April 19, 2024
Wild Thing
Happy Friday. I woke up early, excited that my wife would be home later today. Engrossed in my morning routine, I fed the dogs, did laundry, washed dishes, and vacuumed the house. I also grabbed my wife’s laundry and towels from her bathroom because I liked her to have everything clean when she arrived home. When I finished, I took a short walk into the woods.
My wife called me as I was walking out the front door. She was eating at a Cracker Barrel in Durham and I was happy she finally admitted how good their sausage tasted. After breakfast, she drove to her graduate program building and took a major exam. I gave her my normal exam advice, which included two steps. One: Read the question. Two: Choose the right answer. She always laughed, knowing that my advice was half joking, but neither of us could deny it was a winning strategy.
The forest was quiet, and I quipped that nature was not acting like it was Friday. Of course, today was just another day during earth’s billions of years of existence. Just because I was alive enjoying the day and giving it a valuation, didn’t mean it was actually more or less important that any other day. When I arrived home, I took a shower and started working.
The morning was busy and before I knew it, my wife texted me saying she was done with her exam, that it was really hard, and that she would be out of classes around 3:30 PM. She hoped to be home by five. We were both very excited. A few hours after lunch, my wife texted she was on her way. We used a phone app to track each other’s location for safety. This app lead to a habit of me sitting outside on the front stoop anytime she pulled up into the drive. We would wave and each other, smiling big, and I would ponder in amazement that this human being who was so cool somehow ended up being my wife. We were happy to see each other and embraced in a long, ecstatic hug. She always brought so much energy to our home. The dogs lost their shit when they realized mama was back.
A little before I finished work, my wife came to my office to tell me she received her exam results. She did very well, as always. Even though she made excellent grades, her graduate program was so demanding that before an exam, she never quite knew how she would fare. After twenty-one months of constant exams, however, I felt she probably had it all figured out. About ten minutes after I shut down my work computer, we left the house to go for a walk at the lake before eating dinner.
We arrived at Lake Wilson for the first time in a long while. Dressed in our street clothes and ready for dinner, we raced the two-mile loop just like we did every morning during the holiday break. When we exited our SUV, it was drizzling, but the rain soon ended. The temperature was balmy and the air humid. I thought the water level looked high for this time of year. We started the trail by walking on the east side that borders the lake and several homes. All along the trail, there were flowers of every color planted on both sides of the path. There were large and small flowers in white, pink, lavender, and yellow. The walk down the path was visually appealing and satisfying to our noses.
The water looked different to me. It was dark, with a slight greenish tint, possibly from the color cast by the surrounding vegetation. We stopped near the bank to inspect movements in the water. There was a school of small fish near the bank and their dorsal fins made the water’s surface bend and break. I hid behind a tree to watch them and when the fish stopped moving; I jumped out toward the bank, causing the fish to scatter while the water roiled with their movements.
When we arrived at the Lake Wilson Bridge, the water level looked lower that usual while fresh growth sprouted out in every direction. The entire area looked a deep green color, like a tropical jungle. Apparently, I was used to seeing the lake in its sparse winter attire, so this evening the place looked completely different. And speaking of jungles, the second mile of the trail was hot and full of pesky gnats that swarmed around our faces, sometimes sticking to my wet skin. I tried not to inhale them while periodically shooing the insects away, which had little to no effect. We both arrived back at the car hot and sweaty, so we blasted the air conditioning while driving to dinner.
When we arrived at La Rancherita, I was still sweaty and hot, but once we sat down and I knocked back two glasses of unsweetened iced tea, I cooled back down. We ate our fill, enjoying the crazy music the restaurant played. When we heard one song we liked, my wife directed me to ask Siri for the name of the song. I asked Siri, and my iPhone started listening, then directed me to the song on Apple Music. Why did I not know about this feature on my phone?
When we arrived home and exited the car, the strong floral scent on the property hit us. We went inside the house, fed the dogs, and then played with each one of them. After, my wife took a bath while I followed up with a shower. It was good to have her home. After my shower, I sat down to think about our conversation we shared while walking around the lake.
My wife was facing burnout from her schooling, and last week we talked about it. Not wanting to minimize the difficulty of her program, I talked to her about how hard and demanding the program had been. Then I told her we can face adversity with a defensive mindset, trying to survive, while we are obsessed with the high level of adversity, or we could meet the challenge with a type of positive aggression. This was not emotional aggression as a response to some stimulus. It was a resolute acceptance of the difficulty we faced, and a commitment to accept the challenge, ready to surmount the insurmountable. This was not an attitude of denial of the severity of the situation, but it was seeing it clearly and focusing all of one’s being on, not just being smart, but being tough.
While walking around the lake, my wife told me the talked helped her get through the last week. She said she recognized she was feeling sorry for herself and that the conversation in her head was impeding her from taking the action she needed to take. We both acknowledged how self-pity was a dangerous attribute of being human and how, at the moment, it felt like the fair and just path to take, but it did nothing to resolve the problem.
I remembered the famous quote by writer D. H. Lawrence. He wrote, “I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” Another lesson from nature. Bravo.