In Which I Perform a Daring Water Rescue

My sweet old dog Flower nearly drowned on Sunday. But I heroically rescued her!

I took Roxy and Flower to Sugar Creek, one of our favorite places.  The water is up (as it is everywhere in NW Arkansas), and the creek was running fast. Flower was paddling about in the shallows, and I was upstream throwing a stick for Rox when I man nearby hollered to get my attention.

"Your dog is in trouble!"

Flower had gotten swept off her feet and into a deep channel, where she fetched up in a V of two fallen trees. She couldn't hold herself up on the logs, and she couldn't get past them to shore. Her head kept going under.

I made my way upstream as quickly as I could, set my illegal glass beer bottle down gently, and plowed into the freezing creek. It's spring fed, and was numbingly cold. I got to the log in shoulder-high water and grabbed Flower by her scruff, hauling her front legs up on the tree trunk between us.  The water was rushing by and there was no space between the tree and the surface. My only choice was to lift her over the log. There was no getting her under.  She weighs 90 pounds, easy, and that's dry.  I reached over and grabbed a hunk of skin and hair on her back and hauled. She scrabbled with her front feet, clawing my stomach and shoulders. I didn't think I could lift her, but I managed it.  She sat perched with all four feet on the log like a big, wet, hairy bird, and we both hung there and rested for a minute before I pulled her over to the other side of the log and gave her a shove toward shore.

I was surprised at how shocking the cold water was, and how quickly Flower had gotten into danger while I wasn't looking.  I couldn't decide if I felt more like a hero for saving her or more like a lousy mom for letting her get into trouble in the first place. I was shaking all over, and I kept thanking the people who had seen her and gotten my attention.

Flower at home last summer. 

Flower herself took it in stride, shook the water from her fur, and strolled off to sniff around an abandoned picnic site on the shore, where she promptly found and devoured half a hamburger, unfazed.

Lately my old girl has been moving a lot slower than before, and she gets a bit distracted or fuzzy-headed sometimes. At the park, she wanders off the trail and has to be called back; or she gets in between the sofa and coffee table and gets confused about how to get out. Lately she takes much, much slower walks than ever before, and she tires much earlier. I'm afraid she may not be able to go with us on river trips for much longer, or we'll have to make our trips much much shorter to keep from wearing her out. She's still sharp and feeling healthy. But I hate seeing these signs of her aging, and I dread any further decline. She's been with us since Grayson was two or maybe three. At least 11 years.

The art of losing...

Sugar Creek, or as John and I used to refer to it, "the river spot," was a regular hang-out spot for us in the summers. We'd bring the dogs and a cooler and chairs and hang out on a sandbar, or wade upstream to see what was there to be seen. Because of that association, there was a sadness to my visit on Sunday, but I knew I needed to get back there soon and reclaim it for my own.  I went there with the dogs before I met John. I thought of it as my place then, but it came to be our place.

I missed him, and wanted to tell him my story about saving Flower.  But he doesn't want to hear from me. Ever again, apparently. At first I tried to shut that feeling out. But I realized it's as legitimate to mourn the loss of him as a friend as it would have been if we were still romantically involved. So I let myself be a bit sad about it, and let myself remember things fondly.  Just for a bit. Then, of course, I had to save my dog from drowning.

Independence Day

Yes, I know technically Independence Day was yesterday. But I've declared mine for today.

I hereby hold these truths to be self evident:
That I am fundamentally a good person with no more than the average flaws and failures.
That I have a proven capacity to love and be loved.
That I have, therefore, an inalienable right to be treated with respect, kindness, and compassion. I have a right to choose my company, my friends, and my lovers, and if, at any time, those friends or lovers should become onerous or harmful to me, I have a right to disassociate from them, with or without explanation. I have a right to speak the truth and a right to decide for myself if that truth should be spoken, and to whom. I have a right to be free from abuse, either physical, mental, or emotional. And as in the Wiccan creed:  If I harm none, I have a right to do what I will.

Signed this the fifth day of July, two thousand and fifteen:
Linda McConnell DeBerry

Or in other words:  Fuck this shit, I'm out.

I sent John one last pleading, self-abasing message, apologizing again, asking for an explanation again, Receiving more "fuck you" messages. This time it's because I sent a message to his friend Clayton a few days ago, telling him about John wigging out and asking him to take care of him. It was a strange message to send, now that I think about it. I don't know why I did it. I'm often not very smart about my Facebook usage.  Probably I'd been drinking.  Sigh. When will I learn???

Anyway, the message I got from John was unequivocal and nasty and made me cry and doubt my humanity.  But I talked to my mom (thank god for my mom) and she said "Drop. him. He's not your friend."  And you know what? ... He's not. I may have hurt him by breaking up. It may have been hard for him to stay  my friend afterward. But I never abused him. I never called him names, and I never did anything deliberately to hurt him, even when I was sorely provoked, as yesterday, when there were a whole slew of harsh realities I did NOT lay down for him. And yet he has done all of that in spades in just this last couple of weeks. Like it was his fucking job.  So I sent one last message telling him I would officially disappear from his life, his family's life, and anyone he ever might remotely know. And I blocked his number, defriended anyone who might know him, erased him from my contact list, and blocked him on Facebook. I was thorough. So that's that.

Today I am free of mean "friends," and I get on with my life and don't waste any more time thinking about it.

It's Independence Day.
Long may I fucking wave.

We Lose Some

I am re-evaluating myself: what my capacity for love is, how empathetic I have it in me to be, how selfish I am, how blind.  

This final break-up with a dear friend lifts a veil and I don't think I like what's under it very much.  I see myself in a new light and it's not pretty. It's stupid and selfish and cold. I am beginning to believe that I have spent my life building an impenetrable wall around myself, and my interactions with others are false:  farces performed by personas I put on when I need to, to cover my vacuity.  This sounds really self-pitying. But I'm terribly afraid it may be true. 

It's terrifying to me that I may be living inside a complete lie, blind to my own narcissism and dispassion. I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach for fear that I really have no idea who I am, and nothing is real. 

If you're gleaning from this that the final rupture with John arrived, you're right. It's also unsettling because suddenly I'm dealing with a person I don't know at all, a bitter, angry person I have never seen him be, and I am heartsick that this change is because of me, and I didn't do the right thing somehow and I didn't even know what the right thing was. 

I still don't. 

How can I love? I have failed over and over and over again. I enter a relationship full of hope and trust... but gradually my heart just shuts down, closing like a camera aperture. I want space, I want things my way, I want out.  Even in relationships I thought I was succeeding at, I look back and I see myself becoming critical, unpleasant, hard. Who is this monster? 

Son of the Illuminati

This evening I took the Girls down to Park Springs Park for an evening run. It had rained an hour or so earlier, so the trees were glossy and damp, dripping, glorious green and fragrant. When we arrived and I let the dogs out of the car, there was a deer standing in the meadow: an adult female, just standing, watching us with her enormous ears and giant eyes. Of course Roxy chased her into the woods. And I was yelling to Rox that there was no way she was going to catch that deer, my eye caught the silhouette of a young man sitting on a picnic table under the pavilion.  He lifted a hand to me, I greeted him.  We exchanged a few words about dogs and hunting... blah blah. I took the girls into the forest.

When we came out, half an hour later, the  young man was sitting there still. I raised a hand to him again and he called out "How was your walk?" I told him it was fine, and asked if the deer had come back. He said she had, that she had come out of the forest and gone back in while we were gone. I  stepped up to the pavilion and sat on the picnic table next to him and we talked.

His name is Justin. He's a beautiful, damaged, deranged young man. In his early twenties. Ginger-haired and blue eyed and tattooed. Beautiful. And quite mad.  He talked to me about his adopted family that had "thrown him away" and his biological family who were Illuminati, and how he had an inheritance, and his siblings and cousins had been "switched out," (the meaning of which I never did glean). He told me he had a daughter, born June, 2012. He had never seen her. Only pictures. He said the Illuminati killed his first girlfriend with a baseball bat because she wanted to be with him.

He was so gentle and softspoken and destroyed. I wondered how he survived and where he lived. He told me I reminded him of his aunt (I can't remember if that was biological aunt or adoptive aunt), and told me we were related in some way, no matter what I told him about my faraway geneology.
He had a carp tattooed on his right bicep. The word "Pride" on his left tricep. A star on his chest. And that red, red hair. So beautiful.

I knew the young girl of me would have been hopelessly attracted to him:  his lostness, his outsiderness, the wild smell of him and his wild story. The mother in me wanted to hold him in my arms and feed him a sandwich  and give him clean sheets to sleep on until he was healed and safe from the world.

As a teenager I was always hopelessly drawn to the outsider:  the long-haired drop-out, the circus performer,the aging hippie, the hood. It's all part of that need to care for the broken and unloved. This boy sparked that in me. I wanted to love him, in some way: to heal him, to offer him a safe haven, get him help, feed him a good meal and give him a safe place to come to get his madness medicated and under control. I wondered what part of his story was true and what part was pure delusion.  Such a sweet, gentle, and broken boy.

Mothering the world, as usual. Bringing home strays. But I'll be watching for him around town now, looking after him in some small way. Sigh. like the spirit of Lucky inhabiting some lost boy's thin, tattooed body.

As we talked, the doe came back to the edge of the forest and watched us from halfway behind a tree in the shadows. I didn't see her at first, but Justin pointed her out to me. She stood and watched us for a long time, even with Kobi barking at her. Eventually she ghosted away.

No owl tonight, though I told Justin to listen for it: the barred owl that lives there and calls "Who? Who? Who Cooks for You?"

Wonder if he'll hear it tonight?

The Art of Losing Isn't Hard to Master

I may be in the midst of losing a dear friend. Or I may not be. I'm waiting to see which way it goes.

John, Tabs and Lucky in healthier days.

Since our split as a "couple" nearly a year ago, John and I have remained friends. We've done favors for one another: I loan him my car so he can get to Fayetteville, he watches my dogs while I'm at my folks for the weekend. We've gone on several memorable hikes (generally getting lost or separated or suffering some other form of inconvenience in the course thereof, including, but not limited to a back floorboard full of puppy poop). And we talk almost every day. This last seems to have been my undoing.

I'm not a telephone person. I don't generally choose to talk on the phone for any extended period of time, and I don't call to "check in" with people unless I have something specific to talk about. John's different: he likes to be in touch every day, and when you say "I'll call later" he expects you to mean it and follow through. Well, I failed to call on Tuesday afternoon when I said I would. I got home from an after-work beer and pizza fest with coworkers and crashed on the sofa. I woke up at quarter to midnight with a string of increasingly angry texts.

I don't really think the phone call was the issue. I think the very nature of our relationship is at issue. For me, being "just friends" is easy because I had moved on from a romantic relationship a year ago when I broke up. Not so for John. And on a couple of occasions the genie has gotten out of the bottle and he is angry at me. Furious, in fact, and hateful.

At Hawksbill Crag this spring.

This time may be the last, and I'm heartsick. He has been my best friend here in Arkansas for three years. He and I share some things that are special just to us, and when I think of going for a day on the river or taking the dogs for a run, he's the one I think of coming with me. But I may have been selfish in taking this comaraderie for granted. I think it has been more difficult for him than I realized.

I don't make friends very easily. Some people who know me on a superficial social level would be shocked to hear me say that because of my "hail fellow well met" front for social situations. I get very animated and "entertaining" when I'm uncomfortable, and I can get a group of people I don't know laughing and thinking I'm super friendly, when the opposite is true. That blustery entertainer is like my alter ego who comes out to protect me from actually making contact with anyone. It works pretty well.

With John I have always been able to be who I really am--as jacked-up or fearful or goofy or angry as I am at that moment--and he accepts it with an indulgent smile. Now I'm at a risk of losing that kindness and friendship forever. And I don't know what I can do to prevent it.

I can't go back to the way we were because my feelings changed. I didn't ask them to change. They just did. And I don't know if he can go forward. So I wait. And I hope it comes out okay.

One Art 

             by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; 

so many things seem filled with the intent 

to be lost that their loss is no disaster. 

 Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master. 

 Then practice losing farther, losing faster: 

places, and names, and where it was you meant 

 to travel. None of these will bring disaster. 

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or 

next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master. 

 I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. 

 —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture 

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident 

the art of losing’s not too hard to master 

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.