Me and Jill on the Auntie Ward

My friend Chris called me early the other morning - too early, like 6:00 - sobbing. She choked out,

"Can you take my kids for me?" and of course I said yes, imagining based on her unusual display of emotion that she had either just lost a parent or her husband .

When she arrived she handed me her kids and explained,

"Jill's dying."

Jill is a sheep, one of her prize-winning Cotswold ewes, and pregnant with triplets. Jill was the prize ewe of the previous year's herd, a natural mama and all around lovely sheep. And Chris had made what she saw as a tragic error as a farmer: Getting attached to her animals.

Jill was the first of Chris's ewes to lamb this year, and it was a moment all four of our collective kids had been anticipating for weeks. Every day my Kindergartner would bolt to the phone, hoping it was Chris calling to say the lambs had been born.

It was a long, unhappy day. Jill had been prolapsing and straining for a couple of days prior and finally, the evening of the day I took her kids, Chris found a vet to come out and perform a C-section. In the end, Jill had three lambs - two ewes which perished immediately and a ram who lived one day longer. To Chris's considerable relief, Jill herself came through the operation just fine, altohugh she couldn't be bred again.

The kids were morose but philosophical when we explained that the long-anticipated lambs had died. Jill was morose but philosophical when her barn-mates began to lamb.

And that's what she and I have in common, ever since my husband had a vasectomy. It's me and Jill on the auntie ward, admiring all the newborns and thinking back to what it was like, back in the day.

It's not that I was opposed to the dawning of V-Day, exactly; I did have some say in the matter. But I never really came to it feeling as if I were really *ready* for it. My own baby just turned three. In the days since the party, her mantra is an indignant, "I not baby! I THREE YEARS OLD!"

Mine is, "You'll always be Mommy's baby."

She seems to accept this, at least so far. But I don't. I spend an awful lot of time with visons of my daughters as teens - sullen, distant, hormore-wracked teens - waking me in the wee hours. Just a couple of days ago, my daughter shouted "Yay!" when she learned it was yet another snow day.

"I thought you liked school," I said.

"I do," she answered. "But I like staying home with you more."

How much longer will I hear compliments like that?

OK, so she's only five. I guess I have awhile.

In the meantime, I check in on Jill. She's doing just fine, and I think she's enjoying auntie-hood. If sheep were capable of long-range planning, she might be thinking about how she'll never, ever, have to waddle around at twice her normal girth again, or endure labor. She enjoys the lambs' antics, I think, but not quite as much as she enjoys being the only ewe in the yard whose teats don't drag the ground. Then again, I could be projecting.