The Cow Ate a Fourth Grader's Favorite Sweater

In October 2019 the fourth grade went to a farm, and on the first night the class blog posted the children's reflections, anonymously, each answering one of three questions: what surprised you, what was challenging, what was fun.

Surprising: how much the cows pooped while being herded. A cat catching a mouse. That the farm wasn't as cold as expected. That there was a cow named Puppy.

And this, in full: "The most surprising part of the day was when the cow ate my sweater. Because I like that sweater."

I have read that eleven times. The first sentence is the event. The second sentence is the whole of grief.

Challenging: getting the cows to the barn, because they were not really listening. The sheep, which did not cooperate. Saying goodbye to family. The bus ride. Tetherball. Coming down a steep ladder from the haystack. Milking a cow, after which the other kids drank it and said it was bad.

And one fourth grader, on the day's job of waiting tables, found the challenge was that "everybody just sat there" and the waiter had to do all the work.

There is no better summary of parenthood than an unpaid waiter watching everyone else sit there. I hope that child comes home and says it at dinner. I hope a parent hears it.

Fun: two hours of free time and Wiffle ball. Picking up a rooster. Collecting eggs. Swings. And, from a different child, the time the cow tried to eat a sweatshirt.

So the cow had a pattern. One child lost a sweater and grieved. Another nearly lost a sweatshirt and filed it under fun. Same cow, same afternoon, two outlooks.

The youngest went on her first overnight trip last spring, to a nature center an hour away. She came home with a stick, a cold and a report. Surprising: owls are not round. Challenging: the bunk. Fun: the stick. I asked if she had helped with dinner. She said yes, she'd been a waiter, and everybody just sat there.

Then she sat down at our table and waited for me to bring her a plate.