The moon is a cold white laser, a chilly beacon across the darkness

At three thirty in the morning anyhow.
This is not something I would normally know as like most folks I am asleep then. However, yesterday, after threatening for days, Liz's best show cow, Mandolin Rain, finally decided it was time to have her calf. This was the second time Liz bred her to the popular Holstein bull, Fustead Emory Blitz. Her last baby was Mendocino, known to the family as "Blitzie". She was a BIG baby. It was easy to see from Mandy's behavior last night that this one was going to be big too. Although she is our largest cow, Mandy is a bit on the fragile side, thus Liz stayed up all night with her. Not so long ago I would have waked up and worried a dozen times if she was staying up with one of her cows. However, she is 21 now, knows pretty near as much as the boss and I do about calving, and knows when to tap on our door if things get out of hand.

So I slept like a baby....(well, actually a lot better than any baby who ever lived here). However, at 3:30 I was wide awake and went down to see what was going on. The night was dazzling, blue and black sky glittering with that laser moon, so bright there were shadows in the shadows. It was so pretty outside that after Liz, who was sitting here at the computer waiting to go out to the barn again, told me what was going on, I went out in the dark just to look around. It reminded me of the night we lost the boss's mom, six years ago this coming Wednesday....my 49th birthday as it happened. We went out of the house when it was over, so shattered and hollow it felt as if we would never be right again and there, across the back yard and heifer pasture, was a moonbow stretching like a stairway up to Heaven. I have never seen another night like that, before or since. Last night there was no moonbow, but it was otherwise the same. I thought I felt her presence, as I stood on the back porch, barefoot in my reindeer bathrobe, as if she were watching over my baby while she cared for her favorite cow. I'd like to think she really was.

The news about Mando was good. Although Liz had to help her, she had a big, black heifer calf, and came through fairly well herself. Now the girls are going to have to scurry around trying to find some calcium gluconate, on Sunday, no less, as the stuff we thought was calcium in the case on the shelf is dextrose, and not much help to a cow with a mild case of milk fever. We are thinking Tractor Supply will have some........