instinct

She gets up in the morning and she stands at the sink while she flosses and brushes her teeth, and sometimes she frowns or she sighs. I watch her pace to the closet and rattle plastic hangers above my head, then walk from room to room as her tall black shoes make tiny clicking sounds on the tile. The way she moves is quick and impatient and choppy. It gives me an unsettled feeling, just seeing her stalk around like that, hurrying down the hall looking for keys or an umbrella or a jacket; loading the dishwasher and tugging open the blinds; speaking in short staccato sentences as she gets ready to head off to work. At times like this, I usually go behind the couch. 

I like to lie down back there. It’s shady and quiet, and the carpet is soft, and I can put my nose up close to the air-conditioning vent. Once in awhile when nobody’s looking, I might knock a throw pillow down on the floor and prop my head beside it. Sometimes I’ll nibble an edge or a corner, just a little bit, but the minute my name is hollered I know enough to stop. I curl my tail behind me, and feel the morning sun against my face; and I sigh, and think about how much I like chicken. 

I think about other things too, most days: the way the wind chimes ring outside when the house is hushed and still; the way the grass smells in the evening when I go out for my walk after dinner; the way my favorite chew toy would squeak, and squeak, and squeak, so that I would hold it between my paws to make it squeak and then squeak some more, until one day it began to make raspy wheezing noises and had to be sewn back together with two different kinds of thread.

I think about how nice it is, each night, to sit in the living room with my family; and to sleep on my round quilted bed that’s cushioned and clean and dry. It’s the place I feel safest, really deep down, except for when I hear thunder coming and try to crawl beneath the nightstand or the big brown maple dresser. Every day I wake up and find something good to eat in my bowl, and nobody ever tries to take it away, or to bother me while I’m eating it; and sometimes, not very often but once in awhile, it turns out to be chicken.

I think about her as well. I wonder if she ever has feelings like mine when she’s rushing all around, or talking in that tense and rigid way, or resting her chin on her hands and looking scared or sad. I wonder if she thinks about what it’s really like here. It’s bright in the summer and warm in the winter. There’s enough room to walk around and even, sometimes, to run; and I can sit on the back of the loveseat and look at the trees out the window; at the way their leaves and branches dip and shift in the wind; and at that gray squirrel who always rests on the biggest branch and twitches his tail while staring back methodically. If something on the countertop is waving around in an interesting way, and I jump on a chair to look, nobody stays mad for too long. And if I need to have a bath, I get a treat.

Sometimes she presses a button on the table and we hear all kinds of beautiful music, or she reaches beneath a lampshade and there is soothing light, or she turns a knob on the stove and the house is filled with wonderful smells. Today the neighbor’s tortoiseshell cat sat cleaning its paws by the screen door all morning long, and I got to bark and growl and dance around, even though the cat didn’t seem to notice very much, or care. 

It was a good day.

I don’t really understand her fear and anger. I stay nearby and try to make things better, though it doesn’t always seem to help a lot. She talks about things that might happen in a week or a month, and her eyes look large and worried. She mentions things that took place a long time ago, way back before I can even remember, and she looks stricken and ashamed. 

It’s clear to me that somebody cares for us here. I can’t make out a lot of the words she uses, but maybe she doesn’t believe this. Maybe she doesn’t realize that I would fight to keep us all safe, if that’s what it truly came down to. I’m not sure it would make much difference though, because I don’t think she always feels secure or protected, at least not really deep-down. I watch her when she sits in the chair by herself, and she looks at the floor and she sighs, and the mood that surrounds her is dark and heavy and filled with dread.

But then each day, every day, before she opens the door and leaves the house in the morning, there is one thing more that she does. On the wall in the foyer is a small object made out of wood: two simple brown sticks, one sitting crosswise over the other. She pauses for a moment, and stands very still, and murmurs quiet words or simple phrases, and touches her fingers to this object before going out.

It seems pretty obvious that it’s meant to open something.

see

In the back corner of my garage, buried beneath a frayed and faded area rug just next to the blue recycling bin, is a black wrought iron arch. This arch used to sit atop a tall gate that opened into the front yard of the house where I grew up.

I suppose I should mention that it was really just a townhouse (a phrase uttered so often by my world-weary father that it now jumps out of my mouth automatically, like a single word, "just-a-townhouse"), and a pretty small one at that. My parents moved in right after I was born, following the loss of another baby girl who would have been my sister. At the time, both of them were intently focused on fresh starts, new beginnings, bigger things to come. This house, just a townhouse, was supposed to have been a mere stepping-stone on the way to something better.

And then a series of unforeseen and sustained financial hurdles forced us all to stay put; me along with my parents who gradually grew more disillusioned, distracted, distant and bitter from one day to the next as this tiny house crowded around us and seemed to crush their spirits. When we finally began to depart, many years later, it was in the way that brittle leaves fall from a diseased and dying tree: my father moved out after the divorce, I moved out after college. Only my mother still remains there, growing older and more fragile every day; and she's preparing soon to box up her belongings and be on her way. These belongings, I'm certain, will include several dusty snapshots of a smiling family that, so far as I can recall, actually existed once upon a time.

And so when the fence and the gate were damaged recently after a violent thunderstorm, I made a point of retrieving that arch. It's rusted and weathered and scuffed and faded, but its proximity -- even buried, as it is, in my garage -- provides a peculiar sense of comfort. Just sitting there, all by itself, it prompts memories of popsicles, trick-or-treating, summer vacations, tooth fairy nickels, dog-washing, firefly-catching, campfire cookouts, birthday songs, and Christmas mornings in one tumbling, contended, buoyant jumble. Though of all these countless memories, the best and clearest of all involves the giant lilac bush that grew across the street, sharing its signature springtime scent each year. I remain absolutely convinced, to this very day, that the fragrance of lilacs captures and recreates the simple anticipation and laughter of childhood, suspending it in the air like jewel-colored fruit on a vine.

The thing is, I've found that I really need these memories. They help to camouflage another, more acrid and sinister recognition; one that whispers furtively about the dissolution of dreams, the frustration of adulthood, the shame of falling short. In my numerous moments of doubt, it cruelly insists that I've utterly failed to push beyond the meager station my parents managed to attain; the one that engendered such destructive disappointment.

This is because my husband and I, for several years now, have lived in a townhouse. Not a cottage on the lake with a big backyard. Not a sunny split-level with a breakfast nook and a whitewashed picket fence, or a hammock in the trees, or a walk-out finished basement. Just a townhouse.

My patient, supportive husband reminds me – correctly, and at regular intervals -- that this is a decision we've made together, one that facilitates other choices in our lives; choices that allow us to extend our worldly impact and direct our focus outward. I, too, repeatedly remind myself that any form of shelter deserves our abundant gratitude; that much of the world's population would give a great deal for a solid roof overhead, clean drinking water, medicine, family, food.

And yet in a country that's bursting at the seams with prosperity and expansiveness and material success in nearly every direction, how difficult it can be to exterminate our own arrogance, to control our zeal for comparison, to surrender our human ambitions, to relax our grasping fingers, to eliminate from our vocabulary that harshly judgmental, prideful, stinging, accusing four-letter word.

Just.

Over the numerous years that my husband and I have lived here, I’ll admit that I've experienced less-than-grateful moments during which I've compared myself, relentlessly, to my own family and where they ended up. It's worth noting that these moments concentrate my attention – wholly, mercilessly -- on the "have-not" aspects of existence, creating their own free-falling spiral. Eventually, these mental bouts of self-castigation work their way around to what is, somehow, the most painful jab of all – the idea that I'll never be able to plant my very own lilac bush beside an entrance gate that's topped by a wrought iron arch. 

I was reflecting upon this recently, our troubling human tendency to focus on what we don't have. I was pondering these things as I walked outside to tend the small container garden that lines our front walk. This is something I've done probably hundreds of times, each and every summer: watering this clay-potted smattering of blooming red geraniums, begonias, petunias and marigolds; lost in my own private thoughts; never paying much attention to my surroundings. On this particular occasion I'd arrived home late from work, just after sunset, and I stood there hooking up our garden hose in the deepening twilight.

And as I moved among the pots with my watering can, I was suddenly struck by the overpowering aroma of lilacs. The scent hit me so forcibly, in fact, that I stopped in my tracks, convinced that I was simply reliving another long-lost memory. I looked down at the shadow of our hedges silhouetted against the porch light; hedges that flowered purple in the spring. Hedges that, up until now, I'd utterly dismissed, assuming them to be some variant of wisteria or spiraea or hydrangea. Except that in this moment I now leaned down, and gazed straight ahead into the darkness, and took another experimental sniff. Lilacs -- definitely, without a doubt, lilacs. All this time, planted right here in front of me, blooming every year as they patiently awaited my notice. 

How often our human senses, subdued by shame and pride, indignation and ambition, can fool our perceptions and steer us in the wrong direction. How easy it is to grumble through our days, overcome by such a wall of frustration and resentment that it entirely overtakes our field of view. How blind we can become to the things that bloom before us. Sometimes the sun needs to set, I think; sometimes we need to walk for a time in darkness, so that another sense can take over, with greater truth and purity, and reveal to us what our weakened eyes could not.

In the end, it's true that families can dissolve. Photographs can fade. Gates can splinter and crumble and fall down. Yet still, after all, a single arch remains -- a silent connection, a serene reminder that curves protectively like a sentinel over each of our rocky and winding paths. Weathered with time, rusted yet whole, never losing its shape, lovingly forged from iron.

"Do not doubt in darkness what you've been shown in the light."

- Dr. V. Raymond Edman

indelible

"A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent Van Gogh.  I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, actuaries, painters, scientists;  it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted and the weakhearted .... Indeed, the very presence of outstanding strengths presupposes that energy needed in other areas has been channeled away from them."

~ Allen Shawn, Composer and Author

In the visual arena of graphic design, photography and painting, it's sometimes said that creative use of color yields the most eye-catching imagery. I don't believe that's necessarily true. Some of the most beautiful, moving, and evocative works I've ever encountered are rendered in simple black and white. I have come to believe, however, that few images can really captivate attention without a sufficient level of contrast.

Our world is unfair and unpredictable, yet indisputably vibrant. At times, for many of us, it can even seem a bit too vibrant. Occasionally we yearn for an existence rendered without such stark and varied distinctions. It seems that people inhabiting that sort of reality would have little problem identifying with one another. Their values and vision would be compatible. Ideas on world order, on societal structure, on child rearing and crisis handling and career trajectory would be easily, perhaps even automatically accepted. And there would be few compelling reasons to strongly dislike somebody else.

There is a book, a fairly dated book but nonetheless exceedingly well-regarded, that was written by Marilyn Bates and psychologist David Keirsey. Its title is Please Understand Me, and its authors note that we human beings differ in remarkably resonant and fundamental ways. We strive toward different goals. We hurt in different places. We have different motives and values, needs and priorities -- and as a result, we often think, perceive, conceptualize and comprehend in accordance with our own unique traits.

If we embrace this line of reasoning, I guess it's no real surprise that we would see others around us as dissimilar; that we would sometimes view those dissimilarities as strange, or troubling, or lazy, or flawed, or conceited, or wicked, or frightening. What I think is happening is that we're unwittingly assigning ourselves, our own personal perceptions, the role of lighthouse -- standing fixed and stationary, predictably stable and constant and resolute, in a defined and unmoving space. Certainly, the "window" out of which we view the world doesn't feel like it's shifting or changing in a reactive way from one day to the next. And so we conclude that it's others who must be like boats skimming and drifting across the waves, rising and falling in choppy irregular patterns, taking on positions that are always, ultimately, relative to ours.

David Keirsey refers to a phenomenon called the "Pygmalion project," arguing that we humans harbor a subliminal need to make those near us more similar to ourselves. Certainly we have some degree of freedom in selecting our friends, our spouses, our employers, our team members; and while we may settle into these choices, get a little too comfortable at times, we don't always seek out our own mirror images. What Keirsey postulates is that we can sometimes become just slightly preoccupied with "coaching" and "improving" our loved ones, acquaintances, apprentices and/or children -- trying to make them more tough-minded or tender, more affable or organized or analytical based upon our own world views and convictions.

And yet scripture provides quiet reminders that God is shaping each of us into our own unique sculpture. This suggests that we may be pliable up to a point, but that certain inherent traits are -- quite likely -- intended to be there. Author Susan Cain spotlights the story of Moses. She points out that when God first informed Moses of his imminent role as liberator of the Jews, Moses instantly demurred, pointing out his humble station and lack of verbal eloquence. It was only when God paired Moses with his more outgoing brother Aaron -- who would speak in public while Moses crafted words behind the scenes -- that Moses accepted his task. When we think about the mighty Moses, it's easy to forget that he started out as an introspective shepherd who worked for his father-in-law and was, by his own admission, "slow of speech and tongue."

How many of us feel similarly slow or ill-equipped, damaged or weak or shamed, in one way or another? Individually, in many respects, we are as different as winter from summer. Some of us love to speak in public. Others prefer to analyze figures independently. Some of us want everything to be neat and tidy and perpetually well-controlled. Others thrive on free-flowing energy, shifting situations, a regular diet of change. Some are poetic. Others are technical. Together, we are like cogs and gears and pistons powering an engine that has the ability to change and move the world.

If, that is, we can devise some way to work together. The various platforms that arise in politics, in religion, in healthcare and welfare and education -- I believe that these can sometimes evolve into temperamental arenas, combat zones where human beings draw our lines and strive to shape an existence that is closer to our own personal mode of understanding. I picture God observing all this the way a conductor oversees the rehearsal of an amateur orchestra, the way a patient father watches his children express and act out their differences with benevolent concern. Sometimes, quite unavoidably, that concern shifts abruptly to alarm. The flutes, after all, were never built to sound like the tubas. The introverts were never intended to think or act like the extroverts. The gift of free will is a double-edged sword -- and overzealous attempts to change one another don't always yield a transformation, but a scar.

To me, the monument can't begin to take shape, the imagery can't begin to develop, the melody can't begin to really flow until we strive to understand, to compromise, to accept that our innate contrasts were put in place as part of a larger plan and picture defined by these very differences. Of course as human beings, we're powerless to perceive this larger pattern, so it's our job to trust as we work to blend our myriad voices. This can be grueling and challenging work, demanding copious amounts of awareness and vigilance, patience and penance and grace. But I suspect that it may be the only real work that matters -- the means to carving out a consequential legacy in this earthly lifetime.

In the end, I believe, it is the effort that honors the parent; it is the trying that leads to triumph; it is the journey that is the reward.  

cadence

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were eating dinner when he paused with his fork in midair, blinked at me thoughtfully over his mashed potatoes, and said, "You know what you should write about? Timing."

Just for the sake of argument, I asked him to elaborate. But he simply took the next bite and raised his eyebrows at me while he chewed. We both realize that writing, for me, is basically a formalized way of holding life up and examining its many angles. Maybe, the eyebrows were saying, you should mull this one over a little. And so my thoughts, left to their own devices, began by going back to the beginning.

Even as far back as junior high, I used to get pretty decent grades -- a fact that had way less to do with intellectual aptitude than it did with observational abilities. In presenting assignments, teachers were essentially telling me where to focus, spelling out expectations, highlighting preferences. Over time, I simply got fairly good at following instructions. It actually became a kind of dance, with its own specific steps and predictable rhythms. A shuffle here, a half-turn there, a glide to the left, a spin. The pace was clear, comforting, almost insulating. In those days, I presumed I was being taught to think for myself. But the thinking was constrained within a larger box; a defined set of parameters that produced a regimented response.

Maybe that's why one assignment stands out with such clarity. During my senior year as an undergrad, I took an elective anthropology course. Shortly before finals, the professor challenged us to remove our wristwatches and to function without looking at clocks for two solid weeks. In retrospect, it was one of the most eye-opening exercises I'd ever been given. The first week was nearly chaotic. I overslept a lot. I was constantly late. But as we approached the end of the second week, I began to get the subtlest sense of a tiny rhythm ticking behind the pattern of my days -- hinting when it was nearly noon, when it was almost time for dinner, that sort of thing. Of course by the time I even began to notice this, the project itself was over. And like clockwork, I resumed my reliance on digital displays to move me through my schedule.

Then right on the heels of that assignment came the abrupt rite of passage known as graduation. Suddenly, it was like my partner had spun me out into the world, let go, and slammed the door. Professors, my family, my neighbors and friends insisted on calling this milestone "commencement" -- but for me, it meant that the dance, as I knew it, was over. I found myself in an entirely new ballroom, feeling utterly out of step. The pace and the timing seemed arbitrary, unpredictable, and decidedly, disturbingly erratic.

Through all the intervening years, I've thought about the way assignments of any kind can act as blueprints, if we let them -- maps and diagrams that crystallize our focus. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, not by a long shot. It's just that I'd never recognized how much "learning to learn," in a formalized sense, can sometimes preclude us from learning to live. Much in the way, I imagine, that over-reliance on a wristwatch can block us from subtle promptings and signals. Over time, we can grow detached from the almost imperceptible cadence of our own intuition and spirit, from larger patterns that are far too expansive to perceive.

Released into the currents and the undertows of life, we often discover that free will is indeed a double-edged sword. We question and we doubt, we regroup and second-guess. We listen to others around us, uncertain of which voices to heed and which ones to ignore. Eventually, we run up against inevitable conflicts -- faltering relationships, fickle health, fraying finances, wavering determination. Outside cues can begin to overtake our feelings, our actions, our choices. They can swell to a combined clamor that makes it nearly impossible to discern the innate voice that's been whispering in the background all along.

How easy it is to look back in hindsight through the filter of years, to recognize the ways we were primed to expect certain outcomes, the ways we allowed resentment or entitlement to shadow our perceptions. How easy it is to evaluate our achievements in terms of a clock or a calendar. I don't know of any other creatures on this earth, save for human beings, who are so preoccupied with the idea of minutes and seconds marching in linear sequence.

And I wonder, perhaps, if that idea of linearity is where our man-made blueprint fools us while it fails us. How many seconds, after all, can we truly expect to spend on this earth? Not one of us can say for sure; nor can we explain occurrences that aren't clearly discernible through the window of our own five senses. Maybe it's no coincidence that in scripture, we're repeatedly warned against putting too much trust in worldly things.

As human beings, it seems so natural to question the countless tragedies, struggles and misfortunes that come our way on this earth. Why this? Why me? Why now? And yet rarely do we question in parallel fashion the love, the luck, the treasures and simple joys that cross our paths.

I initially met my husband, for example, at a juncture when a great many factors had not gone according to plan; when I was struggling to reconcile disappointment, disillusionment, randomness, anger, fear. I was certainly not looking to build a shared life. I did not feel ready for a round-the-clock witness to my numerous faults and failings. Yet we recently celebrated a milestone anniversary, and I notice increasingly how we share a heart for the orphaned, the abandoned, the mistreated. Not a moment goes by that I don't contemplate the way time's passage has worn away our edges, weather-toughened our mutual outlook, brought us to this point. Not a week transpires that doesn't suggest the possibility of unseen paths, imperceptible timetables beyond our own.

These days, of course, I'm able to look at a clock and realize I'm not seeing actual time -- just a man-made construct that approximates our human sense of the universe unfolding. And yet here we collectively sit, casting about for signs of God, so frequently lamenting (or in some cases, proudly proclaiming) a lack of meaningful evidence. I often wonder exactly what -- in this world of clocks and watches, mobile devices, pre-packaged goods, man-made definitions, reassuringly tangible constructs -- we're actually expecting to see. After all, if we view a Seurat painting without sufficient elevation and perspective, its image dissolves into a series of seemingly unrelated speckles, random colors sprinkled over canvas.

I think about higher perspectives as I ponder the seemingly unrelated flecks and fragments of life. The trusting eyes of a child. Shimmers of sunlight on water. The supportive laughter of friends. The refrain of a favorite melody. The scent of springtime lilacs. The delicate sound of wind chimes. The face of a loved one, sitting at a dinner table, patiently reminding me to hope.