to record a new Phonoroid album of children’s music, Songs from the Sky.
I am still me.
After every ending there comes a new beginning
And in between there are moments of panic
Shhhh… let’s climb up to the caves
Sky, age 4, feels the textures of stones in a cave in New Mexico.
My story is only my own. I am acutely aware that people’s suffering from loss can express itself in as many different ways as there are people on this planet. I’m also aware that writing a children’s story based on my own personal loss is opening me up to the world from which I’ve retreated for so many years.
After Sky passed away in 2010, I dropped all of my creative endeavors and worked on farms and construction sites, visited cemeteries and a remote monastery as I looked for places to be. Ultimately, I found my greatest comfort in observing creatures—from ants to bats to birds to goats. I am and always will be eternally grateful for these amazing beings.
Skykisses forever.
V.
P.S. Evan found this goat puppet at our favorite Albuquerque bookstore, Bookworks, a few days ago. It reminded us of Electra the Goat so we brought her home. Illustrator Ophelia Cornet and I will have our first book reading and signing of Evan and the Skygoats at Bookworks on Sunday, October 20th at 1 pm. Lisa Donald, Sky’s beloved Music Teacher, Concert Cellist and President of The Sky Velvet Vassar Music Foundation will play her cello for us beginning at 12:30 pm. I hope to see you there.
Goat Memories
I am wondering this morning about the possible ways we hold memory within ourselves—in the waters of our bodies and in the elusive airs of our souls.
Why do we gravitate toward certain activities, foods, smells, music, people and even animals?
I’m asking myself these questions because of a recent conversation with my mom after my first journal post The Goats. She has reminded me of the history of goats in our family, a history of farming and animals that had only skipped my generation until I began spending time with goats after the passing of my lovely daughter, Sky.
And now goat stories are flooding in and they are coming from every curve of my mind. How could these memories have escaped me even as I wrote the story for our forthcoming children’s book, Evan and the Skygoats?
My mother now shows me photos of our family and recalls her own stories with goats in Texas. She remembers being a child of 3 and 4 years old and bottle-feeding baby goats at the hearth of a small house on her family’s farm, just down a path from the main house where she and her family lived. She is pictured here at age 3 on the farm with her doll.
Her family had moved to this area of Texas in the mid-1940s so that her father could drink the sulfur water while recuperating from the removal of a kidney, a surgery from which the doctors predicted he wouldn’t live. Their farm animals included pigs, dogs, chickens, a cow, a bull named Buck and goats.
I enjoy my mother’s stories over our cups of tea and she laughs when she tells me that she and her siblings once got stuck in a tree where they’d climbed up a low-leaning branch to sit in the shade. Baby goats had followed them up the tree and didn’t know how to get back down until my grandmother came out to rescue them all.
My mother says the goats played with her and her siblings like children so it’s no surprise that we call young goats kids. And we wonder together how much the sweet and silly nature of these goats lifted the spirits of my grandfather as he healed from his surgery.
Their goats were angora like the one pictured here with my mom’s brother and father.
My mom also tells me that, at one time, her father’s parents had more than 200 goats. The family lived on a piece of land that had so much brush and briar that goats were the best animals to help clear the land, although my grandfather’s younger sister, my Great Aunt Sue, recalled during a phone call with my mom last week that sometimes the goats got stuck in the briars. Sue says she remembers often accompanying her father to help release the goats from their entanglements and that these were some of the most interesting times for her on the farm.
Another precious memory of my own has come to me after looking through an old box of photographs. It is my daughter, Sky, pictured here smiling happily with goats during a stop on one of our New Mexico road trips.
I stare at this photograph and now also recall that Sky’s love of goats began several years before this photo was taken and while she and I still lived in Santa Fe. We often saw a woman walking with goats along the Alameda River Walk while I was driving Sky to school. I don’t know how many times Sky asked if she could also have goats, promising to care for them and walk them daily.
So just how deeply were these goat memories embedded in me? And as I continue to heal from the passing of my daughter and to live with trauma and loss of memory, what part of me responded to these cherished remembrances when I first decided to visit goats?
For me, goats were the first step to finding a way to stay in this world without my beautiful daughter. There have been so many other elements that I’ve gathered to heal my broken heart and I am still often surprised at what they are. But goats were definitely the beginnings of my gravitational pull toward a new way of being here.
As I am hit time and again by excruciatingly painful thoughts of my own story or when the news of another parent losing a child is made known to me—I can be brought to my knees with a grief so debilitating that, while I am in it, it can seem impossible to emerge ever again. I now equate this transformation to wrapping myself into a warm, tear-soaked cocoon.
The name my mother gave me, Vanessa, is of Greek origin and means butterfly. I have easily been able to imagine myself a butterfly during my lifetime. However, in these last nine years of grief and healing, a butterfly that can sometimes fly magnificently only to return to its cocoon time and time again.
In one of Ophelia Cornet’s illustrations from our book Evan and the Skygoats, Ophelia presents a vivid portrait of a mom living with an overwhelming heartache and crying into her own pool of tears, while also appreciating colorful flowers. The mom emerges from a tree branch of blossoms and plums in much the same way I have imagined myself unfolding from my cocoon—seeing the colors of my own wings and the exquisite beauty of the world until it is time to retreat once again.
I have dealt with my heartache by sometimes reaching out to a friend or family member and sometimes by quietly embracing and then moving through my grief alone, most often in nature.
And yet my sorrow has connected me to communities of people dealing with extreme loss and opened my heart even more to the known and unknown stories of others. For this, I am grateful.
I suppose I’ll never know if my initial desire to be with goats was based in a forgotten memory. And I can’t say if being with goats might be as healing for any one else as it has been for me. What I have learned is how important it is to listen to oneself.
If you are a person grieving and trying to heal, I encourage you to be gentle with yourself and to listen to yourself and what feels right for your own personal healing. These are the first two points in my list of Love Thoughts for Someone Grieving found at the end of our children’s book Evan and the Skygoats.
Because, for you, reviving your lost memories of things you feel connected to, of places and things that comfort you deep inside, might be watching the waves of an ocean, planting a garden, midnight walking or digging a ditch. Just as, for me, it will always be delighting at the sweet and silly nature of goats.
Skykisses forever.
V.
The Goats
I first heard about visiting goats from an interview on our local radio station. It was only a few weeks since my daughter, Sky Velvet, had passed away and I was sitting alone in the house I’d moved into with the man who would later become Evan’s father. He had two daughters younger than Sky, Mamie and Samantha, and he’d taken them to a street fair on Central Avenue in Albuquerque.
Everything felt wrong without Sky.
I can still picture myself at the kitchen table turning on the radio and realizing I was hearing a live broadcast from the street fair. The radio had become my constant companion—both a source of comfort and pain connecting me to the outside world I then rarely felt like joining. Music and children’s laughter in the background almost compelled me to change the station but a sweet voice speaking about newly born baby goats kept me tuned in. The voice was Nancy Coonridge’s and she went on to describe the remote farm where she lived with almost a hundred goats as well as a few herd dogs, pigs and chickens. People from around the world came to live, work and, I would later learn, to heal at The Coonridge Goat Farm.
I looked up the farm quickly with the first spark of intention I’d felt since Sky’s passing and, in that moment, knew I wanted to go to that farm and be with those goats. I wrote to Nancy and then found myself, a few weeks later, surrounded by scores of sweet and silly goats. Before breakfast, we were shown how to milk the many new goat mamas by a young man named Alex Vincent. I immediately dubbed him “Goatboy” and the name has carried forward these nine years of our friendship.
Those first mornings at The Coonridge Goat Farm, Alex taught us the importance of bringing a cup of strong coffee from Nancy’s early morning kitchen with us to the goats since breakfast wouldn’t be served until all of the mamas were milked and set off to roam the high desert with their guardian dogs. Alex demonstrated how to entice these milking mother goats to their milking stalls with small buckets of cottonseed. He even showed us how to squeeze fresh goat milk into our coffee cups straight from their teats. I was surprised at how sweet the milk was and learned from Alex that goat milk only takes on its strong flavor after a few days.
I was painfully sad during this visit to The Coonridge Goat Farm. But, at the same time, I felt like I’d entered another world, another reality—one where I didn’t feel so isolated in my pain and where my story was part of everyone’s story. The moment when I first recognized a brief reconnection to the rest of the world was when I’d just collapsed onto a picnic bench outside of Nancy’s kitchen. I’d left the others eating lunch inside so that I could deal with a wave of excruciating and intense longing for my daughter. As I looked up the hillside and my eyes blurred with forever tears, I witnessed the arrival of a tiny, delicate creature making its way down the rocky terrain.
I ran to find Nancy and tell her that a baby deer was near her house. When she saw it she smiled and explained that this must be the baby of one of her mama goats who’d disappeared a few days earlier and now was returning to the farm with her offspring.
I remember thinking that Sky had left this universe only a few weeks before and that this new being—this amazing creature—had just entered it a few days ago. Everything felt surreal and bittersweet.
This feeling remained as we nursed the baby goats with bottles of milk, as we scooped up the goat poop with shovels, sometimes even laughing at the goats’ silliness, and as we celebrated Alex’s 21st birthday with sweet wine and sacred tobacco while he also mourned the passing of his father a few months before.
I asked Nancy while we were hiking around the farm what kind of people came to her farm to work with the goats and she answered simply, “People like you. People who need to heal.” When I asked her why she was able to understand and even embrace those of us dealing with such grief and loss, she told me that her mother had passed away when she was five years old.
Then there was the arrival of Jane to New Mexico while I was highly pregnant with Evan. Jane and Alex had met during college and she’d come to join him at our small farm near Albuquerque for a few days before Alex took her with him to work at The Coonridge Goat Farm. Jane later became “Goatgirl” to me.
Jane and Alex often came to stay with us when they were in Albuquerque. On one of these visits, Jane and Alex brought us Nancy’s gift of three baby goats. We named the two sister goats Evening and Ebony. And the third goat, with marks on her that reminded me of lighting, we named Electra.
A year later, Jane was visiting our farm and I awoke to see her doodling magnificently in our kitchen. I remarked, “You could illustrate a children’s book.” She asked if I had one in mind and I told her I did but could never seem to find the time to sit down and write. She offered to play with Evan while I did just that and the first version of Evan and the Skygoats was on my computer a few hours later.
After I’d written Evan and the Skygoats, I shared the project with my friend and artist Ophelia Cornet. I told her about the Marc Chagall paintings that I’d most identified with in those first years after my daughter passed away. I’d frequently felt like I was floating above myself or at least floating above the rest of the world. I was often torn between wanting to join Sky “in the sky” and trying to stay on this earth with the rest of the family and friends I so dearly loved.
Chagall’s paintings, filled with floating figures being held by earthbound energy and mixed in with sweet goats and colorful creatures, were the point of departure for Ophelia’s illustrations. Ophelia then developed her own unique style of illustration and brought Evan and the Skygoats to life beyond my words. One can still see Ophelia’s homage to Chagall in this illustration of Evan’s mom floating above the farm while Evan’s dad holds her with one hand and Evan with the other.
This journey of healing is ongoing, but I’m grateful that I’ve stayed in this world to mother another child and to tell my stories once again. I am forever thankful for every thoughtful person and every sweet creature who has helped me accept and even embrace words as ancient as my mind can imagine such as, “The only constant in the world is change.”
Skykisses forever.
V.