I have learned, over time, that usually you have to sit with a broody feeling and listen for what it’s trying to tell you.
“The owl!” I say in a loud whisper and find Janyce’s arm to nudge. She is sleeping way over to the right side of our king-sized bed near the wall. I opened the window earlier on my side, just a crack for me and the dog. The late night spring air is cold and fragrant and all the usual night sounds are mysteriously silent tonight.
“Hmm, what?” she says.
“Listen,” I say, “It’s a barred owl.”
We listen in the darkness, holding our breath. I can barely make out the dim digital numbers on the sunlamp across the room that read 3:30 am. The lamp is set to start coming on two hours from now.
“Is that it?” she says.
“Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all.” I say. “There, there it is.”
Only this barred owl isn’t cooking for us all. The call sounds a little more like “Who cooks, too. Who cooks for you.”
“I hear it!” says Janyce. “Now go back to sleep.”
On our way to bed tonight our dog happily jumped onto my side and made herself comfortable, sprawled out where I usually sleep, so now I am sandwiched in the middle. I contemplate getting up. It’s been six hours. Maybe that’s enough. But instead I lie here and imagine the owl moving around in the trees out in the back woods. Or maybe it’s simply spinning around from a stationary spot because sometimes the call seems like it is so close, and other times it’s far away. Or maybe there are two owls?
This afternoon, while I was sitting in the front seat of the idling car with my computer and our dog was lying in a patch of sun in the back seat ( getting “thoroughly bored with the car” as our fearful dog trainer has advised us to do ) I looked over to my overgrown garden. I left it like that on purpose all winter, so there would be plenty of nest material for the birds. And sure enough, I noticed a purple finch pair gathering twigs from the dried out grasses that were matted down from the last snowfall of the season.
“Maybe I can work in the garden today,” I think to myself while staring at the ceiling. I reach over and pet the dog who is breathing noisily with her back up against me.
A friend of mine has a husband who struggles with serious depression. During one of our texting chats, as she was describing to me his latest panic attack in real time, she said, “he has no plan, just to run.” I’m thinking about that comment now while I lie here deciding whether to get up or try for three more hours of sleep. Last night, at the end of the workday, I was sitting beside Janyce on the couch wrapped in a wool blanket and watching a steady string of Queer Eye episodes.
“We saw this one already,” said Janyce.
“Really, I don’t remember it. You sure you didn’t watch it without me?” I said.
“I only watch these with you. If it was just me alone, I would watch my Swedish crime shows,” she said.
“Here, find something,” I said, and flipped the remote control onto her lap.
“Are you ok?” she said.
“No, not really. I just don’t feel good lately,” I said.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” she said.
I had no answer, so I didn’t answer. And Janyce, in true Janyce fashion, thankfully just let that question hang unanswered in the air.
It’s Saturday morning and I’ve returned back to bed with my coffee. Janyce has our dog up and out for her morning routine and I’m reading poetry while I contemplate the day ahead.
It’s now spring, but still cold out. The forsythia buds are still green. The daffodil shoots are poking only halfway out of the leaves. I have no patience for spring this year, like I have no patience for most things. I want to get at those leaves and dead branches, even though I know it’s better to leave them be a while longer. I want to do something drastic. I understand that comment from my friend — that urge to just run, without a plan, and figure it out later. It’s an old restless feeling of my own, one I know better than to give into anymore. I have learned, over time, that usually you have to sit with a broody feeling and listen for what it’s trying to tell you. That’s the hardest, but still the best thing to do. I’ll let you know when I find out.
In Perpetual Spring Copyright © 1990 by Amy Gerstler. Gardens are also good places to sulk. You pass beds of spiky voodoo lilies and trip over the roots of a sweet gum tree, in search of medieval plants whose leaves, when they drop off turn into birds if they fall on land, and colored carp if they plop into water. Suddenly the archetypal human desire for peace with every other species wells up in you. The lion and the lamb cuddling up. The snake and the snail, kissing. Even the prick of the thistle, queen of the weeds, revives your secret belief in perpetual spring, your faith that for every hurt there is a leaf to cure it.