Today, there has been a break in the weather here where I currently live.
It’s been warming up for a few days now, but today the eaves are thawing, spilling over with that steady drip, drip, drip as the snow covering the metal roof melts. Inside, the furnace is turned even further down and I’m comfortable inside the house wearing only one bulky sweater. Even a stray housefly has come to life, buzzing at the windowsill beside me as I type this. The daylight is growing longer. I’m smiling to think that spring is only a small journey ahead. There is the sure and warm hope of the cycle and seasons of life.
~
We’re back in from a morning walk, Max and I, the going a little slower with our steps through the drifts sinking down through softened snow. For Max there’s the bonus of extra scents and smells uncovering themselves in the thaw; fresh tracks of last night’s wildlife seem to be everywhere and he has his nose to the ground, fully alert and intent on following them.
Yesterday, he made a few of his own. Off the leash for a little game of catch (escape artist that he is), he bounded onto the (safely frozen) inlet next to this property and then bolted out onto the river, which still has open water in places.
All my calls to him to come were ignored and my anxiety ratcheted into full panic – I was sure he would step onto thin ice and be lost. Thankfully, new neighbours across the way shouted and shooed at him to “Go home!” and miraculously he obeyed.
This morning, I met the kindly persons who took action to help my dog to safety. A young woman and her two little children were standing on the swingbridge, trying to spot the muskrats that run along the shores. We chatted for a long time, the mom and I, while her little boys coaxed and played with this dog who lived another day to wag and lick and smile. I was, unexpectedly, given the opportunity to say, “Thank you for your help.”
Eventually, the dog and I continued on our Canal Road walk; it feels, if I think about it, that we must have logged hundreds of kilometres along the river banks over the last year and one half that we’ve lived here at this place called Faraway.
This morning, though, the terrain seemed a little different.
For my part, perhaps it’s that I’ve melted a little more after what seems to be days and weeks of shivering uncertainty and fear over where I’m going and what I’m doing. Today, though, has arrived right on time: nine years since my last drink to date and along with that anniversary a full abundance of gifts in people, places and things. Although I’m still very much a “changling,” today I’m especially grateful for the metamorphosis that takes an alcoholic like me from that place of seemingly hopeless condition of mind and body to one where I am eager (and mostly willing) to live life sober and free.
My steps, this morning then, seemed guided and buoyed by that openness that comes from acceptance, action, and growth. Thank you, each one (and there are many) who have helped and continue to help me along this path. I owe you my life.
My dog’s steps were different, too, as we walked. While he’s a hound, this morning he was Max on a mission with his keen nose to the ground. At one point, I looked out onto the frozen surface of the river and saw why.
All around, in about five or six places, the snow was covered with flecks and spatters of blood. It was clear from the pattern of tracks round about that something large had been chased down, with the snow, at intervals, showing that whatever it was had been circled and trapped, repeatedly, with five or six large, round swaths broken by single lines of tracks as the pursued and the pursuers ran further and further out toward the middle of the frozen river.
Finally, off in the distance I could see a crow sitting on what appeared to be the rib cage of what was left. Neat, nearly clean, with no evidence of legs or any other body parts of what by now I was sure was the remains of a deer.
We stood like that for some time, the dog and I, just taking in what was certainly a relatively fresh scene, and I was struck that in hours or days there will be no trace left to see of this passing. We walked on, down to the lock and the rushing dam, a man-made beauty, and turned around for our return home. No sooner had we turned than I heard the rumbling of a large pick-up truck slowing down and following us. Finally the truck drew alongside and its driver turned off the engine and he and his passenger started talking with me.
“Did you see the fresh kill?” the driver asked. “A deer,” he added.
Yes, I replied. Yes.
~
Sometimes I wonder why I wonder about the flow and synchronicity about every last thing in life. In fact, when I first got sober, there was such an awareness of the synchronicity of things that I used the very word when speaking with another sober alcoholic one day.
“You used the word synchronicity,” he said to me. “I like that word very much, because it describes life perfectly. Never forget.”
That’s the thing. We do forget. Or at least I do. I get busy, I get distracted. I get fearful and anxious, sure that I can never adequately figure this deal out on my own, certain that I am unworthy of being here. I forget that I am / here now / in this. I forget that I’m responsible for how I look at things, for my action or inaction, for my choice between reaction and response. I forget that I am not alone.
I forget that I am coming to know that for everything there is a season; that everything IS, and that on top of that, that everything that IS is a gift, whether I see it that way or not. You show me that, over and over.
~
One of the cascades of synchronicities for me today was that I wondered how an alert and fast animal like a deer can be hunted by (what I was sure was) a pack of coyotes … no sooner had I wondered than the truck appeared, and I got to ask my question.
“Five or six coyotes will give chase until the deer is too exhausted to run any longer,” was the answer I received. What I saw on the ice was the end part; no doubt the coyotes had given chase miles before on the other side of the road in the forests, systemically – instinctually – closing off avenues of escape until none remained. Nothing personal: hungry coyotes plus one sick or elderly, panicked deer, separated from its herd. Swift, efficient, no waste.
~
I’ve been encouraged to ask for help in “letting it happen,” as I prepare to move again. Admittedly I’ve done my share of crying around this move, as I’ve engaged in old behaviours and reactions and beaten myself for all sorts of imagined (and some real) wrongs and failures. I expect, though, it’s all been necessary, because it leads me to this place of surrender, of humility, of compassion, and of love, where through necessity I am opened once again to honesty and willingness. Opened to that place where I know I am not alone, where I experience the help that comes when I’m willing to ask for it, where energy is given instead of depleted, where love miraculousy burns away fear, where I get to daily “reconsider or die.”
It’s a rare thing, indeed, to know the time of our own passing, or by what means it will come. Understandably, this is a blessing, for nearly all of us with a measure of health would be unable to choose the appointment. This not knowing gives extra urgency to the counsel to ‘plan as if we were going to live forever and to live as if we were going to die today.’
There is an extra imperative for those of us who live with the progressive illness of alcoholism, however. Active or recovering, drinking or sobering up, we are cautioned that one of the features of alcoholism is its nature of being like a “rapacious creditor.” Like the coyotes under a nearly full moon last night, alcoholism is a ravenous predator; not bloodthirsty but just hungry for us to take a drink. Alcoholism, for the alcoholic of my type, is insatiable and always advocating for the solution it instinctually remembers – to pick up a drink. It’s not personal. Nor, for a lot of us, is it swift or clean in its killing.
~
For those of us working to remain sober one day at a time, may we each continue for another 24 hours, and to share fully in the miracles recovery bestows with every step.
Always, namaste,
Leslie
Tags: alcoholism, one day at a time, rapacious creditor, recovery, Thank you
