Lately, my mind is occupied with appreciating what is wild in the world while also trying to tame the wildness out of the creature that lives with us, and the emotion that lives within me.
We’re driving in the car on a Wednesday night with our dog in the backseat. I’ve got a paper wrapper unfolded onto my lap with my half of our shared roll-up sandwich balanced on my knees, mustard oozing out of the sides. My spouse Janyce is driving. She holds her half of the sandwich in one hand as she takes a bite.
“I don’t know if I like the mustard and pickles with turkey,” I say. I turn to look behind me into the backseat and our dog is sitting upright, mouth closed and calmly looking out the window.
“We always get it like this,” she says.
“I do like it this way, but only when we have roast beef,” I say. “I think I would rather have mayonnaise with turkey.”
I drop a splat of bright yellow onto my fuzzy sweater and wipe it off with one of the brown paper napkins stuffed into the car cup holders. I’m wearing my “no zoom meetings” workday attire of dog fur on my sweatpants and a zip-front rumpled sweater— now with a mustard stain. I pull the visor down and study my face in the mirror as Janyce pulls out onto the highway. We’re practicing highway driving with our rescue dog who has made great strides since January but still hasn’t mastered a long ride without an eventual shaking anxiety attack. The goal is to stop driving before this happens to her and we’ve only successfully made it a few exits.
I recently read the transcript to an interesting podcast in the New York Times that I’ve been thinking about lately.
We carry a physical imprint of our psychic wounds. The body keeps the score.
I wonder aloud about what happens when we get halfway into our highway ride and our dog suddenly realizes that she is afraid. Is it that she remembers past drives that took her to a new scary place too many times?
“I don’t think you can look at it that way with a dog,” says Janyce. “She’s just afraid. And eventually, after we do this many more times, she won’t be.”
Janyce is so matter-of-fact like this. It’s one of the things I like best about her.
“Well then, I’d like to be a dog. And benefit from the act of doing something over and over, rewarded with change.”
I don’t actually say this part out loud. Instead, I think it to myself while fiddling with the radio. I leave it on the station blasting out that new Harry Styles song, “I know it’s not the same as it was, as it was… as it was.” I’m a sucker for it’s chirpy pop-song hook, even though it will worm its way into my brain on an endless loop for the rest of the evening.
The other day, when the three of us were out taking a walk in the woods, we found a lady slipper. And then another one, and another one. I grew up spotting these wild orchids that seemingly only grow in the pine tree forests in New England. Janyce grew up with them, too. I remember as a kid being scolded to never, ever, pick a lady slipper. That they were endangered. (Actually they are not) But they are wild and want to stay that way. Sure enough, if you ever did try to be rebellious and just pick it anyway, the lady slipper would shrivel up and die within an hour even with its delicate stem submerged in a glass of water on the kitchen windowsill above the sink.
I read somewhere that the root from a lady slipper is a sedative and was used by Native Americans for its medicinal properties including as a remedy for nervousness. Our nervous dog didn’t pay it any mind as she was sniffing the ground that day. Janyce and I were giddy, though. Both of us stopped to snap pictures and reminisce about being kids playing in the woods. We counted a half dozen or so during that walk.
Lately, my mind is occupied with appreciating what is wild in the world while also trying to tame the wildness out of the creature that lives with us, and the emotion that lives within me.
We carry a physical imprint of our psychic wounds. The body keeps the score.
I’ve been using my vacation time strategically to help me with a whole host of minor physical and mental maladies. None of them are life threatening on their own, but taken all together, I feel a little like the picked lady slipper, too far removed from what sustains me and left wilting in the glass. Lucky for me I’ve got a dog to walk every day in the woods and a generous amount of vacation days stored up. Not that I’m keeping score, or anything.