Free My Gentle Barn by Ellie Laks

and sheep’s overgrown hooves, and of course started all of the animals on the miracle algae.
    When I finally was finished in the barnyard, my back was aching, I was utterly exhausted, and I had straw fibers in every imaginable nook and cranny. But I scrubbed myself and Jesse clean, fed Jesse and put him to bed, and then set to work on cooking up Scott’s favorite meal—fettuccini Alfredo with nondairy cream sauce and portobello mushrooms. I even put wineglasses on the table.
    When Scott returned from work, he came into the dining room and smiled. “Mm,” he said. “That smells good.” But a moment later the smile dropped and he rolled his eyes.
    “What did you bring home this time, Ellie?”
    Maybe he was starting to get it that I couldn’t help myself, that this was just the way I was wired. Not that he was happy; it was more like quiet resignation. Back in the days when he was helping out with the dog adoptions, he might have been excited to engage with farm animals too. But he’d long ago shifted away from the world of animals that we had shared and was concerned only with providing for our family—of humans. He seemed like a different person from the Scott who had sat up half the night with me giving sick puppies injections. I wished he would join me, at least a little, in the excitement of saving these poor creatures, or at least be happy for me that I was doing something I loved. But instead he seemed to grow grumpier by the day.
    One night, about a week after this last visit to the petting zoo, I came in from the barnyard later than usual. Scott had already arrived home and was waiting for me on the couch. “Come sit down,” he said.
    “Let me just wash my hands.”
    When I finally sat down next to him, he said, “I feel like I have to stand in line just to get a little attention from you.”
    “I’m sorry, Scott. It’ll settle down. It’s just that these new animals are still healing.”
    “And when they get healthy, you’ll go get more.”
    I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to lie.
    “Why can’t you just be a normal, available wife?” he said.
    “I’m trying,” I said. But at that moment I realized I’d completely lost sight of my goal to maintain the normalcy I’d found after Jesse’s birth. Normalcy had escaped me once again. “I
tried
,” I corrected myself. “But I’m not normal, Scott. I’m just not.”
    Scott seemed to have joined my parents’ camp, the people who wanted me to act like a normal person. And although I now knew that this was just never going to be possible, the last thing I wanted was to ruin my marriage. So I vowed to put my rescuing on pause for a while, to just take care of the animals I had. I made it my priority to show up for Scott and Jesse. But with nine farm animals, eight dogs, twenty cats, a toddler, and a husband, I was beginning to feel more than a little strain handling it all on my own. I had a barnyard to clean up daily, a baby’s diapers to change (several times a day), and a husband who needed some attention after a very long day of work. I finally broke down and hired a Mommy’s Helper for part of the day; she could at least watch Jesse while I took care of the rest of the crew. But I could see myself starting to slip. When I played with Jesse, I felt like I was neglecting the new sickly animals in the barnyard. When I tended to the animals a bit too long, Jesse threw a fit. And sometimes I forgot to get dinner on the table. I had forty-nine mouths to feed—fifty if I remembered to eat, myself.
    As best I could, I ignored the old familiar pull to help any and all animals who needed me. But the whispers I’d felt deep inside me as a child were in full force once again. And despite my best efforts to block them out, a few weeks after the final petting zoo rescue, the whispers led me down a side road to a woman who’d lost her house and was living in her car with her collection of pets. Two dogs, several cats, a handful of ducks, a goose,