Four ways to shovel shit

No matter what, the stalls must be cleaned

It’s summertime. It’s been light outside for 15 hours and will be for another hour more. Down in the barn, the horses are whinnying to go out in the pasture for the night, where the grass is crisp and the threat from biting flies is less. The stalls will need to be cleaned because tomorrow, first thing, they will demand to come in as soon as possible, though never soon enough. No matter how early you wake up, they will be waiting for you, impatiently. The stalls must be cleaned tonight.

In Fury

You’ve had an argument minutes or hours before. It doesn’t matter—you’re in a red rage, the kind of anger that is threatening to come out in a guttural scream. You stomp out of the house and march away, so tense that even the dogs, who normally frolic and range during this walk, stick close to your feet, looking up at you out of the corners of their eyes.

Once in the barn, you’re all noise— you slam the rake into the wheelbarrow, slam the wheelbarrow to the ground. With the first scoop of dirty shavings, the words come stuttering forth—all of the things you wanted to say, but knew you shouldn’t. The more you clean, the louder you speak until you’re shouting, now mostly curse words. No one can hear you. You don’t have to make sense. You may cry now, or you may go silent, depending on which nerve has been hit, but no matter what you keep working. As you lift and toss, lift and toss, your anger becomes a warm, quiet thing, like a rock heated in the sun. You can manage a rock heated by the sun.

In Sorrow

You’re so sad it hurts to turn your head, to walk forward. All day you’ve been pretending not to be, but now your children are asleep and you have to go to the barn—no matter that you’d rather lie on the floor indefinitely. You start crying on the walk down without meaning to. You didn’t realize how much you needed to cry somewhere that isn’t your house—the place that you have to eat in, fall asleep in, be brave in. Keep walking, even though you are really crying now—for your dead dog, for your friend who’s hurting, for yourself for yet another disappointment.

Your muscle memory helps you to position the wheelbarrow correctly, hold the rake at the right angle, and thank goodness because you’re useless. You’re a nebula of sorrow. You stop crying so that you can begin cleaning, but after just a few shovelfuls, you remember that there are no rules here about how to behave, and no one can hear you. Squat down among the pine shavings and cry as loud, as ugly as you need. Your human sadness has no context here—it can just be, and because of that, it begins to diffuse. You go through your ritual and, with the tattered, translucent cloak of your sorrow wrapped around you, you walk down to the pasture where the horses either ignore you or press their warm noses into your hands or against your cheeks, and both ways are good.

In Exhaustion

Your bones have been cast in solid brass. On the 25-minute drive home earlier you’d had the urge to nod off even as you answered question after question from your children. What is the longest river in the world, mama? What is the heaviest metal on earth? You haven’t really slept in months, maybe years. Time is passing with excruciating slowness. Somehow you make it through dinner, through a bedtime spent fighting to stay awake in the dark as your children drift to sleep on either side of you. You understand the phrase “to drag oneself out of bed”—to escape you must move forward by sinking your sharply clawed ghost limbs—the ones you grew when you became an adult with so many living things dependent on you to survive—into the floor and pulling yourself along inches at a time. Down the stairs, where you absolutely can’t stop to drink a glass of water. Momentum is the only thing saving you. On the walk to the barn, you decide to sell your horses.

In the barn, the rake is heavy in your hands, the wheelbarrow even heavier, but it takes almost no time for you to find your rhythm, and you feel a glimmer of gratitude for your body for taking over. Scoop, toss, pivot, scoop, toss, pivot. But now your blood is flowing. You feel good. No. Great! You take extra time to sweep the shavings and hay out of the corners of the aisle, to empty and refill all the water buckets. Now you are so awake that you will, in fact, have a hard time falling asleep when the time comes and the time is coming, rushing toward you. You must catch it before it leaves and so off you go, into the darkness, up the hill, back to the gently glowing house.

In Quietude

How lucky are you to be in the barn on this beautiful evening? The light is golden, the horses are glossy in the pasture, and your kids are playing some wildly inventive game involving water rivulets and leaves nearby, chatting to each other. You reach for your rake gratefully, eager to fall into the rhythm of your task. You have been cleaning stalls since you were seven. Everything is familiar, even though the barns and the horses have changed many times over the last three decades. The box of the stall, the weight of a full water bucket in your hand, the sweet dry smell of the hay. Everything smooths out and simmers down. The dopamine is high—even higher if you rest your cheek against the sun-warmed back of one of your gentle, beloved horses. They are a comfort, taking care of them is a comfort. You will never, ever, give this up.