“Unknowable” asked me to elaborate on this story, and I always try to please.
This is one of my earliest memories. I couldn’t have been more than four years old, because my brother was still a baby and my parents didn’t want to subject him to a long car ride. They were going to spend a weekend at a farmhouse somewhere in upstate New York. I kept falling asleep in the back seat; it was surely the longest car ride I had ever experienced.
Now this farm had a nice back yard, separated from a pasture by a stone wall. They were big stones, and I couldn’t stay away from them. I’d brought some of my toys, plastic cowboys and horses, and sitting atop the stone wall was an ideal stage for make-believe.
There were two or three cows in that pasture, and they came walking over when they noticed me. I could reach out and pet them. I sat on that wall the whole day, and the cows stayed right with me, listening avidly (so I thought) to the stories I was making up for them and showing a polite interest in my toys. To this day I don’t know where my mother and father were that day. It’s hard to believe they just went off and left their four-year-old sitting on a wall, and probably they didn’t; but one way or another, those cows were watching over me.
I will always recommend cows as baby-sitters.