There she was, that nanny goat, as we turned into the marketplace full of Easter revelry. She arched her blonde neck to nibble the last bits of grain from one wrinkled hand. Moira and I tried to coax the little girls in close to feel that soft nose, to see the sleepy burro in the straw. Oh, they stepped in a bit. Tentatively.
They don't remember.
Their world is so new that their memories don't reach back beyond these cobblestones. Tess talks of loving to ride the horse, but it is not our horses she speaks of. It is the pony ride tent she recalls. For a minute my knees are weak.
It wasn't so long ago. I sat on an upturned bucket and ran my hand along the side of doe like this one, coaxing milk from a warm udder and knowing exactly how long I had to work before the feed was eaten and she'd stomp impatient. If I close my eyes I can feel the metal handle of the water bucket, hear the bleating of goat kids in the stall nearby.
It wasn't so long ago. And it was good.
Things are different today. We stand here with these girls peeking between old boards. Another farmer will gather this flock in tonight. My husband and I will gather our own little flock into a yellow house at the edge of a village some 5,000 miles from a barn in Colorado. While they sleep we pore over pictures of houses in yet another country, wondering which we will find ourselves in this summer.
This too is good.
Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned these past two yrs is that happiness is not wedded to a place nor a circumstance. It is not frozen in time. It is fluid and changing and can pour out of its old containers to fill up entirely new spaces. Even to overflowing. I think I didn't know this for sure until I left.
I leave here with something I didn't have when I came. Faith. Faith that happy isn't just a fluke. It can happen again. And again. Just like challenges. I don't know where we are going exactly but I feel sure there is good there and we will find it.
Still, I hope that just maybe, there will be another day when I turn a corner a England and see a nanny goat.
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. - Dr. Suess
Starry Sky Journal 
So true, what you say…I so often feel nostalgic about my many years in Munich, but I could not have made there the ones I have made here in Tennessee.
That blonde goat is so huggable (your pretty girls no less so!)
I love that photo of the young smithy. The hood is wonderfully medieval! I want to make some for my boys!
And I can’t wait for you to be blogging about England. I nearly moved to Bristol back in 1984…
Oh, gosh that made me tear up a bit because I know exactly what you mean.
It IS good. All of it. Here’s to many more adventures and much happiness. 🙂
Life is sort of funny, I totally understand what you’re saying, when you get the opportunity to get Faith, then the journey is so worth it. 🙂 You never know, there might be dairy goats again and if you come visit, you can sure milk some here and show the girls.