Lambweek

It is lambmonth. August is the month of lambs here who are, with daffodils, the first sign of spring. And each day this month as we have borne the cold and wet and grey, I have searched every passing hill for the first lamb sighting. Last week on the way home from work, Michael and I spotted our first labs on the hill—twins lying near their mother. They were early, those twins, and were the eldest of their kind because days and days passed with no new sign of them. We were practically lambless.

And then, on Tuesday, we drove to work (to trade in the minivan and get a sedan—we are not minivan types, it would seem), and there were lambs. I counted nine of them before Michael—in the irritation of the driver unable to catch a glimpse of the lovely views without crashing the car—told me to stop counting. Little dots of white on sparkling green hills surrounded by the larger, clearer forms of their mothers. Every day this week each ride to town is filled with lamb sightings.

Lambs and I go way back, sort of. We used to drive out into the country when the children were young to take them to petting zoos where there were sometimes lambs. It was on the first such jaunt, with a baby Naomi snuggled in her backpack, that I became a vegetarian. I looked at the face of the placid ewe and watched the adorable little white cottonball come up to nurse. I was captured by the twin sensations of familiarity—ah, she’s nursing her baby just like me!—and difference—ah, lamb is my favourite meat! I couldn’t hold the dissonance. Locking eyes with the sheep, mom to mom, I realized I couldn’t ever eat anything that had a fair chance that its mother had loved it (first I stopped eating mammals and then eventually stopped eating anything—like a chicken—that required maternal care, which is why fish seem still to be ok). So I have some kind of attraction to lambs.

But lambs and I don’t go as far back with me as they do with real New Zealanders. When I tell friends about my love for these beautiful creatures, New Zealanders will smile and agree that the lambs are cute. But if they listen, they’ll hear that I am actually excited about them, that it’s not just business as usual. They hear about my once-yearly trips to petting zoos and gape at me. You used to go out to visit the lambs? You would pay money to see lambs? They are often speechless at my deprivation. It is as if I walked into someone’s house and found them putting celery in display boxes with gallery lighting and fees for visits. Lambs are as much a part of the landscape as the mountains, as the emerald grass, as inseparable from New Zealanders as Christmas and the beach (and as foreign to my urban, Northern Hemispheric sensibilities).

No matter how ordinary lambs seem here, though, for me they are a joy. My heart leaps at the sight of those tiny white dots on the green hills. I feel secretly pleased that now I know that these brand new lambs spend lots of time lying down near their mothers but in a month they’ll be tearing around and doing the lambleap with all four feet off the ground. Last year we held a baby lamb in our arms; the children walked through fields of lambs leaping away from them. I hope this year holds similar lamb wonders! Lambmonth is back again and it is time for a quiet celebration of the growing dots on the hill.

(True confession is that this lamb picture today is from last September—but ah, timelessly cute to see lambs in sweaters! If it helps, the other picture—taken from our porch—is of the moon setting at dawn earlier this week)