I’m beginning to think I worry too much

(But how do I stop?) A story of love and loss and cows

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

For two nights after it happened, I dreamt about the cows. Saw their thick bodies in my sleep, their dark shining eyes. I dreamt about fleeing; woke up sweating. Though that could just have been from the heatwave.

I called my mother and told her about the bad dreams. They were her fault, after all. 

She said, ‘I’m so sorry, I forget you’re not used to livestock.’

She’s right about that. I grew up with the rumble of London Underground in the distance; the swoosh of cars on the nearby A-road the white noise that lulled me to sleep. Sure, this was Zone 5, so hardly inner city, but it was no safari either, unless you count squirrels and sparrows, and the robin redbreast that once landed on my father’s big toe while we sat in the garden.

I think my mother – a born-and-bred Londoner, raised in the same north-west corner of the capital that Zadie Smith writes novels about – forgets she too was once not used to livestock. But for nearly a decade, she has lived on her partner’s farm and takes seriously her role as the chatelaine of cattle. Through bucolic osmosis, she has transformed from a woman who once screamed with horror when I brought back a goldfish from university (‘What is that… thing doing here?’) to a woman who has helped birth a calf and been on standby during bovine insemination. It is, you might say, one hell of a plot twist.

On one of the last proper weekends of the summer – my husband snowed under with a work project – I took our two boys, aged four and one, to visit her. As is tradition, we went on a walk to see the cows; my mother clutching a bag of apples for them, as well as a large wooden crook, which I assumed an affection given she loves to play a part, uses any excuse to throw a costume party. 

The first field was empty, as was the second, the grass in parts as high as my one-year-old, its tall blades scratching his face, forcing me to carry him. 

‘Swishy swashy, swishy swashy… we’re going on a cow hunt, we’re going to catch a big one, we’re not scared,’ I sang, riffing on that old familiar children’s story We’re Going On A Bear Hunt. I tried to make things jolly – it’s what parents do – especially as my four-year-old was complaining he was tired and needed carrying too.

Last time we’d thrown apples to the herd, we had done so through a wooden fence. As we trudged on, dodging domes of manure, my arms laden with children, it occurred to me, far too slowly, that we were in the field, not walking its perimeter. I had envisaged a barrier – not an immersive experience.

‘But I don’t want to walk in a field with cows,’ I said to my mother. ‘I don’t want to take my children into a field of cows.’

‘I do this all the time,’ she said, stabbing the earth with her crook. ‘It’s fine.’

This didn’t reassure me. Partly because she always tells me things are ‘fine’; partly because in that moment I realised how much I really don’t like cows.

When we reached the third field – which also seemed empty – I suggested we head back to the house, to the dismay of my oldest who felt entitled to his entertainment. 

‘Cows!’ shouted my 22-month-old. 

‘Where?’ I said. 

‘Where?’ said my mother.

‘Cows!’ said my youngest son again, pointing ahead to where the grass merged into a thick row of trees.

And there they were, at the edge of the field. Hulking black creatures stood still like a stone circle; the suddenness of their appearance spectral and unnerving.

My mother strode towards them, my oldest son by her side.

‘Come back here,’ I shouted to him. ‘Now. Take my hand.’ 

I was standing about two metres back, still clutching the baby.

‘It’s completely fine,’ said my mother. ‘Stop showing them you’re afraid.’ 

I wasn’t sure whether she meant the cows or the children. But then the herd began moving towards us until they loomed behind my mother. One of the cows walked ahead of the others, coming closer until it was right by her. Then it turned its thick muscular body and I saw quite clearly – thanks to its big dick swinging – that it was not a cow, but the bull.

It stared at me with unblinking eyes.

I held my children tighter. 

Looked down. Edged back.

I wondered if it felt threatened. I wondered if this bull had seen small people before.

‘I am leaving,’ I said to my mother, who was still telling me how perfectly fine this all was, despite the bull now standing so close to her she could touch it.

The bull held its gaze on me and my children. Then, suddenly, it raised its head, gave it a shake. In that moment, my mother lifted her crook – which I now realised was a considered choice – and placed it in front of the bull. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said.

That’s when my ‘worst-case-scenario’ mode was activated. Having already been tentatively walking backwards, I turned fully around, the baby still hooked over my right hip, clutching me like a koala, and I dragged my oldest son with my other hand across the field to where we’d come in. I didn’t run – atavistic instincts told me that would be a mistake – but I did not stop. I scanned for gates, stiles, ways to jump the fence… In my mind, the bull was already charging.

I turned around briefly and saw my mother – this tiny 5ft-tall woman with a shock of blonde hair and a purple anorak – with a throng of cows following her, as if a row of bouncers escorting us off the property. There was something steely in her stance. But I did not look long enough to spot where the bull was. I just knew they were coming. 

My four-year-old was almost crying as I tugged him through the long grass. 

‘Ow,’ he wailed. ‘This isn’t fun. This is not a fun farm.’ 

‘I know, sweetie, but we have to keep going.’

I was angry that we’d come to this field. That she’d brought us here to be trampled. That I’d been forced to flee with my children. That in choosing to run, I’d left my mother behind. I thought, this could be the last time I see her. She could be attacked by a bull while trying to protect us. I have left her. After everything she has done for me, my entire life – I have abandoned her. 

‘This isn’t a fun farm,’ my son cried again.

‘We’ve got to keep going,’ I said. ‘Back through the fields, back through the grass…’

We reached the top of a small hill with trees on it and I slowed our pace enough for me to notice the sweat down my back. Then we reached the edge of the next field, the house in sight, and I lifted the children over a wooden fence to safety. I turned around and saw my mother was walking alone now – the cows having lost interest in the previous field.

I climbed over the fence, waited for my mother and helped her over too. I could tell she was angry with me. 

‘You shouldn’t show them so much fear,’ she said, and I realised she did mean the children. ‘The cows wouldn’t have done anything.’

‘But you don’t know, do you?’

‘The bull would not have done anything,’ she said.

‘But those are my children,’ I said. ‘I was not prepared to find out.’

We closed the conversation with silence, then we saw my mother’s partner – the farmer – and I told him what had happened. 

‘Cows do follow,’ he said. ‘They think you’re leading them to nicer grass.’

I began to feel foolish.

‘The bull did get a little stroppy,’ added my mother, a quiet afterthought.

And I felt vindicated, even as my body burned with thoughts of what could have been. 

My husband calls me a catastrophiser. He says my ability to imagine the worst possible outcome for any situation is my ‘most annoying habit’. I am quoting this verbatim as he said it in a video my friend recorded for my hen party.

It is not untrue. But before my husband and I knew each other, I’d never given this behaviour a name. I thought everyone worried about things. I thought everyone’s mind worked like mine. 

Sometimes, I think of it like some kind of psychic intuition. An ability to see what could happen, whether a few seconds or minutes away. I have certainly stopped children falling or things spilling more times than I can count. But I acknowledge there are times when the worry spirals into anxiety, spins towards panic. 

But is worry the inevitable underside of loving and of parenting? The challenge not to shout ‘be careful’ every time they make a new leap. I remember those hazy few days after my oldest was born, how I missed that strange sensation of a body nestled inside of mine, the way I could feel the baby’s every movement, roll or hiccup. I didn’t expect to have to adjust to him being outside. It felt odd that I was no longer shielding him every single second of the day, that he would never be that close to me again, though I remember feeling some relief, too.

Thirteen years ago, a good friend of mine died when he was 32 years old. It was a complicated and unexpected death. Though in many ways, I had watched it happen slowly over a year – I was just too close to realise. At the time, I was 28 and thought I was smart. But his death shook every layer of earth beneath my feet – it cracked and shifted the foundation of who I was. 

This is when, I think, I really started to worry about people.

More than a decade has passed, but I still hold tight to the belief that I could have helped him hold on for a few more years, if only I’d spoken up more.

In my more logical moments, I accept that you can’t control the uncontrollable… But sometimes, you do get a shot. Sometimes you can protect the ones you love. You just need to think through all the risks.

My 22-month-old loves a show called Tractor Ted. It’s a sweet programme about an animated green tractor that works on a real farm. It features songs about combine harvesters and crunchy carrots, which my son enjoys singing. He was watching it the other day and I joined him on the sofa for an episode. I watched the farmers walk through a field of cows. I thought: They know what they’re doing. They’re farmers, after all. They’re used to livestock. They’re all perfectly fine.

I begin to worry my mother will be upset that I wrote this piece, so I message her to discuss it.

‘Write what you want, I don’t mind,’ she replies. ‘After all, it can’t be worse than that time you called me a wicked witch for MSN.’ 

She’s referring to a column I wrote nearly 20 years ago. I had forgotten all about it. I guess I worried less about such things back then.

I want to get this story right, so I Google a photo of an Aberdeen Angus bull to check I’ve remembered its appearance accurately. I’ll be honest, there is still some anatomical confusion – did I really see its swinging dick or was it actually the bull’s pendulous testicles? This detail remains unclear, but my overall memory is good. Though looking once more at the face of a bull, I feel a prickle of panic. A flashback to fear. The worry is not for me, but for them – all this worry is for them. 

After I’d loaded the children into the car to go home that day, I had hugged my mother, squeezed her tight. 

‘I love you,’ I said. ‘Will you be careful with the cows, please?’ 

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m fearless.’

And I know she is. She is a lioness. She would do anything to protect her cubs. Even place herself in front of a 2,000-pound bull to do so.

I think, sometimes, that’s what I worry about the most.

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