i. Kathy inherited her parent’s dairy farm in Oneonta. She was a professional Social Worker and for years struggled with running an unprofitable diary farm in her spare time out of a sense of obligation to her parents. Eventually, she sold off her 250 black and white cows to a man who signed a contract not to have them slaughtered. As they were loaded into the truck she kissed each one on the nose and said goodbye by name.

ii. Estate sales are a strange thing. You rummage through someone else’s home, ransacking neatly piled linens, stacked exactly where the deceased left them before he/she fell ill. It does not feel like a violation, it is a violation. I feel the previous owner over my shoulder as strangers walk past boxes of framed family photos and Christmas cards and lovingly stored crocheted animals in favor of the utilitarian items of furniture which are being sold for dirt cheap. A sign says the items which are not purchased will be discarded- make an offer! I read the woman’s Christmas cards and the notes on the b-side of her photographs. I purchase a crocheted blue cat to bring home and remember a person I never knew by. 

iii. My grandmother was an elementary school librarian and would take me with her on book acquisition trips to the Library Warehouse in Syracuse. I came home with as many books as she bought for her library. 

         Sometimes  more. 

iv. She gave me porcelain dolls to play with as a little girl. My friends’ parents got upset, concerned that I would hurt myself and/or damage the dolls. My grandmother always said that toys were meant to be played with. They did not have rubber or plastic dolls when she was a little girl; all her baby dolls were porcelain ones. Some got broken. They are in a small cedar chest in our attic. 2014 will be their 100th birthday, collectively. My daughter will be six. We plan to throw a tea party for them in celebration. I have already selected the plates; 11 mismatched china butter dishes from china sets that no longer exist.  

v. I read the ‘Velveteen Rabbit’ at an impressionable age. 

vi. I spend a lot of time organizing my books on their shelves, my clothes in the closet (by length, utility, and color), and imagine strangers ransacking through them; taking one book, but not the other. These two have sat together on the shelf for 25 years, made inseparable because of their binding height, and complimentary cover colors. How can you take one, but not its other?

vii. As I wrapped each baby doll in its blanket and placed it in its basket, people would stop by my studio. “You can’t submerge that one, it’s too cool,” or “Don’t use that one, it’s probably collectible”. Baby dolls are eerily helpless objects, and generate an intense need to preserve. I struggled with their accusatory gazes as I walked each one down to the reflection pool. It was surprisingly emotional. Five were spared.

viii. Andrea Yates downed her five children in 2001; aged 6 months to 7 years. I remember a poem performed shortly there after about the incident; haunting, lovely, and deeply disturbing. The poem described the process as “a mother’s work”, the manifestations of a psyche torn apart by the deepest of love. 

ix. Kathy purchased all 250 of her black and white cows back exactly three weeks later because she missed them, not because they were going to be slaughtered. 

She welcomed each one home by name.