honeybees & reveries

Almost before I wake, there are tears in the corners of my eyes. It’s like the emotions from dreams, or even empty sleep, are squeezing my body’s container and must find the release valve. Like my air mattress here in the NYC guest room.

Deflate me, God. It’s a lot.

I’ve sometimes wondered how any person can go though a regular day without hot tears behind the lids ready to spill. For me, it’s always an easy access route – my cheeks are near perpetual puffery.

I just want to live the day to the full.

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There are two times in a woman’s life where she must go it alone – rely completely on herself, her own body, with singular pain and endurance, to achieve the goal. Both journeys are mental, physical, and emotional – and are basically solo.

Two marathons.

Birth and death, you can shuffle them up and place them on the table in any configuration.

My daughter is in the final stretch of hers – in the 38th week of pregnancy. If she asks about specifics, I want to be articulate when I attempt to describe the experience of giving birth, but I can’t. I don’t remember that much.

And it doesn’t matter anyway – it was a solitary pain, custom-fit to my own body. But what we will share is the birth narrative, and her experience will be the notes of her own book.

An account about a rugged trail that is never short (not really), is never a breeze and is almost always a gruel.

But then there is the finish line, thank God.

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Last weekend I went up to NYC to watch my son run the NYC Marathon.

It was a vivid swirl of colorful bodies – wheelchairs, workers, police motorcycles – so many blew past me that I couldn’t identify the faces. 50,000 runners flew, ran, jogged, walked, stumbled and collapsed along the 5 boroughs of that city.

And even though it was a crazy mass of humanity – packed tight, jostling and elbowing – each runner was still alone. Even though they were cheered on by the deafening multitudes of family, coaches and strangers, each one had only an individual body to see them through to the finish line.

For me the marathon is the clearest metaphor I can find today for life – from birth to death – the practice, the struggl, the pain, the transcending of all of the body’s physical, mental, and emotional limits.

That’s why we’re drawn to it. We watch even if we’ve never run around the block.

It is a display of bare-faced human grit and steel will to keep going, to keep living.

When things are so hard, when days make no sense. When negativity fights to block our airways. When we feel no strength in the legs, when we can’t see any road markers or even get a sense of what we’re running towards.

When we doubt we’ll ever want to run a race again. Or run at all.

And always there is the question, squinting toward the blurry finish – why?

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Last night, back home in my own bed, I wake to the weird conclusion that I am all alone.

And that both of my kids are alone too, even as they live their full, active lives with partners.

But in the best way, we each sit in the stands and we cheer for this growing, changing family to keep on going.

I take deep breaths in the quiet kitchen, I cry into the bath towel.

No words, just a fullness in my chest that I honestly believe can rise and coalesce and take flight – and travel like a runners legs sprinting across a dirty city street, or like the tremor of a muscle contraction that builds and lengthens and brings a child.

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My enormous emotions swing and catch and blow across the autumn yard, into the sky.

I see the Cooper’s hawk circling above the near naked oak tree.

And I think about the backyard honeybees.

They are packed in the hive, one atop another, and their tiny lace wings rise and fall in a quiet cadence as they brush against one another.

All winter, they will converse and socialize, and develop, even in that tiny home.

And they wait.

And come spring, the delicate new wings will power them for miles and miles to do what they must.

The raptor and the insect, so different, but alike in a way, too.

Each will traverse on the jet stream of nature’s migration, alone, but also part of a huge dance, one that’s too complex and mysterious for me to fathom – but one that sweeps me up nonetheless.

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I buried the rat today.

The one that lay belly-up in the yard next to the chicken feeder. I knew it had been skulking around the coop at night. I’d noticed the hole it had carved out with its cunning paws, and I wanted it gone.

And now it is.

But it still gave me a start when I found it. Seeing the bloated belly, covered with the soft fawn colored fur, I felt sad and a little ashamed.

His tiny fists were raised as if to curse me. His yellowed, bucktooth mouth, having tasted the poison, was a rictus of agony.

I grabbed the shovel and moved the body next to the driveway. My husband would bury it later, in the place we lay the dead critters beneath the evergreen tree in the front yard.

This is our marriage: tacit agreements to share the grim tasks. Often in silence. Always with questions.

My job is to transport the corpse closer to the burial site. His job is to dig the hole and do all the rest. I stand by as witness.

I don’t know why we do this, but I’m sure I’ve worked out the better ends of most of our marriage deals. Especially the unsavory ones that involve stink and dirt and bodily mess and even death.

But a few days later I discovered the little carcass was still there – it had dried up and shrunk, flattened down and thin, like a smelly fruit leather.

No kind of resting place.

So I marched inside and interrupted hubby’s Zoom meeting with the slash-across-the-neck gesture and an aggrieved look. He got off the computer pretty quick.

Anyway, I have always been an orderly person, obsessively tidy, sorting and sifting through my surroundings. I seek balance, but I also can’t really thrive without some controlled chaos.

These days, I chase after a clean perfection, an impossible control of my space. I boss everything within earshot, mostly outside in the disobedient yard full of wild and semi-wild critters.

And because my brain’s neurotransmitters are semi-wild too, I work hard, really hard, to adjust myself to the world around me.

The past 2 years have been an experiment in letting the backyard go to seed and allowing the chickens and the bees to free range.

And me?

In the end, I can’t say I’ve really made my peace with the wildness. Some of it is just gross.

The chicken lice, the bulbous egg that gets stuck in the hen’s butt vent, the nasty poop trekking into the house. And the mind numbing repetition – the lock-step sameness of it all.

The prison like routines.

Morning: let the dog out, the chickens out, feed, water, watch for pests and disease. Try remedies for disease and pests. Afternoon: feed, water, watch for trouble. Stimulate the bird brains with treats. Stay on high alert to keep birds cool so we don’t have “broilers”. Evening: lock up biddies, run predator search, confiscate dangerous contraband, eliminate escape routes. Plug in fan for bedtime cooling.

Worry.

And the bee colonies. Feed, treat for parasites, provide fresh water. What to do about hive infestations in the hot tub? What about the swarm?

Often there seems to be more imbalance in this co-existence, and mostly on my end, I’m sure.

And it’s been a challenge to keep this blog going during the COVID time. I guess some people’s art thrives in tough situations, but my writing has not.

Maybe I strive too much for symmetry and beauty. Hosing down the coop and trying to find the inspiration. But I ruminate too much, despair often.

Still I have to say that things are off. I notice the sick little clues. Things aren’t right on the planet.

The stifling heat and strange migration of the songbirds. The manic cicada at my screen door last night, buzzing in drunken spirals at my feet. Just one, blind and lost.

Sometimes I think my bipolarity mirrors the environment – patterns of mood and migration, but random acts and intensity too.

And I feel a kind of vertigo: My view is magnified, but also seen in panorama. A crisis of ecology and my own uneasy conscience.

And I think in annoyingly binary ways; that what I write is okay or chicken poop.

As I grab the old splintery shovel with a death grip and drag it to my tasks. And I caress a newborn rabbit’s tiny ears, the mother torn open and abandoned by the neighbor’s cat.

Day by day, I count off nature’s struggles with my own. And I experience her joy.

Writing has the ability to feel like empowerment and impotence, even in the same paragraph.

Still I know that this is my task – to notice things, to reflect. To sometimes do nothing but stare into the hole while someone else covers up what I don’t want to look at.

To be alert to the flash of cerulean feathers at the nest box.

To hold the question of why an ancient beetle lies in wait to crawl out of the soil only once every 15 years.

To know that most questions never get answers.

Still I try.

To understand these things in the dirt, things dug up and things buried – the necessary, the injured, the bountiful and the simply unlucky. The rich mineral, the insect, the rodent, the perfect pale green egg, the sweet lavender honey, all of the living and all of the dead.

I buried the rat this morning.

Well I discovered it, really.

Dead.

I could only glance at the soft brown bloated belly and yellowed teeth

a rictus of agony,

tiny fisted paws raised to curse me.

The wooden handle of the rusty shovel left a splinter in my hand

as I tipped the metal blade underneath the bush,

letting the small body slip into the shade.

it was heavy but the rat was not.

And then I imagined the dark hole that you would dig later tonight

I wouldn’t look down, but

I would sift the loose soil across the mound with the flat of my hand

and slide it towards yours,

careful not to let the dirt touch the stinging sliver in my palm.

– for William Carlos Williams

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• New Old House
• Summer Heat
• Blue on Blue
• Untold Stories
• Eulogy

A sugary sweet fragrance cuts through the crisp air – not beer, not wine – but a seasonal swill of glugwein, which seems the perfect word for this drink, German or not.

Like many of the faces in the crowd, the grog has a rosy shine in the mug and reflects the merriment of the Christmas season.

My son has wandered up ahead of me, across the ancient cobblestones, and waits in line to get a cup. My husband is eyeing the bratwurst on sticks.

For me, I simply stand and look up at the stringed lights, blurring and spinning. Far out beyond this small circle of my vision is a cold, German nightscape and we are many miles from home.

The steaming cup my son brings to me is a real ceramic one that we are allowed to re-fill and return throughout the boozy night.

A small detail – but somehow it signifies a larger sentiment from a bygone time when folks offered wassail on the honor system.

As ex-pats we have entered a wonderland of good cheer, almost like time travelers posed under a self-contained dome, something like a snow globe.

My brain shakes the snow globe and the snow flurries and falls, and finally settles.

It is 1973 and I am 10 years old, living in West Virginia, and it is Christmas Eve.

My grandparents from upstate New York have come for their yearly visit and they are sleeping in my brother’s twin beds down the hall.

Which means he is camped out with me in my double bed. But I don’t mind.

We stay up late and listen to the little transistor radio he has smuggled under the covers. We tune the dial to pick up The Guardsman’s Snoopy vs. The Red Baron, a song we just can’t get enough of, and we laugh and sing along to Alvin and the Chipmunks singing carols in their funny, high squeaks.

And even though we are beyond the age of believing in Santa, there is a magical quality to the night. For me, it is mostly that I am with my brother. He is a teenager now, and I don’t often get to be close to him.

He has strung big-bulbed Christmas lights all over my bedposts for me – he was always like that – coming up with the good ideas and thoughtfully letting me in on them.

In this scene he is young and alive and full of wild dreams. And there is no place for motorcycle accidents or chronic pain, or addictions or jail time, it’s just me and him in our pajamas.

I shake the snow globe again.

I see my mom in her plaid wool maxi-dress, worn with a creamy, ivory blouse, and an apron over the whole ensemble. She manages the kitchen, the elaborate Christmas Eve meal. She’s a perfectionist, a stickler for the details and I stay out of her way.

Anyway, I’m sixteen and kind of tired of the whole routine, but not ready to give it up just yet. Still I itch to escape the rectory and to ditch the Midnight Mass.

My boyfriend comes over and we finish off my parents’ wine. We make it to the communion rail a bit tipsy, just in time to add the Blood of Christ to top things off.

Looking back, I see how my mom and I were always so different and truthfully, it will be many years until we grow close.

I shake the snow globe again.

I am in bed with my husband, trying to sleep on my side and not on my back. My belly is huge and the baby rests quietly in a cradle of ribs and muscle and fluid. In two weeks she will be born.

And I am not afraid, because I am 27 years old, and in the way of that age, I am confident. I believe that my body is a safe haven for my child and that the short distance from that nest out into my arms – and then out to the wider world – is something I can do pretty easily.

I will welcome my daughter into a safe, loving home. A peaceful place.

And now my two babies are adults and I have failed in a basic promise. I’ve tried to protect them, but what world have they inherited?

I shake the snow globe.

It is a balmy North Carolina afternoon and our family of four is walking the perimeter of a pond. The water is brown and murky and has logs and debris (even a deer carcass) sticking up from the depths. But the walk is pretty – the pines are sweet scented and there are geese flocked to one side.

The kids are in college and it’s been a struggle to assemble everyone. We are picking our Christmas tree, a tradition I love, but this year feels different. My Mom is gone, after a long-term diagnosis of cancer.

My kids are amazing but if I’m honest, I’m not sure who they actually are. I can’t stay up with their digital world; I can’t even keep track of their conversation.

And I worry about what memories they will have of me when I’m gone.

I shake the globe again.

Christmas Day and my husband and my son and I are sitting on lawn chairs in the backyard. It is an unseasonable 70 degrees outside. There are no decorations, no tree, no crowded table with coffeecake and stollen. No stockings. No cheeseball with Wheat Thins and no craft beer.

I want to re-shake the globe.

I want to transport back to that original scene in Germany

But no, here we are. There are no bustling crowds, no toasting with glugwein, no hugs even – never mind kisses beneath the mistletoe.

It is a pandemic and the reality of illness doesn’t fit into a snowy, nostalgic scene. The globe is supposed to hold us all close, protect us in an idyllic place and time. To reflect a joy, a poignance, a promise of what is possible.

But we all know that outside this globe is a place of poverty and war, violence and famine. And we know that even the bubble of atmosphere itself is overheated and volatile. There is no pure, crystalline stage left on which to play out our memories.

And so I grasp the globe and wonder what will be this year.

The world has slowed; we’ve been shaken and sobered.

During these past months I have spent time with my son; he’s taught me how to make kombucha and sourdough bread. He’s built me a chicken coop and taught me to tend honeybee hives.

I can’t remember having this much focused time with him.

He and I have had hours to watch episodes of Succession and Premier League soccer, and to eat take -out dinners on the front porch swing. I’ve watched him patiently and methodically build a bed out of local cherry wood.

And I’ve been able to see him up close, clear eyed, with no filter.

His jaunty stride as he unexpectedly runs past me on the Duke trail, where he calls out nice pace! with his shameless flattery.

His face lit up when he writes his stories on his laptop, late at night in the kitchen. Glowing partly from the digital screen, but partly from his own energy and Lewisness.

Later I watch him pack his stuff and head to New York City, carefully wrapping baby succulents, sourdough starter and a full kombucha jug, by hand, in blankets, for the long drive. My heart melts.

Tonight I picture him in Manhattan, bundled up in a down coat, walking on the streets with no gloves. Underneath the skyscrapers that reach to the black sky – no stars, just dirty city air. No sparkling dome, but maybe a dusting of snow.

Next week he’s back for the holidays.

And today, I turn the globe upside down, yet again, and shake it. And I watch the flakes of white settle gently over the magnolia trees and Carolina pines in my imagined scene.

And I listen as the tiny music box plays a tinkly version of Silent Night.

And I wonder.

The interesting thing about chickens is that they are not really wild but not really pets.

They exist in some rare middle place.

They need me to keep them safe at night. If not for me, they’d be hawk food in a heartbeat, or run over by a car, or eaten by the neighbor’s cat. And they definitely rely on me to feed them and keep them free of pests and disease.

But I don’t feel the pull of emotion like I do with my dog, Huckleberry. If a predator decided to take Babs to the great rapture in the sky, I wouldn’t be devastated. Sure, she was an adorable fluffy yellow chick that chirped when I came into the bedroom, but I don’t know.

Chickens are incredibly smart though, and their instincts are fine-tuned. I’ve read that they can recognize up to 100 faces. I mean, I don’t think I can even do that.

My chickens know when it is Wednesday night – Banh’s Vietnamese take-out night, when they will get the leftovers. I mean, they pace and peck at the back door in the late afternoon, even after I’ve told them that Mac is calling the order in.

And I recognize that my girls notice me specifically in the yard – they know that I am the one who fretted over the air temperature when they were in the brooder. And that I was one who took them on field trips when they were toddlers. And I fed them grits (cooked with butter) and oatmeal, and basically spoiled them to no end.

But still, if a hawk took one away, I’d have to chalk it all up to life in the food chain, which is just a fact of being a semi-wild critter.

Why do I bring all this up?

Because I think it’s interesting that we rate animals in such a way. Clever or stupid? Wild or tame?

I believe they are all basically intelligent – way beyond our comprehension, and we humans have set it up so that we can feel okay about killing them. The one that astounds me though is the pig – we know that it is one of the more intelligent species – yet still we want bacon?

We just think these “dumb birds” are here for our taking, and I guess they are. But I’ll have you know that last weekend my husband and I set up Christmas lights on the girls’coop.

You heard me correctly.

I know.

But did they like it?

Who knows?

But, for me, I choose to believe that their beady little eyes had a dreamy glow in them, as they nodded off to sleep in the glow of the twinkling lights.

I think they were dreaming of mealworms and grubs and tender sprouts of next summer’s grasses, and maybe their pea brains think of me, their benevolent provider.

It’s the season of giving, and these chickens have gifted me a lot – hours of entertainment and diversion, not to mention the eggs.

And those eggs are truly miraculous to me, the expression of a not wild, not domesticated critter. And this year they have truly been a gift, a marvel, an astonishment, when so many other things couldn’t be counted on at all.

Kicking through the fallen leaves in the dusty winter yard, I come across tiny chicken scratches in the uncovered patches of dirt here and there.

They look like they were made by a child’s tiny sandbox tool. The lines are perfectly symmetrical and speak of a methodical communication between chicken and earth. Even a syncronicity between birds.

I think about these innocent marks and they remind me of words, chicken words, but also human speech – the way we chat with one another. Pecking and nattering about trivial, everyday things. Gossip, or running commentary. And sometimes we insult, with small barbs or micro-rudenesses.

It is the language of the chicken yard.

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Last week, I was in the house, reading in my armchair and suddenly a sound of rushing air followed by a thump caused me to look up at the window. A large expanse of brown and white feathers swooped past.

Of course, I ran outside to check my biddies. But weirdly, everyone seemed fine, even calm.

Yet as I picked up my yellow Buff Orpington (named Ginger), I gently turned her over and my hands tenderly parted the soft golden breast feathers. And there they were – deep puncture wounds where the predator had tried to lift her from the ground. So deep as to not draw a bloody mess, but they were bored into the area near her vital organs.

They were wounds that went deep, the ones that may heal but will leave a scar.

And a memory.

Again, like human communication, it seems to me that the cruel, thoughtless lashing out that we do is like an animal response.

I’ve often believed that when we say hurtful things, they end up hurting us more than the recipient. Like the jagged edge of chickenwire, they pierce our breast long afterwards. I can remember things I said, mean things from many years ago, that sometimes pop into my head. And I wish to God I’d kept my mouth shut.

And it makes me sad that someone is carrying around wounds that I inflected, and that they hide them in order to get by, move on.

And isn’t it also true that the healing, loving comments we make actually do more for us than anyone? They are like soft, protective feathers around our heart, we go to them when we feel down.

And this is where I am today, as I look up at the sky and watch for that Cooper’s hawk that circles lazily in the afternoons. The raptor is an eerie, vulnerable evocation of brute power.

A reminder of my own agency and responsibility. Of the choice I have to hurt or heal.

This fragile earth, even the deep loamy core of it, relies on careful participation

This fragile earth, even the deep, loamy core of it, relies on a call and response of careful participation. And if I can create a connection, that’s what I want to do.

And I want to be like my chickens – as they chirp and groom one another, and as they snuggle, crowded tight together on the dark roost of the coop as these winter nights grow cold.

I know that without one another’s plump bodies, the snuggle, the warmth, they don’t even have a chance.

I drag my rake across the dirt, scratching the dusty brown yard. Tiny acorns crunch under my shoe, they grind to an ochre dust. I spy little chicken footprints cross-hatched in the gold.

Everything is worn down to sediment – Summer’s remains. All green freshness is gone.

The hens are losing their feathers, experiencing what is called a molt. They shake off little nests of soft, creamy feathers by the kitchen door, wistful gifts that float on the breeze and gather beneath the shrubs.

Their bodies are lean and bleached looking, their combs are a faded pink, their tail feathers are stubs.They seem a little embarrassed by this turn of events, like they’ve been caught out in their underwear.

This is the season of cold, exposed skin, wrinkles and vulnerability. When we lay Summer’s hopes on the burn pile and let gravity and the cold air leaven our spirits.

This is the season of cold skin, wrinkles and vulnerability.

A chickens’ molt serves a purpose – to slough off the old feathers filled with dirt and mites, and to have a fresh, attractive set. Natures’s way of regenerating.

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It seems to me that some of my hardest periods in life have been like molts, of sorts.

Adolescence, pregnancy, menopause – major upheavals of hormones and bodily changes where I did not feel like myself at all. Transitions – times of anxiety, insecurity. Dramatic plumage fails.

Uncertainty about what will be.

When I reflect on these cycles within me and within this microcosm of my backyard, it doesn’t take much to recognize that what is fresh and young will give way. Hair loses pigment, dermis loses elasticity, sebum oils dry up.

But, like my hens, there is that new growth prickling beneath the tender skin.

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During the pandemic, the Baptist church across the street drew a large labyrinth in their parking lot – a spray-painted circular path for passersby-by to meander.

The other day I saw a child meticulously navigate the spiral, one tiny shoeprint at a time. And when he reached the center, he yelled out to his dad “Now what?”

Yes indeed, now what?

The life cycle spirals of our days that become months that become years – it is a scroll of a story. We think we know the beginning and the end, but it is a question.

Worm casts, chicken droppings, loam and skin – they form a crust of fertile cake out of nothing at all. Just when we think something is at the marrow, it lays down another skin of hope.

We backtrack through the labyrinth.

And here, in the midst of a chicken molt, there is an itching, uncomfortable yearning for a cluck of reassurance.

Where are we going?

And as I rake, the hens cackle and complain, and I get it. I’m not one hundred percent sure either.

I just hope that the waiting and uncertainty won’t be for nothing and that this season’s glossy, new plumage will arrive soon.

Oh, and some eggs would be great too, always the eggs.

Being the daughter of an Episcopal priest, it would make sense that I would go to an Episcopal Church camp in the summers when I was a kid.

And I loved it. It was the perfect camp for me. No focus on athletics – no archery, no swimming lessons, no real competitive activities at all. There wasn’t even any camping.

But it was vaguely religious, in that spiritual, campfire songs – skits – and walking-in-the-woods – kind of way.

A handful of church clergy were our leaders, but they were young and never wore their collars. They were like one of us kids, joking and informal.

There weren’t many strict rules, it was a laid back place.

Except there was one thing that we took seriously – Prayer Hill.

Prayer Hill was a special space. It was a small clearing on a tiny mountain that overlooked the camp, deep in a thicket of trees. And every night, after campfire, we would process, single-file, up the hill for evening compline.

And it was understood that, as soon as we took our first step up the steep trail, we had to remain silent – not a whisper or a sound, until we were back down again.

Actually, that’s a lot to ask of pre-teens.

But each evening, after supper, the campers and counselors would take the short hike to this dense nook in the deep woods.

The chapel had rough wooden benches and a stone altar. The pews were worn and saggy from the weather. Leaves covered the benches. Bugs were biting.

There were no formal services. We may have sung camp songs, but mainly the sounds of our music were swallowed up by the screaming cicadas.

One or two prayers were offered up.

And on the last night of camp, we carried candle stubs that dripped and burned our fingers.

But for me, during the summer when I was 10, Prayer Hill was also the place of spiritual revelation.

I can close my eyes now and return there so easiIy. I was a kid who was always in my own head, I was deeply imaginative and easily led to the mystical.

I longed to believe in God, and I longed to feel his/her presence.

As I hiked, a quiet peace ran through me. My body felt light and my brain clear. As I climbed, my spine was electric with joy, unlike anything I’d felt before.

I came into the small clearing and stood to let my breathing slow, and to hear the sounds of the woods go through me. It felt like the moment at the pool just after you launch from the high dive and right before you hit the cold water.

Exhilaration and peace.

Something perfect.

And as the sun lowered beneath the trees, I felt older, as if I was a different girl in a different body.

Or maybe a girl with no body at all, just spirit, like all my seams lined up effortlessly.

Even years later, it points me to something that is constant, burning bright and true

I think the power of that place might have had to do with the wacky mixture of elements: a crucifix rising up from the gnarled bark of a maple tree, a prayer bench covered with bright moss, and the listing stone altar.

The setting was such a stark contrast to the dark, polished pews and the gold cross and stained glass windows of my Episcopal church back at home.

Anyway, that summer, after camp ended and I went home to my family, I distinctly remember feeling transformed. I was more patient with my sisters, more content with myself. I felt spiritually clear, almost as if I was in a monastic state.

But eventually the feeling faded, and I went back to being my same old bratty, junior high self.

The shine slowly wore off.

I was impatient and moody and bored being back in the fall school routine.

And now, all these years later, I wonder at the alchemy of the experience.

Yes, it was the silence that allowed me to meditate and to filter out all of my pre-teen angst. But it was also the intention.

The spark to investigate.

The yearning to open myself up to the divine.

And I think this memory has stayed with me because I haven’t written it off through the years. I’ve kept it in a small, private place.

Away from any editorial cynicism and judgement.

More than anything, our weary old world is in need of great love. Less adult smarts, more childlike wonder. Fewer certainties, more curiosity.And when I read the daily news I wonder what I can do to make a difference.

And when I feel hopeless, I walk.

And I try to pray.

I try to conjure that 10-year-old faith that there was a kind of redemption up on the mountain. Something bigger than my overactive imagination even.

These days I believe that prayer is an act of letting go. Like releasing a breath. A sigh. Like slipping a chafing backpack from our aching shoulders.

A prayer is a question for the universe.

It is a dance of imagination and risk.

And maybe the questions, even unanswered, are enough.

Maybe climbing the hill is all we have.

Yesterday, my sister called and told me that you are depressed.

She said that you want to sleep most of the day, and that when you’re awake, you mostly just want to eat.

That you are sometimes angry, mostly irritable.

And she said that this has been going on for quite some time.

I’m sorry.

We’ve never met, but my sister says that you are amazing – funny and unique. She loves you.

I just wanted to say that when I heard about you, my heart ached.

Because a number of years ago, I was you, (or a lot like you, maybe).

Clinically depressed. 

I remember how my days were a fog, everything was flat and grey. And my skin was thin, my feelings right on the surface. Everyday comments could cut right through me.

And I would cry at random, even though there was nothing attached to the tears.

One time, I cried non-stop in my therapist’s office. I mean, I didn’t speak a word until I wrote her a check at the end of the session.

Sometimes we just need a witness to our pain. To feel the truth and have someone to hold onto it with us.

To say this is the worst.

It’s a confounding thing to live with a reality that can’t be explained. Something so ugly, so convoluted, so monotonous and draining. In fact, it is a nearly intolerable thing.

Sometimes we just need a witness to our pain. To feel the truth and have someone to hold onto it with us.

There is no one answer. No fix.

But people will try to help; after all you are so clearly in need of advice (right).

They tell you to exercise, see a therapist, takes meds, do yoga, meditate. Just get up and do something.

Mind over body (right).

But at the time, what I really wanted to say to my family was this:

I need you to listen. It will probably be a repetitive script of bitching, moaning, crying and feeling sorry for myself.

Still, just listen.

I need you to accept that I am trying, even though it doesn’t look like it.

I need you to accept me exactly as I am, not a better version of me.

And I would also say that I know that being around a depressed person is a colossal drag. I know because I live it every moment.

But I need you to know that this depression is in my body, just like some other disorders, like diabetes, MS, or epilepsy, the symptoms are physical.

Which is part of the problem, because I have to walk around and pretend that I’m okay when my brain is not really functioning.

It is an added burden – I carry my guilt along with your judgement and expectations – and it’s too much to handle, it is exhausting.

And so I comfort myself.

Eating takes away a bit of the pain, at least for a short time.

Sleep is my delicious, velvet escape.

But I guess the biggest thing I need right now is a simple, neutral acceptance.

Anyway, as the years have gone by, what stands out the most, are the tiny moments of feeling okay – the sparks of possibility for relief, when I could escape my own head, even for a little while.

I remember when you sat with me and told me a story, or rubbed my feet, or when we just looked out at the yard, laughing at the chickens.

I remember that you stayed with me, even though it was such a hard, hard place to be. 

And you might not have been able to imagine my suffering, but when you sat with me, I felt so much less alone.

Time passes, this is always true.

But some things remain, deep down in the bones, the hard life experiences, like depression. The pain is baked forever into the marrow.

Even so, today, what surfaces in my memory is you. Your care gave me a whiff of hope; like oxygen to my body.

Your kindness, your patience, your love – you saved me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve had a few close calls with predators here on the backyard farm.

Yesterday I watched as a massive red tailed hawk hunkered down on the power line, its dappled chest ruffled, right above the chicken coop, lurking overhead, with a beady eye.

His tawny shoulder wings were partially spread, ready to swoop.

My flock was out of the run, free-ranging in the grass, having a great day.

But when they saw the raptor, three of my girls froze up like little chicken mannequins under the picnic table. Fiona was hiding under the deck, a little clueless.

And there was my poor Babs, standing stock still in the middle of the yard, the plumpest, heaviest and slowest (in all ways) of my birds.

Beaky mouth agape, she had a stricken look in her bright orange eye, but she was focused, not on the hawk, but on her sisters.

There was an eerie silence, a collective intake of breath, not even an insect scraping its wings.

The chickens were holding still, in suspension, for several minutes, even after I finished waving my arms and screaming like an idiot.

Later, I reflected on their response.

It was as if there was an invisible thread that linked the flock, a tensile connector between them that whispered across the line.

A bit like the yarn we used to string between tin cans to whisper across our bedroom windows in our children’s game of telephone.

In the past I have seen the flock freeze up like that, but I never saw any threat.

But of course there was, and the chickens knew it.

I marvel at the way nature interacts and moves together to protect its own.

Another example came last week, when I had my two baby Marans outside to scratch around and get acclimated to the outdoors. They are my cute black copper twins; they never leave one another’s side.

I always find them wing to wing, with their little beaks together, like they’re telling secrets.

Anyway, Huckelberry the dog, chased one across the yard, caught her and dropped her, and she quickly scrabbled underneath the chicken feeder.

She had two puncture marks on her shoulders, a little blood, but no broken wings.

As I gently inspected her and placed her back in the indoor cage, she immediately ran to her sister, as expected.

But what I noticed next surprised me. Her twin, the uninjured bird, was trembling. Her soft little body shook like I’d never seen before.

And I wondered if she felt the terror, the near escape, the trauma, of her big sister.

Sometimes it is so clear to me the way that our big, wide world is connected by tiny strings.

And the way every mood we experience travels along these invisible pathways, creating ripples of emotion.

Animals are attuned, but we humans often forget this universal language of empathy.

This week, when I read about Simone Bile’s Olympic performance, and her withdrawal from competition, I watched how the world responded.

Her message was: I am human and my mental health is an integral part of my body’s athletic pursuits. You can’t separate the two, mind and body.

And, I swear, I could feel the ripple effects of her statements throughout the mental health community.

Finally, we can talk about what is real: the strength to step away, the courage to describe vulnerability, the excruciating pain of carrying others’ burdens.

And the unnecessary shame that often accompanies us when we let people down, people we love.

And mostly, ourselves.

to be vulnerable is to be strong, to be broken is to be fully human.

For me, Simone is not letting us down, she is raising us up.

She is still the world’s best in her sport, and maybe mind-body intelligence is a reason why.

Like Naomi Osaka, these young women refuse to be defined by mens’ preoccupation with stoicism and self-punishment.

The old ideal that we must subjugate our emotional life in order to succeed, needs to be retired – like mandatory white tennis skirts for women at Wimbeldon, and bikinis on female volleyball players.

Even though these moments are just whispers on the breeze, I believe the flutterings of real change are in the wind.

And I hope that we can transmit this lesson: that to be vulnerable is to be strong, to be broken is to be fully human.

Only if we have the courage to listen, to feel empathy, and to pass the word across the wire: that we’re all in this flock together, and we’ll only get by if we take care of one another.

My chickens know it and I’m trying to figure it out too.

The death of a pet is a grief unlike any other. And when the death is a decision we have made, it is cast into an ambiguous category of loss.

One that we don’t want to talk about.

We say euthanize, and sometimes that term helps. It helps to neutralize what we are feeling, and to distance us from the act – the act of taking a life.

Because, of course, what we are doing is killing a beautiful, vigorous animal.

Last week, my husband and I decided to put our dog Theo “down.” I suppose I am still in shock; I hope that writing these words will help some.

Theo was a huge, big-hearted, loyal, coon hound mix who lived for our family’s love. He was disinterested in other dogs or squirrels, or even treats – he was just partial to people – specifically me and Mac. And Lewis, always Lewis.

He waited every afternoon between five and six, pacing at every window, for Mac to come home.

He watched over the baby chicks without incident, never chased the backyard flock, and joyfully welcomed a second dog into the house.

He could hear the UPS driver from a half a mile away, and wanted nothing more than to jump, full body, onto his shoulders and lick his face.

He adored me, and sat on my lap – all 95 pounds of him – every afternoon when I read my book.

And in the evenings, he galloped, tethered to Mac’s bike, long tongue hanging to one side, with the neighbors laughing as they made way.

A perfect dog.

Except that Theo had one defect: he was a food guarder. Meaning, if anyone got between him and something he really wanted, he would bite.

Last week he bit me. He had done it a handful of times before, but this time felt like a tipping point. I researched, talked to vets, and mostly struggled with my own conscience, to decide what to do.

There was no right or wrong decision, all of it felt wrong.

There is a particular shame in euthanizing a dog. If you’ve had to do it, you know what I’m saying.

Playing God, or using our power over another creature, makes us feel guilty.

Because these animals are vulnerable, and they come to us for protection and care. And it feels like a betrayal of trust.

It is unjust – Theo didn’t even know what we were having to do. He had no voice in the matter.

Yes, he was just a dog. Just a sweet, goofy mutt.

But he had a fierce love, not unlike my own.

My own love that has been so crazy hard, so exasperating, so intense.

Loving a puppy is easy; they give you so much. The pure innocence. The need to please. The forgiving nature. The complete devotion.

But loving a problematic dog is a special kind of heartache.

Loving the not-so-perfect. Loving the hard-headed, stubborn, difficult one.

Loving the temperamental, unpredictable, even dangerous dog.

But also loving the dog who looked at me from the cage of the Durham ASPCA shelter and said take me home, please.

My friend tells me that maybe not every creature is meant to stay here on earth with us. Because maybe this world is too imperfect to truly love a complicated dog like him.

And so maybe it was never Theo’s defect, but rather the world’s inability to accommodate him.

But if I could have understood, or helped, in any other ways, of course, I would have. And, despite his biting, he was such a good boy.

Too good for me to truly understand how to love him in the way he required.

And I want to believe that in some other, more perfect world, I’d be able to love and understand him the way he could me.

I take full responsibility for his death, just as I did for his little life when I brought him home from the shelter. I told him I would care for him forever, but that time has fallen short.

Emptiness, heartache, and such a feeling of loss, that I cry a little, in the afternoon, when I try to read in my chair. I can still feel his hot, heavy weight on my legs and the way my circulation would cut off. But today my legs are light, with no silky black hairs shaking off them.

And in my heart – where there should be a doggy fullness, there is only a jagged hole.

Mac has scattered Theo’s ashes on the roadway, where he loved to run. And when I close my eyes, I can imagine that hound-dog face with the huge, drooley smile, racing alongside him.

He loved just being alive, in the night air, next to Mac. He could run forever if my husband had asked him to.

My Theo, my big sweet boy, I hope your huge heart can forgive me.