The Weights of the Journey

It’s common human behavior, the need for validation, be it through action, written word, or selfie sent to the masses.  No age is immune to it, which I witnessed recently in the local doctor’s office. One person states, “I had a double bypass!” to which someone else chimes in, “Well, I had a quadruple bypass,” and so it went, some of the seniors comparing ailments as if whoever had the most artificial stems and valves and joints will win. I could not help but think back to a story of the Christian Desert Fathers who tried to outdo one another in self-mortification to die unto oneself, and a monk boasted, “I’m deader than you!”

We all have those moments when someone says, “Oh, I did this, or I did that,” and we immediately jump in with our story. I’ve been as guilty of that as much as anyone; the whole “been there, done that” was probably invented by a type A personality. 

Then you had those moments where what you see and witness were so beyond the pale of anything man could dream up in his personal darkness that trying to compare was impossible. It’s chaos and blood. It was the sound of screaming until the voice was spent, and nothing was left but the ghost of that scream. It’s fate, history, man, machinery, and microbes, and sometimes it’s simply a losing battle with physics. It could be a steep slope that you tumbled down in a flurry of words, or it could be a precarious balance, that moment where you came up abruptly to the precipice, only to stop and find you have no speech.

At that moment, you understood what faith was made of, its severity, its saving grace, and the power of its secular right to your fidelity.

Sometimes it’s the smallest of things, that person on the corner with the sign who may well be a con artist in beggar’s clothes, or someone genuinely sleeping on the streets, their broken bearing sometimes only visible in the eyes, which you would see if yours were not half-averted. It’s shouting at the bathroom door that was sticking as it opened, making a sound wood just should not make, and then walking outside to see someone’s home at the end of the block burned to the ground. It’s complaining to a freezer full of food that there’s nothing good to eat when elderly people who served their country and worked most of their lives go to bed hungry. It’s whining that your welfare check doesn’t allow you to have an even bigger TV and a new car when across the world, where some people who know neither Christ nor comfort sleep on dirt floors among the vermin and the predators, with no handouts and even less hope because that’s what being poor truly is.

Sometimes it’s those big moments. It’s getting up before dawn to grab the bag and head for the flashing red and blue lights when you’d rather sleep in, get in a vehicle, and transverse miles that might as well be days to do what you are expected to do. It’s standing there under a weeping sky that amplifies what now lies beyond your power to heal; it’s accepting that which you have not elected. It’s broken skies and broken limbs as if bent by an invisible hand. It’s harnessing without hesitation the armored heart that lies within a web of flesh and bone, in which you walk, search, and fight the raging fire with little more than your eyes and mind. 

There is no badge in the world, Scouting or otherwise, that could be granted for this experience and the understanding of what it means. If there were, it would be much like the badge we call Faith. Such times make one more fully aware of just how precious this humanity we bear and how easily it is lost (and not just by outside forces). You become aware and grow stronger, like lotuses blooming in a fire.

When such a day is over, it’s hard to turn the mind off; the visuals are imprinted on the brain, a sudden wheel running downhill, a lantern dashed against the wall, the rending of a sheet of paper. It’s hard to get to that quiet place, and when you do, invariably, someone asks how your day was. You didn’t even want to make eye contact, as you have no words for what your day was, what you have witnessed, how you have hurt, and what you have learned from it. There is little to offer up by way of comparison to any other act of Man, God, or Fate that could go against what one heart could witness.

“So, how was your day?”

I remained silent. If someone wanted to go on about their day, illness, money issues, fears, or whatever in my silence, I would resist the urge to speak. For to them, what they were dealing with in their world that day was as important to them as anything that Fate and Earth could proffer elsewhere. Their fear was not unfounded, for it is their fear, and by telling their story, they are seeking hope as well as safety.

Let them have the last word, for there is never enough time to say the last words of our love and desire, of our faith and regret, of our submission or our revolt. To speak them is to shake both Heaven and Earth.

As I drove back from a trip into the city, I saw a man in tattered clothing standing at the corner with a cardboard sign under a sky that had lost its vivid hue, fading from blue to a grayish-green, the color of old glass. As I grabbed a bite at our local diner tonight, I looked at the crucifix worn around the neck of the waitress, laying sharp against her skin as she moved, leaving in her wake the scent of spent flowers. I looked to the people around me in my little community, all carrying their own joys and burdens, which to them were as real as the bruises that remained on my heart. My journey, however difficult, was no more difficult than theirs, our burdens all of different colors but carrying the same weight.

I raised my head to listen. On this day, perhaps, I could give that much to them.

 - Brigid

 

Sweat, Words, and Truth - Autumn Days.

It never fails—I take my "use or lose" vacation each fall, which has built up since I'm no longer flying to the West Coast constantly now that Dad is gone.  Partner in Grime will be working, so I can use that time to relax and maybe write.  Each year, inevitably,  a roofer comes along, and one of the neighbors is getting a new roof. Last week, the house was literally next door, so there was no ignoring that. Today, it's a few doors down. I'll have some more time off in late October, and hopefully, then the Village won't be repaving my street.

But living in the upper Midwest, getting ready for winter is as much a part of the season as changing the color of the leaves. We had our roof redone already. There's stain on the wooden steps front and back that Partner built to touch up and seal, and flower beds to clean out one last time. Although it's 85 today, it will likely be snowing by Halloween. These are the days of the false conceit of autumn, where the warmth is still a whisper, a promise, a touch that goes suddenly slack as winter pulls all the promise away. 

Too soon, we will have those days when the AC kicks on in the afternoon, and by dinner, you are contemplating turning the heat on before searching for that sweater you put away last May. On those days, the days seem born, already bored, not wishing to stay long, as the darkness descends earlier and earlier each night. I do love those days, though, walking along paths at the edge of the city, where the city becomes the countryside in a sharp demarcation that's as abrupt as a shuttered door.  People fought, struggled, and died to settle these areas, pushing back the wildness to find a safe shelter where they could grow and prosper, only generations later finding the wildness coming back at them from the very civilization they once fought to join.  

I'm in the city for better or worse, but I've brought my "country" mentality to it, living much of my life in a rural setting, including a working farm.  I still recall my last days there - the glare of the headlights that illuminated the front room. A cattle truck came that night to reach the stockyards in the morning. I had woken alone to the rattle coming up the road. Trying to get a little nap before they arrived, springing like a bow from my bed, aware of my responsibilities. As I donned work clothes and boots, the orange running lights and diesel growl outside the window reminded me of Martians landing, searching the house for signs of human life, and the first smile in a long time passed my lips.

All they would find was a lone woman with boots, a shotgun I knew how to use, and a kitchen that once had smelled of cinnamon.

The driver backed around, turning the trailer with a gentle sigh of air brakes up to the wooden chute at the barn. Within came the muffled grunt of the cattle that were being sold. Besides the lumbering truck and its driver and the cattle, I was alone. No cars, no help, the earth hanging suspended in space, cooling, wearing only a thin veil of wood smoke. The wind cut my face, a blade that only stroked the skin, not cutting it, my hands aching as I rubbed them on my thighs, trying to stir warmth back into dormant skin.

Oh, how I longed to just go back to bed that night, the rustle of cotton, the panting whisper of breath, the predation of the night assuming a hundred avatars of dreams. No cows, no work, simply the house still and quiet as if marooned in space by the dwindling of day. The truck was long gone, and the sounds outside fell to a low fragmentary pitch. A coyote howled at the indignation of clouds that covered the moon; no other sound was made. Prey went into hiding, insects died with cold, and everything else assumed their own mantle of hibernation or hunting. But there was still work to be done.

Thirty years later, there's still work to be done.  The other night, it was in the 40s, reminding me that it's best to be prepared early, bringing out the blankets for a wash and line dry. I'm looking forward to snuggling under them soon enough, the scent of woodsmoke clinging to the fabric. Then, the last of any canning to do, the neighbor had brought over some of their tomato crop - a thank you for occasional loaves of warm bread.

However, I've conceded the fieldwork to the young, no longer wishing to leave my bed at 3 a.m. to flash the badge to get past the crime scene tape to a place of my future nightmares. I've got my own team now, and though I will join them as needed, I'm not on 24-hour call any longer; I'm called upon to provide direction, consult, and expert testimony.

I still take pride in putting up a whiteboard of evidence and diagrams of the wreckage of a life, like some demented game of Pictionary when my expertise is needed to solve the puzzle.  I still find great fascination in the miracle of the workings of the human body and the incredibly messy ways in which it can come undone.  But some things don't change, I think, as I look at yet another cold form laid out on an ever colder surface. No matter how strong I think I am, how tough, I've seen too many times that even in unexpected and sometimes violent death, how strong the will of those bones was, to remain alive, was and how futile that sometimes was.  It doesn't matter if you are strong as an ox or go through life as inconspicuously as possible; Fate will find you.  

It just seems to find the unprepared, the ignorant, and the "let me finish this beer and take a selfie on the edge of a cliff" much sooner.

So call me old-fashioned or simply old. I didn't get to this age by living any other way. I know the merit of hard work, the beauty of quietness, and the wonder of turning that phone off and wandering in empty places, the ski lit by the stars of an eternal heaven, fearful only of the mysteries that I won't have time to explore before I, too, leave this place. 

I'm grateful that I learned about hard work early on in life, facing it like a battle to which you carry ancient wounds. You can’t live on a farm or a ranch without learning that.  I know the signs of impending birth in a heifer. I know how to cut a single longhorn from a herd of fifty with only an ATV and a dog while avoiding the pointy ends. I didn’t compare nail polish colors with my girlfriends because long fingernails get in the way when you might have to grease a cupped hand and naked arm with Betadine and lubricant to help a breached calf make its way into the world. I’ve fallen face first in stuff you don’t want to know about and cried like a child to find a calf still and cold after I spent two days nursing her after her mama died.

It wasn’t Green Acres, though I think we had their house. It had nothing to do with Norman Rockwell and everything to do with the hundreds of different ways a heart can freeze. 

It was a valuable life lesson. Hard work and hard decisions are made on evenings like that, where there are still tomatoes to can, bread to bake, and tools to sharpen, as winter will be here soon enough.  I keep my hands busy, my eyes on the sun, turning my back to the rain, not as sheep and cattle do, but as man will, after getting drenched one too many times.  Even as the rain grows steady, I'll soldier on as the sky and the day itself eventually dissolve without grieving for the warmth soon gone.

Fate may still play with me when I give it a chance, a playful paw stroke, a tentative trifling before the final pounce. But until then, I have my hands, my sweat, my words, and the truths that lie in the quiet. - Brigid

Please Don't Eat the Daisies. . .

Sunny has always loved her sticks, from the day we picked her up from her foster Mom's. . .

to her discovering our Lilac bush, which she was intent on killing.

 So a fence went up around the bush, and a sign.

I don't think she can read, though. . .

Nope. . .

Gotcha Days

Another Weekend at BiteyTime Play Center and Arcade. Partner in Grime still has his opposable thumbs

Sunny D (dog) is adapting to her new home well, considering she spent 10 months penned up in a barn. Spending her days in a too-small crate and likely malnourishment left her with bowed front legs, abandoned by the "breeder" because no one would buy her as a Purebred dog because "she isn't perfect". 

I'm thankful she was given up to a shelter rather than just killed, but it breaks my heart what she went through.  She'll never be a "working" dog, but she's happy and runs and plays with abandon; the Vet said there's no fixing it, but it doesn't cause her any pain (and if she needs it for arthritis in those joints as she ages we still have a doggie escalator).  She is our third rescue since Barkley, after Abby and Lorelei. He'd be pleased we didn't get  "perfect" dogs, but rather, ones that needed some tender hearts that knew of hurt themselves.  

The first night home after the "freedom ride," we woke a little after five a.m. to a plaintive whine from her crate.  It was a barely audible sound as if she had learned that there was no need to raise her voice, the brooding silence of her former world insensitive to her cries in the night.  The only voice she would hear would be her own. At night, that singular sound had to echo alone in the rafters.  But not that first night home - Partner in Grime was sleeping on the futon beside her crate and talking to her until she fell asleep again.

The first few weeks were rough. EJ was on an extended travel schedule, and I had my hands full, to say the least, as Lorelei needed palliative care at home.  At one point, I went three days without a shower, promising never to roll my eyes again at someone complaining about losing sleep with a baby. But with the help of some boxed hippie granola, Greek yogurt (OK, I'll share), and coffee, Sunny and I survived.  

Even terminally ill with an aggressive sarcoma, Lorelei doted on her like one of her own pups. She was forgiving and patient, and the short weeks they spent together were full of comfort. Still, one couch is worse for wear, and one small area rug threw itself on the pyre which is the flaming energy of a puppy.  

I wonder if Sunny remembers her past life.  We discovered that she didn't like telephones, sudden bright lights, or the sounds of cars and only reacted to commands in German, which gave us some history of what community her "breeder' came from. So I gently eased her into city life, sitting out in a lawn chair in the backyard on my lunch break and after work as she sat beside me, taking in the sounds of the city, realizing she was safe.  The words she knew from us at the time were few, but they stirred something in her heart on their hearing that quelled her fears and made her realize she was finally home.

A dog's perception of memory is not like ours. We tend to make painful things loom large because strong emotions stand out, isolated from the mundane daily thoughts that naturally diminish over time in one's mind. So, just as I can vividly recall, as if yesterday, moments of heartbreak, abandonment, and loss  - to Sunny, they are just shadows that haunt the edges of what she knows now, soon to be forgotten.

The brief expressions of loneliness and fear you see when you first bring a "rescue" home are hard to bear. But they were so short, soon to turn to looks of "I'm not sorry at all" when caught with a slipper, looks delivered with a goofy grin and the wag of the tail that even the hardest of hearts is not immune to.  Even after being neglected by others, they look at us with love, and whether that's simply the temper of a dog's soul or their eternally forgiving nature, I wonder how we are even worthy of their undying regard.

She knows only joy now, afraid of nothing except the bread machine, which she still will bark at. The backyard is her kingdom, to be defended against squirrels, rogue tomatoes from the neighbor's garden, and the cat that lives down the alley.  She doesn't understand why the people who walk past in the morning on their way to the train at the end of our block, burdened by life and propelled only by a timetable, don't want to stop and pet the dog.  She embraces the power of a slice of cheese.

She greets the morning yard joyfully, the grass covered with dew, like jewels strewn under her feet.  You don't notice anything wrong with her legs unless you are looking at her head-on when she comes at you slowly with a gait like Festus from Gunsmoke, taking your measure slowly, then doing a zoomie around you, a dust devil of motion, fueled by a complete lack of fear.  

She'd stay out there all day if she could, coming in only to nap beside me by my desk as I work.  Nights, she goes out one last time before bed since I don't walk her after dark in Chicago, as my husband will do.  After doing her business, we'll just lay in the grass in the center of the yard as above, the stars fill the skies, flickering down on us like eyes, as alive and enigmatic as the hearts of men.  

Training is ongoing, but she learns quickly when she wants to, having the doggie equivalent of a teenager's brain right now. She still will play a version of "Bite Mom's butt!" (no tooth pressure, but it will get your attention if you're not expecting it), and we've had to hide the smaller throw rugs.  But I can't get angry at her for enjoying being free to be a puppy, if only for these short months as she emerges into adulthood. (Though I'm still finding sticky spots in the kitchen where she bit into a can of Sprite and sprayed it around the room like a Nascar driver after winning a race).

This will be her sixth-month "Gotcha Day" and though she has had her "puppy moments," she's grown into a barrel-chested, muscular 84-pound English Lab of high intelligence. I told my husband that if I ever mention adopting another puppy, please talk me off the ledge. Still, I wouldn't trade these initial memories for anything, all the times we laughed at her antics through the tears as we said goodbye to her big "sis" Lorelei.  As I look at my remaining years, however long the Lord sees fit, I can't imagine not having a dog in them.

She's the 4th dog we've had in the 14 years we've been together.  But like any relationship of abiding love, there are always moments of trepidation, the fears of the unknown, the learning and the knowing, and, eventually, the loss, as we are all mortal.  Yet we embrace it, holding up that love like a match held aloft, grasping it until the flame burns our fingers, never wanting to let it go. - Brigid