Friday, May 6, 2016

One Week in the Woods



We have been living in our new home for one week. The second day I was here my sister was packing up her things to leave after she and her daughter drove over to help unpack. When she walked back to the house before leaving I thought she had forgotten something. Instead she had become worried about leaving me standing in my cardboard-strewn home, in the middle of the woods, alone. We cried as she left and I listened to her car drive away up our dirt and gravel driveway until she turned onto the highway.

The next day I was momentarily overcome by joy as I stepped out our garage door with my 10-month-old German shepherd, Zoey, and was in the woods immediately. The beauty here with a softly-flowing, bubbling stream, surrounded by evergreens and moss and spring wildflowers, is a creation of God’s I quickly became lost within. Yesterday Zoey even stumbled upon two shed deer antlers and I gleefully said to her, “Look what we found!”

When we return home an hour or so later, Zoey hops up into her new dog bath and already seems resigned to a daily scrub down if she is to have her fun running back and forth through the water, the woods, the mud and the moss. Like all my shepherds before her, she stays right by my side most of the time. She loves to run as fast as she can across the forest floor, adept at avoiding tree limbs and gnarled roots. With a whistle, she runs right back to check on me before circling around the trees that reach skyward, sniffing out animals that passed through earlier and picking up sticks and dropping them as she becomes quickly distracted by a fluttering leave.

Unfortunately, even here in the woods, fear and anger do not leave me for long. In a brand new home there are dozens of brand new gadgets. I have quickly become frustrated at finding the TV shows that I like to watch. There are too many buttons and arrows. It has only been a year since I became partially skilled at handling the TV in our last home, and then only because my husband moved away and my last son left for college. How easy it had become to let others do for me until no one else was around.

When my son Eric does offer to show me how to use something, like our induction stovetop or the convection feature on the full-sized double ovens, I tell him I am too distracted, busy, frazzled and fried to learn. When pressed, I relent, only to discover that I don’t need to be an engineer or teenager to learn the controls, this time.
Sometimes it is funny when my husband and I lose yet one more item in our home because it was shoved at the last minute in a random box or put away in a drawer we have forgotten exists. Most of the time, though, it causes me to obsess with anger and single-mindedness until I either locate the item or give up in tears in the corner of the basement.

Today is the first day I have not unpacked, put away, sorted or sifted. Instead, I went “into town” to get some groceries. When I was ready to check out the woman behind the register asked me if I had found everything I needed. I told her I would be happy to list all of the items I couldn’t find if only she would be able to do something about it.

Here in the woods, one day by one day, I aim to work to be happy enough even if I don’t find everything I need and even if there is nothing I can do about it.