Young Love

It was the end of summer, and the tiny piece of fluff yipping at my dog yanked at a leash held by a girl whose hand was held by another girl, and as they pulled away toward an obscure corner of the park, I realized I was witnessing young love.

I found myself craning my neck to look.

I found myself wincing at my obnoxious, kneejerk voyeurism.

I found myself ignoring this wince and inching around the trees with the surreptitiousness of a circus elephant, craving confirmation in the form of – yes, there they were, on the edge of the flat field – unmistakably kissing.

I was thrilled. I was like a bird watcher whose binoculars sight a rare warbler doing the cha-cha. Not only had I not seen any young lovers kissing in the park all summer – where were they?! – but I was irresistably awed by what struck me as that certain kind of courage  that shakes up daily routines and changes worlds. Love, the revolutionary, marching quietly and defiantly in my park.

I have to explain that my possible nosy prurience has its origins in memory, in another park 18 years ago on the other side of the continent not far from the Pacific Ocean where I spent my first two years in high school.

My best friend, Heather, was seen kissing a girl in a park by a gang of other girls from the Colonia area – literally across the town tracks. The girl left, and the gang confronted Heather. Beat the shit out of her. Broke her glasses. Left her knocked out in the grass.

Heather lied about it the next day, about needing new glasses, about the bruises. She mentioned a bike accident. Only years later did she tell me what really happened. What she had hidden, out of fear.

Now I’m an old lady with my dog and my kids in my neighborhood park, and when I see two girls in the daylight holding hands, I can’t help wanting to let out an encouraging cheer, shake their hands, tell them I’m proud. And then I want to pat everyone else’s backs, too – the muscular basketball players, the gossiping gradeschoolers lounging on the benches – I want to thank them for letting the girls be.

I want to lay down in the grass and be glad, and I want to weep for the past, even though it doesn’t exist anymore.

I want to protect all lovers walking in parks. I want to become their patron saint  who is also a superhero, leaping out from behind peeing statues to rescue the tender hearted from the aggression of the unloved. I want the park to surge and teem with happy kissing.

It’s winter now; I’ve been saving this story for several months. I wonder if the girls are still together or not. And how is their dog. Is Charlottesville a welcoming place to sexual minority youth? I have no idea.

I wonder about the Colonia gang. What happened to them.

And of course, the memories of my own moments of daring come: the perfect contemplation as the new year approaches, as I wish for the courage to be myself despite the possible ramifications, which is what is meant, I think, by following your bliss.

It is not easy, but it is true. May we all be like young love, upright and uncowed by convention. May we cheer each other on.

And let each other be.

The Dog

The dog runs off constantly, any time he can. There’s too many smells – and squirrels – in the world for his poor soul to resist it – when the leash goes slack, or a weakness in my grasp, when the door is ajar, when a jerk will unjam his body from my arms – he’s gone.

And usually I’m spitting curses between my teeth.

The dog reminds me of this poem, “The Invitation,” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer (I know) which says:

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

It’s not that he doesn’t love us. Sometimes he does saunter back home of his own accord, paws the front door, wags a tired tail like a ragged flag to say Hello. But our damn dog’s allegiance has and will always be to himself, not to us.

I have several thoughts about this – beyond the first flush of crass cursing, that is.

#1: Born to Be Wild: I truly wish I could let the dog come and go as he liked all the time. Animals aren’t meant to be yoked at the neck, regulated by a master’s desires. I hate how we treat “pets.” Not to disparage or demean the intimate and mutually beneficial relationships built between many animals and their ‘owners’ – just to say that part of me cheers my dog’s disobedient bent because really, he didn’t ask to be cowed and cushioned. He wants to chase squirrels and piss on plants. Laying around on our bed all day, lounging under the dinner table waiting for tidbits to drip down in the waterfall of baby drool, obviously depresses him.

But what’s the current realistic alternative? I wish he could be wild and free. He can’t, because he’d get stolen or run over. Or would he? What if I took him to a field in Iowa, let him go? Would I be unleashing him into a fantasy dream of thrills and real living? Or would I be abandoning him, crushing his heart? Are those his only options – to live alone and free or together with us and jailed?

Thought #2: It’s called “domestication” and is also used by us humans when talking about things like marriage – that living with other people is much like being leashed, imprisoned, dominated, coersed, like a dog.

Yikes.

What do I think about the other humans with whom I live? Is freedom antithetical to living with others?

#3: If our dog had been better, more thoroughly trained, he might have actually achieved more ‘freedom’ by being more trustworthy. He could maybe go off leash here and there. Let out in the porous back yard. Sometimes discipline and training are tools for the kind of strength and endurance that true freedom requires.

I was made aware of this in my ballet training. To become strong enough to go on pointe, and then to be good enough to be amazing going free-form, required years and years of rote, routine, highly structured, disciplined exercises.

Or: If you want to fly on a basketball court, better tie your shoelaces nice and tight.

#4: I wish we had a dog park in our park. That would make life so much easier.

#5: We need to fix the holes in our fence. Good fences make good dogs.

#6: As a metaphor for my own life, what calls to my wild heart so that I break free from all other ties? Am I brave enough to risk disappointing others in order to satisfy the needs of my soul? Will I dare to be labeled as bad and disobedient because my behavior upsets others’ expectations for me? And if I do – if I can – won’t that be a wild romp – and don’t we all need these moments to break away and chase down our bliss?

Adoption

Today I contacted the City about officially adopting the park.

The response:

Thanks for your inquiry to adopt Forest Hills Park, as you may know the Park is in it’s final stages of planning for revisions to the Park. Unfortunately the revisions will be on hold due to current budget restrictions in the City. In the mean time Park adoption usually includes trash pick-up, (which you kindly already do) mulching landscaped areas, simple weeding etc. You may wish to only do a targeted task such as trash pick up. We can provide bags, gloves and a trash picker as we don’t recommend handling trash. At the point when plans for renovation of the Park are possible there will be many lovely landscaped areas to oversee and water when necessary. If you wish to continue on in your present capacity it would be greatly appreciated just let me know. When future plans begin there will be many more interesting tasks at hand and certainly your involvement will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

This is swell. But I cannot imagine myself with gloves and a trash picker.

Recently I’ve been bemoaning my age – I see the wrinkles around my eyes and realize that the good ole Ravages of Time have begun their necessary tasks to take me down, and I’ve been having visions of myself as an Old Lady – sucked dry like a hunk of beef jerky on a late-night infomercial, sitting tidily in my translucent box, happy to oblige the hungry, younger generations their need to preserve me and then chew me into pieces as a midafternoon snack.

But gaw, that’s still all in my imagination – a trash picker would really seal the lid on the tupperware deal. I’m all for eccentricity, but I’m already earning Neighborhood Goof title by singing out my buoyant, geeky Hello!s to the boys in the hoods. Give me a trash picker and gloves from the City and any aspirations I yet maintain to blend in will be trampled… and picked and bagged and tossed, like all the other litter awaiting its fate in the wintering grass…

I remember when I was about 12 I promised myself that, unlike all the other adolescents I’d read about /witnessed, I wasn’t going to fall victim to the illusion of immortality, ride high on any kind of faith in safety from my vulnerable human state.

But I did; not because I forgot about my promise, but because death not only feels remote and far away – something to worry about in what seems to be the very distant future – but there’s a weird trap that opens up in your mind, an argument that forms that says you are not like other unfortunate souls who suffer an early demise – you do so easily wrap yourself in an odd, demented sense of immunity…

As I get older, and the things that seemed so far in the future occur, smacking me silly with the flat hand of Time, I listen to my grandmother, for instance, talk about her loneliness, and I think, darn it, darn it, it’s all going to end in tears. Her brothers and sisters are dead, her husband is dead, and her best friend is so deaf they can’t talk on the phone the five times a day they have done their entire lives.

I can’t run away from it, aging, and death. But I can save the trash picker for the lonely times when eccentricity is all I’ve got. For now, I’ll pick up trash on the downlow and thrash out the end of my youth like it’s a mosh pit… you know… rage against the dying of the light… at least until it’s time to do tai chi and wear comfortable pants and then, however wrinkly and bereft I’ve become, I’ll have the trees to be with, because the City is leaving them up for now, and I’ll go before they come down.

That’s my hope, at least. The hope I’ve adopted.