The Day I Held A Fawn

I was two weeks into a break up—still raw enough that just waking up and staying upright for more than thirty minutes was difficult. Weeks earlier I’d been putting my life together after a year of child-related emergencies and for a minute I had the hubris to think—everything is going to be okay! Maybe I can stop caregiving everyone else now and just focus on my own dreams! I was falling in love for the first time in seven years with a man who got me to salsa dance again, to laugh again, to cook. I dared to wonder how was it possible to have this much joy again—even amidst all this planetary sorrow.

Six months in he said he needed space. I’d just handed him a chocolate croissant and a cup of tea. I’d been foolish enough to tell him I “loved” him. He could make a killer lentil soup, bike a hundred miles, and spin me around on the dance floor— but he could not express a single feeling without prodding. Logic told me that he wasn’t good for me in a whole host of ways. This didn’t make it hurt any less.

A few weeks into my grief I got news that two young teenage boys I’d met had died. They had each valiantly battled with the conjoined demons of substance abuse and mental health struggles. Their mothers had gone to extraordinary lengths to save them. They were nearly the same age as my own sons. I pulled my car over on the side of the road and wept.

A few days later—-the morning of the fawn rescue—I woke to an upsetting email from someone I respected. I needed their medical advice, but I had accidentally stepped on their toes. I’d gone into panic when they hadn’t responded to my requests. In full blown New York Bulldozer fashion I’d sent a flurry of anxious texts and emails, instead of patiently awaiting a reply.

I often find myself often going into fight or flight over little things. If my kids are sick, in Dump-On-Mom-Mode, or the TSA bag checker at the airport gets snarky with me, I get mixed up about when it’s a four alarm fire and when it’s just a Band-Aid that’s needed.  

My trauma survival bible is Firefighter Zen by Hersch Wilson. A Volunteer Firefighter Wilson teaches us how to apply his first responder mind tricks to our own life crises. He writes, 

“Banging down a dirt road to a car crash, I can feel myself getting ramped up…Right about then I repeat to myself my favorite mantras…The first is simple: This is not my emergency.

We can be empathetic, but we don’t want to absorb and reflect back someone else’s panic. It’s not our emergency…when you are in a crisis situation, it’s essential to ask the question, ‘Whose emergency is this?’”

The email sent me spiraling into the black hole of self-flagellation. Obviously I was unloveable. Clearly the only creatures who loved me were the dogs. They stared at me expectantly. I hurried into my boots.

I’m blessed to live on the border of natural parkland and a big beautiful forest lies right outside my door. Just the sight of the dogs’ tails wagging and the Queen Anne’s lace rising up along the trail made the fist inside my heart unfurl.

Penny and Goldie are gentle rescue mutts. My easy children. Goldie is a Taiwanese rescue, the size of a coyote. Penny is a tiny Chihuahua who thinks she’s actually a Pit Bull. There was a rustling noise. A deer? A coyote? The dogs took off. 

A scream interrupted the quiet. Sandra, my neighbor stood at the top of the hill. Then an unrecognizable squealing noise—A wild turkey? A child’s party horn?

“Come back! Pamela! Pamela! Pamela!” She hollered. My chest tightened. I was too far away to respond. There was nothing I could do to call them back once they were chasing something. I turned back.

Then I heard, “deer, baby, Get Goldie.” Oh God, I thought.

Stood at the top of the steep hill. Below was bramble, redwoods, poison oak. Tick filled grass tall as my waist from the recent rains. A sheer drop into the woods. I took a deep breath and plunged downhill— toward the sound—broken ankles be damned.

This is the kind of thing I am good at—emergencies. If someone has to go to the ER I get really still and focused. Inside I’m a mess, all circuits ablaze—but on the outside—I know how to take action when shit hits the fan.

It’s just hard to turn off the internal alarms once they go off. This is what others don’t get. If you’re a mother who has been through more than your fair share of emergencies it’s hard to distinguish when it’s the kind of breakdown that only requires a tow truck and some patience versus when it’s a four-alarm-fire.

Note To Friends, Teachers, Medical Team & Future Boyfriends: Don’t call me anxious because I’m freaking out about something that seems small to you. Instead just stop and imagine what hot coals I’ve walked on, how the burns on my feet might still sting, and then recall the worst heartbreak that you’ve trudged through—say that thing that you wish someone had said back then to you.

The fawn was curled up next to a bush. Goldie was nipping at her left ear. I yelled and kicked her off. Scooped up the fawn. Her left ear was torn apart, bleeding. She had a few tooth marks which were bloody but not deep. Drenched in sweat, my heart pounded hard. Big black eyes open, snout opening and closing. Breathing. I held her tightly to my chest —legs and hooves dangling, the dogs trying to nip. Fawn under my left arm, I leashed the dogs with my right. They followed eagerly.

Please live, I whispered.

Sandra watched from her porch. “I’ll call Wildcare,” I hollered. I was panicked about how I would make my phone-therapy appointment which was starting in eighteen minutes. I couldn’t drive to the animal place and make my appointment. I’d been holding on for days now—praying my therapist would make me feel whole again. I wanted to save the fawn, but I also needed to save myself.

I locked the dogs on the porch, and then raced around trying to figure out where to put her. A text from an unknown number sprang up. “I just heard the uproar. In future you need to keep your dogs under control so they don’t attack the wildlife.”

It was signed by neighbor who never greeted me or smiled when she passed. Why did this stranger hate me so? Would she have acted more kind if she knew the weight of my suitcase?

I thought of the Spanish expression, a friend from El Salvador taught me,

“Nadie sabe cuanto peza la maleta que el otro carga sobre su espalda, solamente el que va cargando.” No one knows the weight of what another carries on their back, only he who carries it knows.

Normally I would have responded. Defended. I chose restraint.

I had blood stains all over my grey sweatshirt and the fawn curled up in the pink towel in my lap. The last time I’d used this towel was to dry the blood off one of my son’s friends who had a violent nosebleed.

I knew I shouldn’t give a f*k— but it was one more judge in a five-car-pile-up.

I placed the fawn in the dog crate. She wobbled on gangly legs. When I returned from the kitchen with a bowl of water she wagged her little white tail! She puzzled at the water and seemed sad.

When my twins were in the Neo-natal intensive care the nurse told me that skin to skin contact helped babies grow. So I picked her up again.

I thought about the fawns mother. About how much I miss my own sons even though I know they are thriving now in a great school in another state—too old and independent to want me hovering over them.

A doctor I’d recently spoken to told me that the reason he didn’t take after hours calls was that he is “I have a baby and I’m trying to regulate myself because I’m growing a nervous system.” How many times was I was unaware of how my own anxiety must have impacted my sons?

For forty minutes the fawn and I breathed together. I pet the top of her head, ribcage. She was speckled with white stars just like Bambi. I wished I could have kept her.

The Marin Humane Center was sending a truck.

The phone rang. “This is really crazy,” I told my therapist, “But I have a baby deer on my lap.” I sent her a picture.

Photo by Pamela Alma Weymouth

“Wow,” she said. Then we proceeded to talk me through my list of griefs. Lele comforted me. I comforted the fawn.

The dogs barked when the truck pulled up. I put down the phone. Reluctantly I handed her over still wrapped in my pink towel. A gruff woman stuck her into a cold empty crate in the side of the truck. “I think she likes being held,” I whispered.

The woman barraged me with questions about where I had found her. I was anxious to get back to my call. Lele is the lifeboat that keeps me afloat each week. The clock was running.

“I’m in a meeting,” I said. “My doctor,” I said, “I’ll call you later, okay?” (I figured doctor sounded more serious than therapist.)

The woman yelled at my back, “That’s very rude. I could report you for letting your dog go onto parkland—Is that your property? I can report you!” 

I hated her. I hated the neighbor. I felt bad for feeling hateful.

Lele told me it was going to be okay. That I am a good person. After hanging up, I put my sweatshirt in the wash. For a minute I felt calm-ish.

Then an explosion of text messages came in from son’s school. Aidan had been exposed to cashew nuts. He can go into anyphylactic shock if he eats cashews or pistachios. He’d forgotten his epi pens. Staff was monitoring him with Benadryl. I was mad at the school for forgetting to have their staff carry extras. I was mad at my son for forgetting his epis—the tool that save his life. What would happen next time he forgets? Would he at some point realize it’s worth listening to your mother?

That night, I called Wildcare. The fawn was getting oxygen and formula —doing well. Relief!

fawn on sofa, photo by pamela alma weymouth

But the next morning I woke to this text: We are sad to say the fawn did not make it. Fawns have a high-stress response and cannot always tolerate trauma.

I was stunned. This was not how I wanted the story to end. What would I tell my sons? That their dog was a killer? How could I spin this story into something that would not reinforce their view that the world is a dark hopeless place?

Maybe I could tell them that I tried my best. That the moment when I held that fawn was one of those tiny moments of awe that life gives us—even when the world feels like quicksand.

What reminds you to exhale when you are in dealing with crises? Have you had a moment of awe amidst a dark time? Share in the comments!

Join me weekly on Thursdays at 11 PT/2ET for Journaling & Resilience Support Group for mothers & caregivers of children with rare disease and complex medical conditions. Class includes science-based stress reduction tools and fosters community. You are not alone! Message me to learn more.

Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash