What sort of love is this?

On Sunday, I found myself singing to a grey fox. Do you think it’s odd to sing to a wild animal who’s lately been visiting you almost every morning?

I can’t sing. Okay, that’s not quite true. Almost all of us can sing—and should! it’s so good for us—but some of us, well, there’s a reason we haven’t become American Idols. Still, who knows what a fox’s musical aesthetics might be?

As I sang, her ears pivoted, one angled in my direction, and her head seemed to bob as if she was struggling to stay awake, and soon, on a pile of mulch, she laid her head down over her paws, her plush tail curled over her nose, and fell asleep.

I don’t know why I spontaneously started singing, Here Comes the Sun. Perhaps because it was just before dawn and the sun was literally on its way, or more accurately, our earth ball was turning toward it, clouds in pink strips, hinting at its return.

Little darling, it’s been a long, cold lonely winter, little darling, it feels like years since it's been here, here comes the sun, la, la, la, la, here comes the sun, and I say, “It’s all right”.… Followed by humming whenever my mind couldn’t summon a lyric.

After more than 8 years in caregiving mode for a beloved who’s been at the precipice of death several times followed by an erosion of his life afterwards, that “long, cold lonely winter“ line hits me differently than it did when I was a kid.

That said, “here comes the sun” also lands more deeply. The sun always does come, it’s always here, even if it’s shining in another part of the world for a bit.

One surprise out of these recent years is that my attention is becoming more and more focused, the ordinary landscape of each day revealing bits of magic, no kidding, a magic way better than pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Someday I’ll tell you about seeing invisible, baby Oystercatchers—the adults are black with neon red bills, while the nestlings look like stones come to life, if you pause to look closely at a boulder off shore—who knew?

Then there’s this. I find myself walking around so open-hearted that I say or think or feel or pray in my own way, “Love you,” a crazy number of times every day, and not just toward human beings.

I honestly feel love for the Japanese red maple slowly dying by the front door. Love for the grey fox who endured my singing on an early Sunday morning. Love for the crossbill, a delicate yellow female bird whose bill literally crosses like a bad overbite, who struck a window and died panting in my palm later that day.

Once I would have thought it hokey and sentimental to talk openly about love. But. Living in the shadow of loss, as you and I do, carrying layers of loss with us though life, witnessing how so many suffer outwardly and inwardly, can either shut you down, or open you wide as a cathedral window.

Here’s what I know. Sometimes we’re so focused on whether and how to let go, we forget to let in.

Love, as naive as it may sound, is the most life-sustaining thing to let in … and to let go, in the sense of letting it go out into the world and touch others.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how love shows up, in so many ways that might not look like love until you pause and focus attention into a moment, a situation, a person, or some peripheral movement at the edge of dawn that might be a song-loving fox.

In this spirit, I’ve written a piece below, “What sort of love is this?” I share such pieces because I want you, too, to feel more alive in the wild now of your daily life, no matter what each day brings.

Let me know what you think—I read and reply to all emails or comments via the comment bubble below.

What sort of love is this?

What sort of love is this when mostly his words stop, and sleep takes over, your person turning into a cat, so that you are alone for long hours, but not alone, checking on him, watching his head tipped sideways, mouth gently parted, the ‘o’ of a little damp cave, teeth in a semi-circle like an amphitheater, empty, but waiting for the quiet gathering of sounds and meaning to return?

What sort of love is this to want to be in July’s warm sun, yet find yourself fixated, peering at him through a window, at his body poured limp into his chair, looking for the rise and fall of the green blanket pulled up to his beard on a luminous day he will not enter, his inner world working out what’s still undone, charting the map to a place his body knows but his mind can’t see, to look at him through the double-pane of glass between you (a double pain?), the separation already begun, you from him, waking from dreaming, breath from body?

What sort of love is this to find solace in an alligator lizard who's gripping the cement beside your heel, who’s already ejected the tip of his tail to distract you so he can scuttle under a planter, but doesn’t, flicking his tongue as you crouch down, both of you curious, inspecting the other, both of you oblivious to whatever dramas brought each of you into this shared moment beside a window, where inside a man sleeps and sleeps, where outside a leathery snippet of lizard tail wiggles and writhes, and you wonder what part of yourself you have let go and if you can ever get it back?

What sort of love is this when you cry into a watermelon as you scoop little pink balls into a dish, when you cry, drops spilling and ebbing like surf over the cutting board, as you slice a strawberry in half, carving a ‘V’ at the top so it looks like a heart, when you cry into eggs stiffening in the skillet, into the little caverns in half an English muffin mixing with butter, when you cry into your sleeve, pulling your arm across your eyes and cheeks before bringing his breakfast on a tray, when you remember all of this, standing at the window, watching his hands still and soft as fallen feathers in his lap, knowing that he has eaten your tears, your worry, your weariness, also your wonder and joy?

What sort of love is this to realize maybe it’s good to let all of that travel with him?

What sort of love is this to stop wanting this life to be easier?

What sort of love is this to magnify for him all that his life means and is worth staying in?

What sort of love is this to realize you and he are the ash of long-dead stars, held tentatively in the shape of a human, not the ashy remains of something burnt, not an ending, but a constant beginning of something new, thinking, oddly and out of the blue with your lizard friend beside you, fusion, thinking how even those old stars turning hydrogen to helium, helium to carbon, were, like us, just working with whatever they had, letting out their light with each transmutation, stalling their own collapse?

What sort of love is this to listen for owls, wanting to believe, after whatever this is, you will hear his voice calling through the night, trembling and trilling, distant but clear?

What sort of love is this, standing in his workshop, cradling the whittling tools and slender gouges that carved owls, herons, juncos, cardinals, several trout frozen in motion, even a life-sized loon out of wood?

What sort of love is this when the sloyd knife slips and slices, a red line drawn down your thumb, blood beading, and you see how you, too, have been shaped by him?

What sort of love is this when you fill the space, which once held conversation, with plants—heathers, bee balm, wild geraniums—yanking back your hand from the garden’s dirt whenever you find a worm, moving the wriggler from the path of the trowel’s blade, or easing with a tissue banana slugs from the dahlia in the planter, watching them suck in their honeyed horns and let go of leaves so you can take them into the feral grasses that need pulling but might feed a village of wayward slugs, you smiling, anticipating the lucid moment in which your husband will say only, "Foolish to save a slug," and your mind will say to itself, Maybe so, but too much loss, too much loss for even one more?

What sort of love is this to save any bit of life—window-dazed finch, alligator lizard from the cat’s proud mouth—and when you can’t, to cradle the vacant body into a shallow space in the redwood duff, offering it gratitude, wishing its spirit well, placing a leaf of cascara or a branch of rosemary or a handful of fallen rose petals from the kitchen counter over the hardening body, the receding eyes, the quietness of one moment when no human eyes see you, but you know such tiny acts matter, that somehow you matter, that the brethren birds or the wise redwoods recognize you, that the light of every body never stops travelling?

What sort of love is this to wonder if, no, hope that, someday someone will do all of this for you?

August Pause

The next issue of the Wild Now will arrive in your inbox after Labor Day.

In the meantime, If you're looking for a quick story or dose of attention to the tiny moments of life that might bring light-heartedness, I'll be publishing occasional Field Notes to my online home PoetOwl.com.

Explore Field Notes