Perspective

An offering for our friends Jerry & Rebecca, and for Henry. Wishing all of them happiness they can feel in their bones.

A Brief One-Act Play 

The couple enters stage left to a dimly lit kitchen. Red lights hang over the island where the woman sets out placemats and napkins for dinner. The man stirs something in a sauté pan on the stovetop. Background music is audible from stage left. A fire is in the woodstove.

Sam: "Sounds like Jerry and Rebecca's birth was very civilized. Almost as civilized as ours. More civilized than ours actually…no one had to get up at 3am."

Kerry: "You didn't get up at 3 am."

Sam: "I didn't say that I got up at 3am."

Kerry: "You didn't even get up at 4 am."

Sam: "I got up at 5 am."

Kerry: "No you got up at 5:30 am when I woke you up. Again."

Sam: "Well, I had to drive…"

Perspective is everything really, isn't it? It is our version of what is real, what is happening, or what is not happening. It is a thing we sometimes lose in the chaos of days, and without it the world around us goes all askew. But regain that vision, that ability to see proper proportion, proper distance, things lining up as they are meant to, and the heart expands again. The lungs fill. The smile comes.

One night, maybe two weeks ago, Sam came to where I was sitting at the dining room table. He knelt down next to me and looked at me in the way he does when he has something intimate to say. "Lately I've been feeling really happy," he said, his eyes lit up with the sincerity of it. Ever the wise guy, I congratulated him. "Welcome to your forties buddy; it's about time." (When Sam is lit up like that, I can say anything and he remains largely undeterred). "I feel happy, in a rational way, a lot of the time, but this is different," he said, "I feel it in my bones."

I feel that way often, for at least some small part of most days, and so I was glad to hear his news. I've come to understand that Sam feels things deeply, but he rarely expresses those deepest feelings in words—one of the many ways we are different. For this reason, his pronouncement was a gift that I received with gratitude. He could have easily felt the happiness in his bones and kept on with his business, and I never would have known what he was experiencing.

It turns out we are both experiencing this kind of grateful pause fairly often these days. The perspective we have feels very fresh...very new.

One day, maybe two weeks ago, my boss and I were sitting in two Adirondack chairs on the side of our school's soccer field in front of the library. While we talked we were looking at the ridge of mountains that defines the campus view, lit up by midday sun on foliage. "I know the leaves are beautiful every year," I said, "but this year they seem more beautiful." I felt like that might have been a stupid thing to say, but that's what I was thinking. "And you know," he replied, "they actually keep getting more beautiful every single year."

I know what he's talking about. Every little thing really does seem to get more beautiful, every single year. I can't deny it, even in my most dour or skeptical moments.

One day, about a week ago, I came home from school ahead of Sam. I was fighting off a cold and felt like hell. Somehow I managed to force myself to get my sneakers on and get the dogs out for a walk…I'm not usually good at rallying like that when I don’t feel well, but for some reason I did. I wanted to bring my ipod so I could listen to some music, have some company along, but it wasn't working. I went without it.

When the dogs and I reached the upper part of the loop, and my eyes were on the uneven footing of the trail, I noticed fresh moose tracks in the mud and started feeling happy. We see tracks often, and every time I feel grateful to live in a place also inhabited by such wild life. Lost in this feeling of Thoreauvian good fortune, I hadn't noticed that the dogs were stopped ahead of me. It was only when I heard a deep groan that I looked up.

There were two moose on the trail just ahead of us. The cow and Moses stared each other down, my dog with  his fur in a full mohawk from head to tail. The bull was oblivious, munching away on the few remaining green leaves. I've seen many moose, but none so close as these, or for such a prolonged look. They were humongous and, as I stood there motionless, I started wondering, is this mating season?

Before I could remember, Moses broke the silence with a bark and the bull lifted his tremendous head, with its gigantic rack of antlers, and he turned to look directly at all three of us. It was then I started thinking I should perhaps get myself behind a tree. Both moose together took a few quick steps in our direction before making a fast left off the trail and down into the woods.

The dogs and I stood still, waiting for a minute, listening to them crunch their way through the understory before we continued on our walk. It is mating season, of course. Hunting season as well. How strange that the two are together…the risk of death always intertwined with the great raw power of life.

I smiled all the way home…my home on this hill shared by moose and bears and coyotes and owls. I thought of Quinn—eager for her to see her first wild creatures, eager to know what perspective they will offer to her, if any. I hope they do; it's hard to imagine they won't…

Yesterday was Sam's day to do something on his own. I was with Quinn who happened to be in a terrible mood—still congested and overly tired from her busy week. The weather worked in his favor for once: the rivers came up on a day he could get out, and the sun shone hot all day. A friend was free and he was able to go paddling…the stars very rarely align for him in this way and when he came home in the afternoon, just as Quinn was waking up from her nap, his joy was palpable.  "Daddy's home!" she yelled as he walked through the door, and she leaned out to be pulled into his arms.

We raked leaves before giving Quinn a bath. She ate dinner, read books and drank warm milk with maple syrup before going effortlessly back to sleep at seven o'clock. The house was clean, the dogs were bathed and walked and quiet, the music was on. Red potatoes were boiling on the stove, and I sat in a comfortable chair with a glass of red wine and a new New Yorker on my lap. Sam went out the back door to put a steak on the grill, and I started to cry...sometimes I feel so grateful I don't know what else to do.

I tried to explain it to him when we were eventually eating dinner. "That's funny," he said, "because when I went outside I sat in the chair on the deck for a minute looking at the stars, and I was trying to figure out how to express my gratitude to…I don't know, the universe."

How do we express our gratitude in this life? 

We never really came up with an answer and even now all I can think to do is write it down. Sometimes, when you feel it in your bones, happiness and gratitude seem beyond the scope of words.