When we had been living in our house for a few years, our next door neighbor greeted me over the fence, Wilson Wilson style. “Did you know you had a skunk living under your front porch?”
No, I didn’t. But we smelled skunk with some regularity, so it didn’t surprise me.
When I was a kid, we had a skunk living under our front porch. It was a white skunk with a black stripe, which was in keeping with my need to be different. So I was a little enchanted to find that as an adult with my own home (a bungalow very like the one I lived in growing up) that I also had a skunk living under my porch.
I identified where the skunk was going in and out. We saw it snuffling around the backyard a few times after dark. Early one morning, I discovered that there were two skunks, one mostly black, and one mostly white (fantastic!). One of them and I had a very uncomfortable stand off, with tail raised on its part and terror on mine, before we were finally able to break the tension and make a run for it.
I’ve been on a bit of a quest lately to collect magical moments. A dear friend suggested that I be a little more open-minded about what those moments look like, and I took her advice. This open-mindedness means looking for adventure, and saying yes more often.
Last night, we went to Grafton Lakes State Park. It’s just a tiny bit longer than I like to drive, but it was the last day of summer vacation while also being the first day of school (since we homeschool, we can have our cake and eat it, too). The day called for a special ending.
With all the nonfiction reading I’d done over the summer, I was a little nervous about diving into fiction again. But my mom recommended this one to me, and I was ready for something different.
The Brontë Plot, by Katherine Reay, got off to a slow start, so I wasn’t sure what to think. I kept reading, though, and I’m glad I did.
One thing that was on my Summer Bucket List that we hadn’t done yet was go bathing at the beach.
I remember what a big deal it was to go to the beach as a kid. We lived on the bank of a river, so we regularly got a water fix, but there is something you get at the ocean that you can’t get anywhere else. It’s like synchronizing your heartbeat with God’s as the rhythm of the waves moves through you.
Several years ago, the Chaplain and I watched a documentary about parrots that was equal parts fascinating and disturbing.
What stuck with me was what the documentary had to say about the nature of parrots. In the wild, they mate for life. When they live solitary lives with humans, they attach themselves to their owners and rely on them not only for food and shelter, but also the attention and affection they would normally get from their mates in their natural habitat.
As it turns out, humans make crappy mates for parrots. We are fickle, have short attention spans, and I suppose, a low tolerance for squawking. And when parrots rely on humans for needs they should be having met by another parrot, they are disappointed. In the face of this, they can begin to turn to self-destructive behavior. They act out in the face of grief at their unmet needs. I’m not pretending parrots have the full range of emotions. But seeing parrots who had plucked half their feathers out in frustration and anger, covered with scabs from self-inflicted wounds, it was clear they were feeling something.
I was reminded of this misplaced need earlier this summer when I stopped at a rest stop on the long drive home from Pennsylvania after visiting family.
