When I’m twelve, I have a pet lamb named Wilbur. I feed her powdered milk mixed with water that I funnel into an old beer bottle. She pulls on the rubber nipple, enthralled with me.
The green-and-white Labatt 50 label sparkles my palm. The other sheep run from me, but Wilbur thinks I’m her family. She isn’t scared of the dog.
Sometimes I let her come inside the house, then pour molasses into the dog food bowl. When I’m an adult and I meet children who are twelve, I often say, Twelve is the best age! * My parents taught me to say when anyone asked ? It doesn’t sound right when I say it, but I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want to bother anyone with my real feelings.
My family listens to public radio, plays comedy records, sings folk songs while doing the morning and nightly chores. When I meet people who express sorrow or anger, and explain what they need but don’t get—these are people I want to be around, as though I can wordlessly learn to feel and express feelings by being around their leaking faces, their longing. When adults ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I say an actor.
Imagine spending your life pretending to feel everything so deeply. I rent so many times from the rack of VHS tapes at the corner store that Mrs. Johnston tells me to keep it.
* As a child I spend a lot of afternoons lying on the forest floor, a bed of wet cedar, an audience of softwood branches. Wilbur is the only one who isn’t afraid of the coyote. I grow up to make .