Call of the Wild

I like wolves. They’re sophisticated pack animals with a complex society. They take care of one another—the old are respected and supplied with their needs when they can no longer hunt for themselves. The old teach the young the survival skills they will need and, when the pack has overextended its range, they help the young find new territories and establish themselves. Occasionally the old pack and the new run into one another. Their late night songfests fill the forests with ancient music—the call of the wild.


I like to think that my affinity for canis lupus goes even further and I share an animistic association with this ubiquitous, worldly predator. I would love to have that kind of connection to the natural world. It’s probably a reason I like some science fantasy and shamanistic religions. I’m not a fan of lycanthropy, however. The contortions of the werewolf are different from the more spiritual transformations, which are not cruel shape-changing but a sharing of essence, a sort of higher order connection with the natural world. Of course, that is an example of the human egoism that places the human “animal” on a higher plane than the other beasts. Animism also assumes a spiritual consciousness in the non-human animals. It’s all a complicated philosophy. If you don’t think about it too much as a religious practice, though, and merely a blending of spirits, what fantastic mental meanderings can occupy a fertile imagination!

I used to sit for hours in the woods of the river bluffs around my home and look out over the river valleys. I would imagine myself loping easily along in an effortless gait, aware of everything around me. I hear the red tail hawk floating high above as he adjusts each feather in the wind. A vole is digging furtively just beneath the surface, making his blind way through the roots of the tall grasses. My belly is full, so I don’t stop at the spasmodic hammering of the rabbit’s heart as he cowers in the brush nearby. The sun is warm. The world is mine, and I am the world’s. With involuntary joy I lift my head and sing.

It’s imagining a better world, too. The wolf’s territory is never more than can sustain the pack, and the size of the pack is adjusted to the territory and what it can sustain, changing with the foibles of nature: weather, disease, age, available game. There is no waste. Or war. Or wantonness. Even the struggle for life is peace. Some people don’t understand or have a real appreciation for the world of tooth and claw. It’s egoism again, I think. We feel more sophisticated than my shadowy gray friends because we don’t pull down our enemies with our jaws fastened around their throats. On the other hand, wolves and the other animals don’t have enemies—there is only hunter and prey—except for man.

Philosophy again. This old wolf would rather just keep it simple. Breathe deep. Listen closely. Feel the warm hope of the sun, or the life in the rain, or the cold peace of wind and snow, and the comfort of home and the “pack”…and sometimes, when the moon is full, just step outside and howl!

Six Pomegranate Seeds

I’m always excited by snowfall.  By the first of October I’m straining at the window like a little kid to see the first flake fall.  The science of snow is amazing to me, but watching it fall and cover the earth, changing the landscape, creating new designs in nature…that’s thrilling.  I tell people that I was born in a snowstorm on the first day of winter.  Actually, that’s true.  The result of that auspicious beginning, according to my story, is that I love snow; my favorite environment is 27° and snowing.  I’ve been out in all types of snowfall, from the soft, large flakes that look like pieces of cloud floating gently to earth, to the crystal “throwing stars” that seem when driven by 45 mph winds to slice with ease through an LLBean parka, wind-guard vest, wool sweater, flannel shirt, and both layers of thermal and polypropylene underwear.  If I’m ready for it, I like every extreme.

One of the reasons that I appreciate this miracle is that it doesn’t really happen very often.  We don’t get many white Christmases no matter how many times we sing the song.  I’ve been “in school” for 54 years, so snow days are precious to me and always seem as rare as white buffalo.  After so many years, it’s a toss-up whether I like snowy days because I enjoy being out in the elements, or that one of my favorite things is sitting by the fire with a cup of coffee and a good book while the snow falls outside my window.

Years ago I developed a love for Greek mythology.  Some of the explanations for why things occur as they do in Nature are pretty funny, some are too far-fetched even for myth, yet others strike a chord in me with their complexity and beauty of theme.  Naturally, I was drawn to the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone.  These two are like the middle of a spider web with filaments of attachment to other stories going in all directions.  Central for me, of course, was Persephone’s kidnapping by Hades and Demeter’s resulting rage.  I think the myth explains more than why we have six months of winter.  That first cold spell described by the story must surely be an explanation for the Ice Age.  No one knows for sure why it started or why it ended.  Someone stealing my child would make me want to freeze the buds off the olive trees, too.

This year I’ve been thinking often of Demeter and Persephone and Hades and the gang as I’ve watched the snow pile up over and over since the first week of December.  The October storm was a surprise…the kind I like.  I thought of Demeter pining for Persephone.  Her only child was gone, dragged into the Underworld by the ruler of the dead.  Awful!

The three days of vacation before Christmas were quite welcome.  I could hear Zeus pleading with Demeter to thaw things out.  The whole world was frozen over.  Nothing was growing as the Earth Mother pined for her daughter.

Then came the three days at Christmas that kept us from getting together with the whole family.  Persephone was sitting there, ignoring Hades and refusing to eat.  We had so much turkey and dressing left over that I’d love to have shared it with her since our sons barely made it and my brothers and their wives were snowed in miles and miles away.

Then we got three days that kept us from ending first semester on time.  She was getting hungry; Demeter was listening to Zeus, but she still refused to budge.  What’s her problem?  She can go visit.  I’ve got work to do!

Then I think we had a couple more days that kept us from starting second semester on time.  Zeus brokered a deal and made his offer to Hades.  If Persephone had eaten anything, she had to stay in the Underworld.  Are you kidding?  She’s a goddess!  Why should she need to eat anything, let alone pomegranate seeds!

The combination of all those days off caused us to lose two planned vacation days and add 20 minutes to the school day.

All I could think by then was, SPIT OUT THE DAMNED SEEDS!!

I still like snow, but I’ve had enough for now.

Young Woman

I see you standing there at the counter. You’re obviously bored since you’re with your brother. Out for a drive, killing time, seeing what Fate has in store for you.

I can’t take my eyes off of you. Everything about you shines. Your laugh echoes off the marble floor and high ceilings and makes even the ghosts dance behind the cobwebs in the corner. Outside new snowfall reflects a late January sun; your smile blinds me to everything else in the room and takes my breath away.

My future seems to radiate from you. You haven’t seen me yet, so I sit and smile to myself, feeling the reality of my dreaming. I memorize the pattern of the braid in your hair and the line of your jaw and the strength of your will. Why do I remember your kisses so many years from now?

I see you standing there and eavesdrop on your conversation. You’re not sure. Maybe. Why return? What is here for you?

Me. And you smile when I say your name and you recognize me, an old friend, a diversion for now, but there is something else there. I can see it in your eyes that you see it, too, and you reach out, as I do, and our fingers seem to touch tomorrow, and I hug you and it feels like I’m holding everything I ever thought I could be and I ache for your approval.

And then you’re gone, for now, but you promise to return and I don’t breathe for waiting, my life on hold just to see you again….

I see you standing there at the counter. Your laugh is the music that makes my heart dance. And there—in the love of your smile—our grandsons grow.

Do Overs

When we were kids, one of the best things about the games we played with Mom and Dad was the “Do Over.”  Baseball never had only three strikes.  Your move in checkers wasn’t over when you lifted your hand off the checker.  Realizing you had just played the wrong card meant you could pick it up and try again.  We were learning the rules even as Mom and Dad ignored them for us.  We still lost games and learned to deal with our mistakes and our failures.  The older we became, the more we played by the rules, but it always seemed like games with our parents were more fun and we won more often than they did.  Eventually the “Do Over” became more important in real life than it was in our games.  Still, we could count on Mom and Dad for that second or third (or fourth or fifth) chance.

Some of those Do Overs were pretty expensive: a crushed fender on the car (or a total loss!), a speeding ticket, dropping a class, a changed major (or college), out-of-hand credit card charges, bounced checks….  Late night calls home brought calm and reassurance and the encouragement that the next time—the Do Over—was a sure thing.

It was even easier to change major life decisions with help from Home. Who was there with the best advice when your heart was broken (again)?  Who listened to your plans and tried to help the dreams become realities, and then understood when it seemed the whole castle came crashing down or you decided once more to go in another direction?

When I become a parent and crossed over to the other side of that Do Over equation, I gained not only a much different perspective but a much greater appreciation for what I put my parents through, and how much I owe them!  I can only hope that I have been as much help to my sons as my mom and dad were for me.

One of the things about those Do Overs that I came to fully understand as a parent: home was the one place I could count on for unconditional love…no matter what I did.  Oh, I was often reminded that I was in the wrong or had done something really stupid, but that never meant my parents didn’t love me.  I was always sure of that.

If my sons know anything for sure, I hope it is that—as long as I live—they will always be loved and always have a place to call home.  With Mom and Dad, there is always a Do Over.

Speaking of Do Overs:  Happy New Year!

I Believe in Santa Claus

The great American caricaturist and cartoonist, Thomas Nast, published the first sketch of Santa Claus in Harper’s Weekly, in 1862, during the early, dark days of the Civil War.  Matthew Brady tried to get photographs, but he could never get the old elf to stay still long enough for those early cameras to get a clear image.  Of course, Nast’s most famous image is from his illustration published in 1870 of Clement C. Moore’s 1823 description in “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

Every Christmastime brings hundreds or thousands of essays (like this one) about dear old Santa.  Is he real?  Do you believe?  Children ask the same question of their friends and parents and grandparents.  The answer usually varies depending on the age of the person asked.

My answer has always been the same: YES!!  Only the rationale have changed as I have grown older.

When I was a kid, it was easy—in my family—to believe in Santa.  My parents were children themselves when my brothers and I were born.  When you’re a nineteen year-old mother of three little boys, or their twenty-three year-old father, just promising to pay the rent or knowing that there will be food on the table next week requires belief in the improbable!  Believing in the magic that is Santa Claus isn’t much of a stretch from there.  Every year we told one another, “I believe!”  The more you say it out loud, and the more people who are willing to say it with you, the easier it is to continue your belief.  [It’s sort of like voting….]

Neither public school nor Sunday School taught the belief out of me.  In fact, it did just the opposite.  I learned about other cultural versions of Santa: the historical Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Pere or Papa Noel, Kris Kringle, Shendang Laoren, Grandfather Frost, Babbo Natale, Black Peter, På Norsk, Sinter Klaas, Jultomten, Kerstman, Joulupukki, Christindl, and others.  The lesson I took from this?  People all over the world believe!

I have most noticed in the last decade or so that despite these world traditions from so many other cultures, the image and details best known around the globe come from Moore’s and Nast’s Santa Claus.  It can be disconcerting.  I wonder how little children in the southern hemisphere, in the equatorial tropics in particular, justify or rationalize Santa in his heavy red suit, boots, and mittens and arriving on a sleigh.  I mean, believing in flying reindeer is one thing, but understanding how an “adult” would dress like an Eskimo when it’s over 100°?  Even a two year-old knows that’s silly.  I guess that’s proof of the influence of the United States in the world.  No matter what else those in other countries might think of us, if Santa is part of our image in the world, it’s not all bad.

Actually, I just answered my own question and explained why I can easily say that I believe in Santa Claus.  Children don’t have to justify or rationalize.  That isn’t believing.  Children believe in magic, especially the magic of Santa—a giving heart.

Any time I feel like the magic is waning, that maybe Santa Claus isn’t real, all I have to do is look into my grandsons’ eyes….  Do you want to enjoy the holiday?  Believe like a little child.

Thanks Giving

Thanks.

What a small, inconsequential word.

“Thanks for…

…holding the door for me.”

…passing the butter.”

…the ride to school.”

…your help raking the leaves.”

…doing the dishes and taking out the trash.”

How about “Thanks for…

…creating the flu vaccine that will save my life.”

…putting out the fire that engulfed my home.”

…stopping the thief who stole from me.”

…fighting the enemies that are attacking our country.”

Thanks.

What a small, inconsequential word.  Not at all important.  Right.  Tell that to my mother.

No.  Please.  Tell my mother.  She’s the seventy-five years young lady at the nursing home.  The stroke victim who hasn’t been able to speak for the last seven years, or hold her great-grandsons or go to her youngest grandson’s wedding, or tell me that I have to say “Thank you” when someone does something for me, no matter how small and inconsequential.

Or tell my father who has sat by her side daily just to keep her company and bother the nurses and harass the doctors so that Mom has received special attention because he’s such a nuisance.  Why does he refuse to leave her side unless my brothers and I all but load him in the car and force him to go to dinner with us?  I think it’s his way of telling Mom “Thanks” for sixty years of marriage.  For thousands of the best meals.  For clean homes.  For three successful sons, three wonderful daughters-in-law, four terrific grandkids, two healthy great-grandsons.  For being the love of his life.

They’ve had quite a life.  We all have in the last 50-60 years.  Fortunately, we’ve lived here, in this country and in the Midwest where we take care of one another.  We work hard, sometimes at awful jobs (sometimes two or three at the same time), so we can one day do better or give our kids a better chance.  And we’ve helped others, too, because you never know when you lend a hand to others that they will one day be helping you up.

Yes.  I say thanks every chance I get.

I give thanks.  It’s a small gift, but not in the least inconsequential.

I hope you take the time, too.  And thanks for reading this.

To Each His Own

Many years ago, on a very cold November evening, I happened on a scene similar to the one described here.  That experience was the eventual inspiration for the following narrative essay that I have used as an example of both narrative and descriptive writing in my writing class.

“To Each His Own”

After the supper hour on a late December evening, the small Iowa town was winter dark. Leafless trees reached to one another for warmth and companionship across a silent street on the edge of town. At the end of the lonely avenue, a single streetlight struggled against the darkness.  No moon silvered the snow-laden clouds.  Flickering shadows cast by a front-room television were ghost dancers on the dirty snow in front of the single house in the middle of the last, long block.

I was out for a walk, believe it or not.  I suppose I was young enough then to ignore the cold.  For another fifty yards or so I would have the taunting north wind at my back, but soon I would have to turn around and force my way home against its frigid hammering.  The wind shouted at me, deriding me for my foolishness, cutting through the seams of my heavy coat, snatching at my wool cap, pushing me, taunting me, daring me to turn and face it.  It wasn’t the wind that was making me shiver, though.  A desolate, despondent loneliness assaulted me there and chilled more deeply than the icy wind.

I had driven this street before, but it wasn’t a neighborhood that invited site seeing.  I felt a stranger there.  Despite the temperature and the wind and the occasional needle sting of driven snow or dust, I found my steps slowing as I carefully took in the details of the small, one-story house that was the last evidence of the community.  Just beyond the streetlight’s dim glow, barbed-wire fences and corn stubble also marked the city limits.

Since there wasn’t a garage, there was no need for a driveway, but a rusted-out Duster sat forlornly near one corner of the house.  Without wheels and nothing else to support its sad weight, the hubs were buried in the old snow.  The car seemed to be sinking into the earth.  In contrast, a companion pickup truck faced the street nearby.  A heavyduty electrical cord ran from under the front door of the house to the grille of the truck, a life-sustaining umbilical in the cold.  Nearly new, the monstrous F150 must have been recently washed despite the weather.  Not a speck of dirt marred its glossy black finish.  Although I couldn’t see into the cab—the headlights were almost to my shoulder height, the body elevated on oversized tires and lifts—I assumed it would be spotless and state-of-the-art.  The gun rack in the rear window was empty but ready.

The house itself must have remained upright through stubbornness alone. It seemed to lean into the wind in old defiance.  Tarpaper shingles clung desperately to the roof.  If the clapboard sides had ever known paint, it was a vague memory.  One ill-fitting door was centered in the porchless front.  I did not need to move any closer than the curb to see inside.  A window, curtained by streaks of dirt, showed all of the single room.  Only the television provided illumination, but the huge screen seemed to fill an entire wall.  Next to it, like the trophy case of a perennial champion, proudly stood a gun cabinet even larger than the television, its prizes gleaming: an assortment of shotguns and rifles, scoped and strapped and, no doubt, lethally effective in the skilled hands of their proud owner.

He was seated close by, feet raised high in his La-Z-Boy, a magazine—Field and Stream or American Hunter most likely—open across his wide middle.  Head back, eyes closed, mouth open in a contented snore, he was unaware of my impolite observations until I coughed.

He couldn’t have heard me over the noise of the television and the wind whistling through the doorframe and around the window, but the dogs did.  I moved on as their clamor rose against the gale and discovered their kennel on the other side of the house.  Almost as large as the master’s home, the doghouse was a spotless palace with walls so thick they must have been insulated, a well-maintained roof—unlike the house nearby—carefully drained away from several runs and doors that provided at least half a dozen hounds access to their warm beds or their exercise yard.  They bayed me on my way.  As I walked into the shadows a few yards away, I heard them quickly silenced with precise commands shouted from the door.

I turned to face the remaining distance home.  At my own fireside would be my loving family and pampered pet, probably oblivious to the wind and cold.  I wondered, as I battled on, at the priorities I would have if circumstances forced me to choose between necessity and appearance and what impressions I would give to the world peeking in my windows.

01/18/04