GOOSE ME AGAIN, WILL YA?

He stood behind the ravaged corpse, blood staining his hands, no apology in his black eyes. The white wall behind him was dotted with crimson handprints as if he had been creating art out of gore.

When I have no words to express what's going on inside, sometimes a line from a poem nails my feeling. As I looked at the carnage, a question from Stanley Kunitz' The Layers came to mind: "How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?"

Then came a question spoken aloud by my husband Dave: "What do you want to do with him?"

What indeed?

I love geese. In particular, I love Chinese geese, the most cantankerous, ornery and aggressive of all breeds of domesticated geese. But also the most garrulous. They always have something to say, will offer an opinion on anything.

Several years back Dave and I reared two Chinese goslings. I have warm memories of going out to pick wild black raspberries one summer, leading a parade of two humans, a raccoon foundling, a dog, cat and two young geese. We all of us picked raspberries, even if only two of us deposited any in the bucket.

I love geese. I love their antics, their gregariousness, their individual temperaments. I see myself in their headlong rush to catch up, being too dense to find simple routes through barriers, the way they think they know it all, imagine themselves far bigger and braver than they are.

The woods around us teem with predators: fox, coyote, raccoon. Probably a weasel or two, as well. We'd had the geese two or three years when some creature of the night killed them, first one then the other. After the second strike, I wandered the yard weeping, clutching a white feathered body to my chest. Eventually my arms grew tired. I dug a grave. A friend gave us a concrete goose statue to mark the site.

These wondrously recalcitrant creatures had been my teachers about life, anger, self-centeredness and getting along with others. And now they were dead.

We've been gooseless the last few years and I didn't realize how much I missed the excited trumpet call of a welcome, soft murmurs of grassy contentment, the way a goose always gets the last word. Didn't remember until this spring when we came home from the farmers' supply store with three goslings, two white Chinese and a gray-brown Toulouse. I was in heaven.

They lived in a box in the dining room the first two weeks, then in a corner of the basement until they were big enough to sleep outdoors in a predator-proof cage. During the day we gave them run of a large pen with a goosecote (a doghouse-like structure) for shelter. Then Dave and I returned from an afternoon trip to town to find one of our Chinese geese missing from the pen. We beefed up security, but about a week later, a second goose disappeared. I looked for her, looked for feathers, evidence of (forgive me) fowl play. I saw nothing. Poor feathered thing. I hoped the end was quick.

Dave conducted a more thorough search. He shone a flashlight into the back of the goosecote. "Come look," he called.

I looked. There was my beloved Chinese goose, snow white feathers spattered with blood, body rent asunder. And there, at the back of the cote, caught literally red-handed, a raccoon, staring up with beady eyes.

What to do? Dave put this question to me. I considered the options. Did I want to get a gun, blow the back out of the goosecote and the hell out of the murderer? I could get a pitchfork, impale the hard-hearted creature. Or seal up the door, let it starve to death.

"Let's let him go," I said to Dave. "The woods are full of raccoons. What will we accomplish by killing this one?"

I removed the dead goose from the cote, let the wild creature be. Dug a grave near the concrete statue. The spade turned up a white grub, ugly toothsome creature with a grey butt, orange-yellow face and legs. I focused my anger on that grub, held it back, threw it to the banty chicks temporarily housed in the basement. They looked askance at it until the biggest of them pecked at it, found it to his liking, chawed it down.

Even in death, geese teach me about dealing with loss: mourn what is taken, give focus to anger, let go resentment and revenge, honor the departed, allow life to feed life, learn that to love is to risk loss. Know it's worth it.

Bryn Marlow lives in Indiana on a 1930s farmstead with his husband Dave who mopes about the house saying, "I can't stop thinking about that poor grub." This letter appeared in the August issue of The Community Letter. Photo credit: Rocket Ship, flickr.com

LIKE A ROCK

When first I see him, my breathing goes shallow and quick. My pulse revs. My hands turn rubbery.

I’m on MySpace or Facebook and I’ve just seen his photo. It's no bigger than a postage stamp but its impact on me is billboard-sized—one of those roadside signs with a picture so arresting it causes traffic accidents.

I click on the word “profile” beside his name. Nothing. Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing. Clicklicklicklicklick. Nothing. I am a stranger to social networking sites. Several eternities pass before I learn I must create an account if I want to view his profile. Fine. Sign me up.

I make up a first and last name, try to enter my real email@yahoo.com address. It goes in and through as me@yazoo.com. Fine. I’ll rename the company if I have to. Just let me see his profile. Let me see if there’s anything more to see.

There is.

He’s posted seven photos of himself. Two show a sandy-haired young man in a red argyle sweater, blue-gray eyes, slight smile. His hair is still curly, I see. His face still mingles considered seriousness with an earnest eager-to-please look. In one photo he leans against a tree. In another he looks directly into the camera. The caption: “Yah, my high school graduation pictures. I look like a dork.” In the other photos he holds a guitar. Stands on a backyard stage, in front of a microphone. Caption: “I play in a Christian rock band.”

My son plays in a rock band! I had no idea.

Four years after his mother and I separated, a few days after he turned 10, he terminated contact with me. “Dad, I don’t want to see or talk to you. Don’t think that anyone else has influenced me to make this decision. I came up with it on my own.”

Except for the two photos of him my mother has sitting out, I’d hardly know what he looks like nowadays. I could easily pass him on the street, not recognize him. These seven photos are the heart’s feast.

They've nourished me for four years now.

This past week I make another of my periodic visits to Facebook. I poke around, find a teeny photo of another of my three sons. He looks to have grown tall, lost weight. He’s dressed all in black—black fedora, too—with a red tie and white boutonniere, hands in pockets, stands beside a young woman, hair piled atop her head, red dress, plunging neckline. His senior prom photo? I can only surmise.

It’s been four years since I saw him and his twin brother. Just before they turned 14 they met with a judge, asked that visitation with me be terminated. I arrived at their mother’s home to pick them up for their birthday party, found the restraining order taped to the door.

Some days it sucks being a homosexual father in rural Indiana.

I look at this small photo, let sadness wash over me. I keep learning to acknowledge, accept and feel my feelings. No sense running from them. No use trying to hide. Buried, they only rot to rise like zombies unbidden and at inopportune times.

Instead, I open myself to my emotions, open wider yet to let them wash over, through, past. Sadness keeps coming, sometimes like waves pounding the coast. I imagine myself as a rock, deeply rooted in living earth. Waves of sorrow, rage and fear may wash over it, but the rock remains.

My feelings are not me. No emotion, no judge, no other person can determine who I am at core.

This essay appeared in The Letter mid-month online issue, June 2009.

ON THE WAY FROM HERE TO THERE

The current talk about jump-starting the economy by rebuilding infrastructure has got me thinking about bridges. And asking some questions. 

Marvelous constructions, bridges. They get us from here to there, right? Help us move forward? Not always. A few images come to mind:

Natural bridge

I am nine or so. My family is camping in Kentucky. We are great campers and hikers, all seven of us, along with our dog Buddy. We hike a nature trail that includes a stone arch formed by wind erosion. It spans an abyss. The path goes right down the middle of it—no fence, no handrails. My mother forbids us kids to set foot on it. She likes strong boundaries, fears blurry edges, needs something to hang on to. My father grins, strides out to the center of the rock arch with Buddy. My teenaged sisters follow him. Before I can move, Mom grabs me and my younger brothers. Dad finally convinces her to let us go and, what’s more, coaxes her to join him and us. She totters forward, sinks to her knees, crawls the rest of the way, panting, gasping for air.//

Highway bridge

December, a year ago. My workplace sits alongside the Mississinewa River. I arrive one snowy morning to find tracks where a car has shot off the bridge and down the steep bank. It landed a few feet from my boss’ office window, backed up, and took off across the lawn. Thirty minutes later another car slides on the bridge, crosses the road, plunges down the embankment opposite us. My supervisor Tonya dashes out and up the snowy bank in high heels, no coat. She returns with her arm around a woman who is white-faced, shaking. As Tonya ushers her into the warmth of the boss’ office, we hear a loud crash. A third vehicle spins off the bridge and into the yard. Bits of metal, plastic and glass, a duffel bag, a red and white jacket, sunglasses dot the lawn. Tonya is off again, yanks at the driver’s door. No go. She runs to the passenger’s side. Out climbs a young woman, her face and hands bloodied. Next a young man. “My dad is going to kill me; my dad is going to kill me,” he says. His new car was an early Christmas gift, delivered yesterday.

One-log bridges

Twelve years ago. The summer after my wife and I separate, I move to a small apartment near the White River. On our side of the river long trails wind through wild woods and over a small stream by way of single log bridges. My children and I spend many hours there during our times together. We call it Sherwood Forest. My eldest son plays Robin Hood, his twin brothers Will Scarlet and Little John. I am cast as Sheriff of Nottingham. The implications do not escape me.

Charred bridges

Two years ago. I walk out of a hospital room in Joplin, Missouri and away from my family of origin. The message I hear yet again from my siblings, even from my dying mother: “We love you, but because you’re gay, we do not accept you as a member of this family.”  Something finally snaps. I refuse to swallow that poison one more time. I don’t care if I burn every bridge behind me. I’ve had enough—more than enough. I’m out of here. On the day-long drive home, my husband and I stop at a museum. I weep to see an ancient pottery vessel shaped like a woman holding a baby. It depicts the traditional bond between mother and child, a bond that is broken for me. I ignore my mother’s subsequent phone calls, do not attend her funeral.

Some questions about infrastructure

As we enter the new year, here are some questions I ask myself, and invite you to consider, as well:

Where in my life’s path have I been asked to step though fear? What was my response? How did it serve me?

Along life’s journey, what people, events or circumstances brought me to a sudden halt? What did I learn? How can I apply past lessons to present challenges?

What role do I play in creating my own perceptions of reality? How does my view of the world hold me back, help me move ahead?

What bridges have I burned behind me? How have such actions helped me, hurt me? Is there any bridge repair work I wish to do? What might this entail? Where and when will I begin?

This essay first appeared in The Letter, January 2009

THE ROUND NOT TAKEN

I’ve washed the drinking glasses, am on to the bowls. I pick up my favorite, a study in dandelion yellow, inside and out. Its outside is ribbed—’twould be a bumpy ride if I were a flea circumnavigating this half-globe. If I made it over the thick rounded rim, however, I’d have smooth sailing right down into its slick center. Were my world then turned upside down, I’d be trapped under what looks like a frat boy’s embarrassingly bright beanie topped with a big dimpled button. No backstamp offers the name of its maker, hint to its age. Ah, well. 

Perhaps where things are going is more important than where they came from.

Sturdy to begin with, this bowl grows heavier with age, encrusted with layers of memory. It once belonged to my grandmother, part of a colorful set that included yellow, orange, cobalt, and turquoise. These were the favored cereal bowls of my boyhood. Every summer our large family spent at least three weeks at my grandparents’ home in rural northern Minnesota. Every morning there we ate hot cereal—oatmeal, oatmeal with raisins, oatmeal with coconut, wild rice porridge, cornmeal mush, cracked wheat, farina. 

My siblings and I vied for our favorite bowl colors. Yellow was my first choice, with orange and cobalt following close behind. Some mornings there was no color in my world since there weren’t enough of these favored bowls to go around. Two people ate from shallow, scalloped white china bowls and two poor saps had to spoon their oatmeal from soulless, square, glass bowls with insides the color of watery milk, outsides a sickly yellow. Those bowls made any kind of cereal lose its savor. But there was no use protesting. I knew what my parents’ answer would be. Might as well dig in, make the best of it. Be earlier to table tomorrow.

This lesson has proved useful.

My wife and I were visiting Grandma one summer when I asked if we could someday have those colorful bowls. She laughed to think anybody would want them, told me to take all five home. 

Though I glued it once or twice, the cobalt bowl did not survive the onslaught of our firstborn son. I was prepared for this. Early on, my wife and I had agreed we wanted to give our children the message that people are more important than things. We knew accidents would happen and our children would break things we treasured. We would accept this with good grace and remind ourselves that everything is temporary, fragile.

Another useful life lesson.

Our three children came to visit me at the ratty apartment I moved into after coming out to myself and others as a gay man. My middle son accidentally knocked the orange bowl to the floor. It might have been my heart lying there. Or my marriage. Some things, there is no gluing back together. 

That was a time when my life seemed to echo Yeats’ description of a world in turmoil: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” In coming out I lost my marriage, home, job, contact with my family of origin, my friends and faith community. Soon, my eldest son quit coming to see me, citing discomfort with my sexual orientation, conflict with his religious beliefs. A few years later my other sons followed suit. A judge stamped his approval. Here, have another helping of mush in a pus-yellow dish.

These losses hit hard. Some days I had no appetite for life. Yet morning after morning, bowl after bowl, life went on dishing out my daily portion. It was amazing how the sun kept rising even on days I had no desire to get out of bed. No matter my reaction, life kept on dishing it out. And the thing is, some days it arrived in a dandelion yellow bowl. 

From my grandmother I received all those years ago—is it mere coincidence?—not one but two bright yellow bowls. My husband and I ate breakfast from these this morning—my husband, partner in a heart-marriage that has lasted as long now as did my first church-sanctioned union. I live in a soul-nurturing home—walls painted vibrant colors, many windows, the woods around full of birdsong, coyote call, tree whispers. I have animal, plant and people friends who enrich and wonderfully complicate my days. I have alone time. In solitude I have opportunity to explore the universe within my heart, even in sleep to plumb its depths in dreams.

Life is a mix, I keep learning. Some days my portion arrives in a sunny container I love. Other days I glance at what I am given and think, “I’m expected to eat that?” The answer is yes.

This essay first appeared in The Letter, August 2008

LEMONS AND LIGHTS

This time of year you don't see the cracks in the mortar. They're still there. They jag their way from above the cast iron fireplace insert to under the pine board mantel. Whoever laid the bricks didn't count on the extra weight to make the floor sag, the mortar crack. It did. Actions have consequences. Not that you'll notice, however. Not this time of year.

Step into our living room and your eye is drawn to the holiday decorations atop the mantel. Two green wreaths on either side, an angel in the middle. Shiny red balls, little white lights, bright yellow lemons, pine garland, reindeer, glistening glass. Beautiful—and fraught with meaning. Have a look. 

Two evergreen wreaths adorn the wall, apt symbols of two men whose lives have circled 'round though joy and heartbreak to a sense of wholeness and love. My husband Dave and I marked our eleventh anniversary as a couple this year. Coming out and living as gay men in rural America is a sweet-sour enterprise; lemons nestle with frosted red berries and ribbons amongst the pine bough wreaths. 

Loss and gain, fullness and emptiness. The tension between these poles recurs as a theme in our lives, and is reflected in the antique cut glass bowl propped on edge at the center of the display. Behind it, small white lights cord a pine garland that runs the length of the mantel. Extra lights gathered behind the bowl illuminate it, cause it to shine. Were the bowl full the effect would be lost. Out of the emptiness shines the light. 

Peer long enough into the bowl and you may see faces of the dead peering back: my father, Dave's mother, his firstborn son, friends and relatives. And the living: our former wives, my teenaged sons, Dave’s two siblings and one of mine—brothers by blood who severed ties with their gay kin—and a host of people we once called friends. The refracted light serves notice that even in their absence these persons are present to us; bearers of light all. 

To the right of the bowl stand three hurricane globes graduated in size. A ruby-red heart-red glass ball appears to float in the center of each. Look closely and you'll see the ornaments are suspended from nylon fishing line. It is not always easy to see the threads that tie us one to another. These glass globes represent Dave's three adult children and their spouses. 

On the left, three red balls represent my estranged sons. Twin reindeer each carry a rose-red ornament in honor of my twin sons; a crystal vase cradles the third red globe. Making of loss, beauty. Perhaps an answer to poet Stanley Kunitz, "how shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?"

 

Against the wall between the wreaths lean seven long cinnamon sticks. Squint your eyes and you might be looking at the oaken slats on the side of a crib. A crib that has been the focus of Dave's attention for hours on end this year. That has come into being through his effort. That represents the first realization of his desire to build fine furniture. 

A crib that will cradle our first grandson, born halfway around the world this past July. He should arrive home to his parents next month. He was named Angel Gabriel at birth, re-christened Noah Andrew Gabriel long-distance from Ohio. We've been cooing over photographs of him. What a bundle of hope and promise swaths any infant! As a reminder of this, above the mantel, above the cut glass bowl, above the red balls, the lemons, the wreaths hovers a carved wooden angel with wings widespread.  

There. Did you notice the crack in the masonry? Probably not. But it's there nonetheless. We live in a world that feels flawed, in which there is pain, loss, cracking up. But at the same time there is hope, there is color, there is light. Isn't this the message implicit in Hanukkah, Christmas and Winter Solstice celebrations? In the time of great darkness comes the light.

In this new year may we all be sustained by such hope. And light.

And love.

This essay appeared in The Letter, December 2007