Bonds

Place is like a friend, you understand its past, accept it for what it is now, and have hope for it into the future. 

Before I opened an email from a friend and read this interesting observation, I had an image stuck in my mind—something I’d seen last week—that spoke to me of the human capacity to bond with an incommensurable other.  On a sunny evening, I parked my car by the new greenhouses on the East Side of Flint, and I saw a grown man rolling around in an empty lot with a puppy.  The puppy would leap and bark, and the man would toss him lightly on the emerald grass, and they’d splash together in the pools of light.  There was so much joy in the man’s face, it made me smile and laugh, too.  Come Sunday morning, I walked down Franklin through the East Side to St. Mary’s church.  I listened intently.  I sang.  But I didn’t feel much until we all stretched out our hands to sing “Our Father, Who Art in Heaven.”  Many people in this church don’t want to hold hands, but there was a different vibration coming from the old woman with the dyed red hair sitting in the pew next to me.  I reached my hand very tentatively toward her, and she reciprocated by seizing mine in a vice-like grip that was all bones and cold.  But the most amazing things happened:  after the sung prayer to “Our Father,” as priest and congregation continued to chant, “for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever,” slowly and lightly she lifted our arms until our interlocked hands were way above our heads.  Then there was an affirming squeeze before the letting go.  To be touched and raised up in that way by a complete stranger felt like a true spiritual experience.  I walked to communion, and held out my hand for the blessed bread, and knew that it was true—man does not live by bread alone—but by kindness that passes between a man and a dog, a woman and a stranger.  On the walk home, nothing looked sordid or ugly, and I saw daffodils, opened-mouthed, singing to the sun.  God’s will in the world if we could learn it, test it on our lips, would taste of praise.  Why else should the world be beautiful?  Why should the leaves look as they do, the light, the water?

Back in the hood, there was a young boy—probably seven years old—down on all fours head-butting the little but fierce, Gizmo.  I immediately thought of the way wolves hit their bodies together when they run and play.  Do animals give us back our grace by taking away self-consciousness?  I think so.  It happened again last night when I was headed to the park with my dog to see the full moon rise, when we were waylaid by a pack of children (ages 4-7):  “doggy!” they cried gleefully.  Then dropped their bikes and came tearing over, wanting to pick him up, walk him, get him a treat.  They rolled with him, and the incessant rough petting of eight small hands was better than a brush, and soon we were laughing in a cloud of Panda’s soft undercoat fur.  He rolled over on his back as if to itch it in the grass, and the kids squealed with delight.  Then the littlest boy asked, “what’s that red thing,” and his cousin said, “that’s his privacy.”  I laughed and ran off into the park which was equally full of wonders:  a racing rabbit, two mallards in the soggy center, and the moon rising round and clear.

It must be love:  this weather!  I couldn’t resist the woods today that looked so different under blue sky and bright sunlight.  I was thinking about my friend’s comparison:  “Place is like a friend … you understand its past, accept it for what it is now, and have hope for it into the future.”  Under the influence of that remark, I saw the beech trees holding onto to last year’s leaves, and the record of human loves carved in ugly letters in the bark of trees.  But what I can’t stop thinking about tonight are the new may apple plants:  tiny leaves folded in swirls around a shaft and topped with a shiny green ball (which will become the flower that forms the fruit).  I bend down to stroke them—oh, so soft, like a baby’s behind, soft as the privacy that comes before we learned the names, scientific or slang.  What is making me so happy?  Is it this place?  Is it this friend’s words?  Is it the realization that spring brings new things fully formed out of the dark vernal ponds, the dark study of years, and the darkest places in ourselves?  All I can think to do to celebrate is roll in the grass.