Six...

...a lovely number...

Hello, and welcome to the first week of May! It’s still cold here in the evenings, but the days are warm enough for me to wear my Spring sweatshirts, and to turn the warming pad in my bed down to ‘5’ - woo-hoo!

There are now six deer in my yard. Last year there were two. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, but I’m choosing to interpret it as a good sign.

Last year we regularly had two does, who strolled into the yard, made a quick assessment and decided to stay a while. I learned quickly not to make sudden movements near the window, not to open the back door too fast, and generally to behave as though I was the guest and they were the homeowners.

Over the summer, I left them apples with soft spots, pears (which we buy for reasons we don’t understand since neither one of us really likes them), and old slices of bread. They liked it all and started to show up with some regularity, peeking into the back windows to see if we were there. Nobody negotiated it; we just both seemed to understand it.

They came back this spring - with friends.

Four does, and now two fawns, small, spotted, and treating every falling leaf as a credible and immediate threat. The fawns are a work in progress, nerve-wise. The does hold steady, and eventually the fawns figure out that if Mom isn’t running, they are probably okay to explore the blackberry bushes.

Here is what I keep coming back to: deer don’t return somewhere out of sentiment. They return because something in their considerably nervous nervous-systems has decided it’s safe. Which means this yard passed some kind of test. They went wherever deer go in winter, they apparently discussed it amongst themselves, and they came back, with babies.

I have received worse compliments.

Now, the cat.

The cat, a big orange chonky boy, belongs to the neighbors, technically, in the same way that a houseguest who has been living in your spare room for eight months technically has his own place. He has installed himself in our planter boxes with the serene confidence of someone who has never once in his life questioned a decision he’s made, and he treats the squirrel food as a personal buffet (no reservation required, no acknowledgment of the squirrels’ prior claim, no eye contact, no remorse). This is in addition to the cat food we leave out for him, which I should mention, is not the cheap ‘market-brand’ kind. The squirrels have a great deal to say about this, but the cat has made clear that he will not be taking questions at this time.

He has also, and this is important, established what can only be described as a situationship with one of the does. They have been observed together on multiple occasions at close range, the cat sprawled in his customary position of aggressive relaxation, the doe leaning in with what I can only call genuine intellectual interest, and periodically one can find them chasing each other through the tall grass and over the lowest rung on the pasture fence, hopping the same way the rabbits do, simply happy to be alive. No one introduced them. Nothing was arranged. The cat simply decided at some point that the doe was acceptable company, and an understanding has developed.

(The squirrels remain unacknowledged.)

So we feed the cat, and we give treats to the deer (who are also fond of crackers and sliced raw zucchini, but not celery or carrots - bleagh!) and we put trail mix out for the birds and squirrels. And what do they give us in return? Trust, for one thing: the specific privilege of watching something that is engineered entirely for escape choose, instead, to stay. Beauty, for another. The fawns especially. They have no idea they’re beautiful, which is honestly the best way to be beautiful.

And on the hard days, I look out the window and count: one, two, three, four, five, six. Plus the cat. All present. All fine. The world still has this in it.

This week they were all here at once, early in the day, in that particular light that lasts only a few minutes before it shifts and stops showing off. The fawns were chasing each other in circles. The does were grazing. The cat was in the planter box, horizontally, on his back, ignoring everyone, presumably thinking about the squirrel food.

I stood at the window and did not move.

It lasted maybe five minutes. Then one of the does made some kind of executive decision, and the deer drifted back toward the tree line, unhurried and unbothered, with the fawns falling in behind their mothers like small, spotted shadows.

I stood there after they’d gone and felt something I don’t have an exact word for, but a specific feeling like the world had briefly shown me something good and true and perfect, and I’d been standing in the right place at just the right time.

My hope is that this coming week brings you something, a song or a story or a vision or feeling that is good and true and perfect, and that you are able to embrace it, and keep it with you always.

As always, with love,

Violet

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