Promises

How many promises have I made in my lifetime and how many have I kept? My answer to the first part would be probably not very many, and to the second part probably most of them. Im sure some were forgotten promises, and others had faded into oblivion before they ever came to be realized, but I do remember the first serious promise I ever made, and it was to a goat. She was a brown goat, and so her name may have been Brownie: it's hard to recall her name, out of the many goats that have passed through my life. I was no more than 10 years old, and the goat had once belonged to us, but my mother had given the goat to her sister, who lived with my grandmother a distance away, on a ten acre or so plot of land. Plenty of room for a little goat, one would think. But the matriarch, born and raised on lesser acreage in Ireland, had her own firm ideas of how animals should be controlled, and confined. She dictated that Brownie be hobbled, as well as tied to the chain when she was staked out to graze. I was horrified at the sight, Brownie, legs imprisoned, being unable to gambol about, as she was accustomed to do, within the periphery of her tether. Of course I had no power or even a voice, during those times. The best I could do was go to the shed at the end of the afternoon, where Brownie was stabled. So I made a solemn vow to the goat that I would somehow free her from her hobbled life. Now I don't know if you've ever looked deep into the eyes of a nanny goat with your own eyes full of tears, and promised a reprieve, but I can tell you that it's a memorable experience

First of all, a goat's pupils are not round, but are little rectangles. Secondly, I was not sure if I was supposed to be taking an oath on behalf of a goat. And of course I had not the slightest idea how I could carry out my promise to bring the goat back home. As it turned out, the promise was kept, though not because I had anything to do with it. I never told a soul. But my mother, evidently feeling much the same as I, did reclaim the goat, not right away, acting more out of diplomacy than urgency. The goat was unshackled and my first oath to a goat was upheld.