About a Squirrel. And Longing

I feel like I should have something important to say, or at least specific, but my energy is rather scattered today. It is late afternoon, and while I managed to cross off all the items on my errand list, once I got home everything got a little out of whack. I didn’t clean up the breakfast dishes until—oh wait, they’re still sitting on the counter—and I haven’t done anything I thought I might do once I returned from said errands. Somehow I ended up tweaking my website, which brought me here, to a new blog entry, with no idea what to talk about.

I can share that the sun is sinking into the horizon a little bit later each day now, that winter has provided extreme temperatures in the single digits but not much snow. Our brick patio is currently an ice skating rink. And while I don’t feel the stirrings of spring just yet, I know it’s there, hidden beneath the surface of grass that looks like straw and small patches of snow.

I can tell you about one of the squirrels in our backyard, the one that knows the only way he can get to the buffet of bird seed we provide is by leaping from the fence to the feeder, where an abundance of tiny morsels await. After considering his options from the ground, he makes his way to the fence post and contemplates his leap, tail twitching back and forth. After a moment of concentration, he suddenly springs into the air, and I can practically see his tiny squirrel fingers stretching out toward the feeder.

Alas, he usually misses on the first try.

…but does not give up, and repeats this brief gymnastics routine as many times as necessary until, eventually, he has success. I think if he had a little squirrel flag—emblazoned with his squirrel family crest, perhaps—he would plant it in the pile of birdseed triumphantly before engaging in the work of stuffing his face. While my husband tends to be annoyed by the squirrel’s intrusion into bird territory, I can’t help but root for him. He works hard to get to the top. I always smile when he nails the landing.

When I last wrote, it was to share a bit about the loss of our sweet Tilda. The only update I have on that is to say that we are still missing her like crazy, that we still can’t quite believe she is gone. There are times when I am sitting perfectly still—in a car, on a sofa—and I suddenly feel so desperate to touch her and hold her I imagine myself splitting in two. I don’t mean in half, but as if my skin didn’t merely contain all my veins and organs and bones but also some ephemeral part of me that has the ability to move beyond the physical limits of my body. That part of me, for a few seconds, seems to be able to escape the confines of this world, but it doesn’t give me what I so furiously want, which is to feel the solidity of Tilda—her fur and her nose and her wiggly body.

I first experienced this strange splitting apart when my dad died, and the image is always the same: my body is not moving, but on another plane of existence I am leaning forward, arms reaching out, fingers spread apart. It is slightly disconcerting, this deep longing to pull away from my body, but also oddly comforting. There is something about it that feels….normal. This is grief, and it exists because there was—is—love, plain and simple.

I came across a small container of dog treats earlier this week. Most of what was Tilda’s has been given away, shared, or stored in the basement until we can donate it, so this was an unexpected find. My first instinct was to simply throw them away, but then I thought of our industrious squirrel, and all his squirrel buddies, and instead tossed them outside in our yard. That was two days ago, and they’re already all gone. My husband and I tried our best to give Tilda a happy, comfortable life, and we also do what we can to take care of the other creatures that wander through our yard. We keep the bird feeder filled week after week. I cut up and toss out apples that have gone soft. In the spring, we put out oranges for the orioles. It makes me happy that this last little smattering of Tilda treats fed the squirrels; it was another opportunity to keep spreading that love, to keep taking care of whoever shows up at our door.

This is the End of My Day

I am sitting on a tall chair covered with gray fabric at the end of the island in our kitchen. Sounds around me are muted—the hum of the refrigerator, the soft tap-tap-tap of my fingers at the keyboard. I see the shadows lengthening across my brick patio, letting me know the day is coming to an end. Not quite yet, but close—closer than this morning, when the sun was moving skyward like a roller coaster on its slow ascent, when I was all motion and purpose. 

I suppose I can say it was a productive day, what with phone calls made, mulch scattered around my flower beds, and freshly washed sheets just folded. My reward is a bowl of popcorn, some kernels sprinkled with cheese and others glazed with caramel, made by a local company I discovered at a farmer’s market last weekend. That morning my husband and I filled four grocery bags with goodies for our pantry—deep purple eggplant, two dozen fresh eggs, heirloom cherry tomatoes. We bought a brown paper bag full of mushrooms grown and harvested by the man running the booth. We felt like we’d won the lottery.

My husband and I haven’t had more than a week alone since the beginning of summer. By mid-June, our calendar had exploded like popcorn, with invitations, requests and ideas flying criss-cross around the country to and from family members. We wouldn’t normally have taken on as much as we did, but coming out of Covid, we decided to go for it and do as much as we could. Now that all of these plans are winding down, what I am most in awe of is the fact that it all worked. Planes departed and arrived on time. Weather was great. No one got sick. No one got as much as a bee sting. I find this to be a great and miraculous thing, something not to be taken for granted.

Notes from The Rocket, my first book in three years, is now at the printer. I am currently in the process of organizing all the little goodies and ephemera that will be tucked into the book. It is quiet work, and slightly tedious, but I have an affinity for those sorts of tasks. It is precise work, and methodical; it lends itself to a certain kind of meditation. I’m looking forward to sitting down with a big stack of books and doing all the work to make each and every one unique, to imbue each book with something of my love of the creative process and my longing to make meaning of this life that I’ve been given.

I was at the dog park yesterday, which has a big field where dogs can run around and play as well as a trail that circles the entire park. As we came around the last bend on our way back to the parking lot, I looked up and noticed the leaves of a few aspen trees waving frantically in the breeze. They were moving back and forth so quickly the trees began to look, if I unfocused my eyes just enough, like a pointillist painting, á la George Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. I stopped and watched them for a few minutes, wanting to hold on to the image, to capture the feelings their movement was conjuring, which was somewhere between playful joy and profound gratitude. “Look at us!”, the leaves seemed to say, “Look at this amazing day! Feel this amazing moment!” 

It made me think of one of the many quotes from The Color Purple that I’ve carried around in my heart ever since I first read the book in my early twenties. It was spoken by a character named Shug, who was talking to another character about God: “Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?” Those trees at the dog park weren’t begging for my attention, but inviting me to give it to them freely. How many such invitations do I miss throughout each day because I insist on locking my attention in any number of cages—the ones that hold my to do lists and my worries; the ones that hold all the big and little annoyances from yesterday or last week or twelve years ago? 

The light outside is changing. The white brilliance of the afternoon sun is giving way to that perfect, soft shine, the one that makes every flower petal, bird wing, and fence post look drenched in gold. The trees are barely fluttering. The ruckus and chatter around the bird feeder has settled down. On the counter, overripe bananas are reclining as if in a hammock, keeping company with a lemon, an onion, and garlic. This is the end of my day, the first gentle steps toward sleep, the invitation to rest and exhale.