People have spring time rituals. Some plant bulbs, some begin to turn their
soil for a vegetable garden, others lube up their bikes for riding the country
roads. As for me, I will be watching for
the snow to melt so I can find my socks.
My feet, to be truly honest, have the aroma of crushed rose petals
coming from them … well, just about. So
it is really quite beyond me why the young dogs have a fascination for stealing
my socks and playing tug-o-war from one end of the house to the other, all the
way through the garage, and out the side yard.
The socks are wrapped around the one little arborvitae tree that most
likely isn’t going to make it. It’s not
that the socks will kill it. It’s just
that aside from chomping its little branches, my boy-puppy is eventually going
to realize he has boy-dog-equipment and is going to start “watering” the
tree. That will be a bad day for the
tree, the veritable beginning-of-the-end.
And yet I will still be looking for my socks.
Last week during mid-winter thaw, I found one of my Dunkin’
Donut socks and it was frozen to a crisp in a shape kind of like a canned
potato chip. I call it a Dunkin’ Donut
sock because I originally had a pair of pink and a pair of orange. I split the pairs and purposefully mismatched
the socks, thus creating two pair of Dunkin’ Donut color socks. This kind of creativity only comes with an
under-used Master’s Degree in Ministry.
I get excited about socks and consider them my team colors: Team Dunkin’.
I have other loves besides my socks – flowers, for
instance. I do have a big bag of tulip
bulbs that got nowhere close to being planted in the fall. I forgot what was going on that pulled my
attention in other directions – perhaps supervising the canine pregnancy and
getting ready for the early November litter -the very same litter that brought
me my favorite Sock Thief. So in the
spring, I will have to figure out where those bulbs are going to go. That decision will have to be made quickly
before the bulbs start to sprout – I need to beat the rabbit to finding a
location for them. And the rabbit has a
vendetta against me already.
Back in the early winter, the rabbit accidentally found his
way into the dog yard on the side of the house.
He was just kind of hanging around in the late evening when –bam – the
door swung wide open by me and the three dogs went barreling out and discovered
him. The first time I saw him was in the
spring when he was a baby bunny, probably weighing in around the size of a
baseball. Now he was a rabbit a little
smaller than a house cat but he aged rapidly – like ten years in three
minutes. When the dogs charged out the
door and discovered him he ran straight into the fencing at about 100 mph,
flipped up in the air and blazed to the other side of the yard …. To do the
exact same maneuver. It was like watching
those motorcycle guys riding inside the tube, halfway up and flipping. I jumped into the game momentarily only to
guide him to the one possible exit and, trust me, he took it. I believe he now lives under my deck. Or perhaps he just lingers there waiting to
get even and eat the bulbs I will plant.
Lately, I leave my side garage door open for an hour or two
just to get fresh air in the garage. I
don’t know why I think that my garage might
like fresh air, but we all have our hang-ups. It will be a very exciting day when I let the
dogs into the garage, and they surprise the rabbit! He may duck in thinking that he can get a
break from the wind, snow, and inclement weather. Then the dogs will discover him and he will
probably flip out completely. He reminds
me of the year I tried to go on a retreat day two or three times. In one case, I sat on the deck at the retreat
house on a lovely summer day trying to enjoy peace and quiet – and then someone
brought the chain saws out in the neighborhood below where I sat. I felt like bursting into tears.
Most recently, I went on a one day retreat at a church. When the nun stood before us and told us we
should be “grateful to trees” for what they do for us - as if cleaning the air and providing shade
were purposeful and conscious choices on the part of trees – I better
understood where the phrase “tree hugger” came from. I closed my eyes briefly. Perhaps it was to hold back tears of
frustration. Perhaps it was to keep me
from creating a scene by “rolling my eyes” as I have seen so many teenagers
do. (But I better understood the
therapeutic value of rolling eyes at this point.) When the good Sister got to the point of
telling us we should call God “Mother” as well, I wondered what Jesus’ reaction
would be to the insinuation that He might’ve had no daddy? I mean, in my religion, we are aware it was
ground-breaking material to the culture of the day to be taught to pray to God
as “Our Father who art in Heaven.” Jesus
so often identified Himself with God as his Father that the suggestions of the
nun standing before me were more than ludicrous.
Back in the days of my youth, I might have made an issue of
the heresy that was being presented to our group. After all, we had paid for a nice,
inspirational retreat day and what we were getting was some really bizarre and aggravating
stuff. Yet the wisdom of middle-age is
this: you tough-it-out until lunch and
have a good meal, then you slip out the
back door and go shopping at the Mall…
which is exactly what I did. Like
the rabbit in the dog yard, it only took me two back-flips off the wall to
realize I wasn’t in an ideal environment for my spiritual growth and mental
health. I just looked for the break in
the fence and took off. I think I am
going to give myself permission to do that more often. It was very liberating.
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