The Goat Lady

So we’ve lived in our own rural paradise for a year now. Being used to suburbs and urban settings, we’re used to lit roads at night. Not out here. There’s no coddling of drivers. No lights, lines (including divider!) are faded, the road is rough, and there aren’t railings or shoulders to keep you on the road in many spots.

When we first moved here, we found the lack of street lights most daunting. We even added driving lights to our two older cars to help. The one thing that never failed to cheer us was seeing ‘The Goat Lady’s’ house with her three very bright lights. We called her ‘The Goat Lady’ because of the large white goat she had in her yard.

She was the landmark on our otherwise dark, curving road, that indicated our drive down a private road was coming up. It became our saying every time we passed "Thank you Goat Lady for the lights!" We intended to meet her, but it never quite happened, I am ashamed to say.

So she came to tell us about needing to take down a mutual fence to have tree work done a week before Thanksgiving. We got to talking and found out many amazing things: about the changes in the area over 40 years, about her horrific car accident four years ago which led to a brain injury, about her artisitc career and that of her adult daughter’s, and that she lived alone but for her goat, Molly.

We share many of the brain injury symptoms–hers from an accident, mine from CFIDS/Fibromyalgia. She calls her post-accident brain her ‘New Brain,’ to remind herself of the changes. We shared strategies or ‘work-arounds’ for our brains and what things just didn’t work.

I also found out that she was recently alone, her mother having left the area. So we invited her to share Thanksgiving with us, and she accepted.  It turned into our best Thanksgiving ever!

We all chatted while the meal was made. Once we feasted, my better half worked with The Goat Lady on a computer program she was having trouble with. Then we played hearts (cards), and invited her to the movies with us. She declined the movie, but we still spent about five hours together learning more about each other and forging a brand new friendship.

We plan to invite her over again in December to share Hanukkah/Christmas/Winter Solstice together. The Goat Lady was a true treasure found almost in our own backyard and we’ll be reaching out for more in the future.