Returning Home
Sunday evening, a flicker landed in the snow outside the door. He drilled down like a sewing machine in search of his meal, solitary in the white yard, looking around as he did his work
He must have seen me taking photos through the window, because the flicker flew over to the weeping willow tree and perched on the trunk for several minutes, looking fat and sleek, before he departed for the deeper woods.
When I returned home last night, I was so glad to see Jinx and he was so glad to see me, we danced around each other. He barked and whined and did his best to tell me how much he missed me. For my part, I said to Jinx, “Whaddaya think you’re doing, you crazy dog?” over and over.
At least, that’s what I intended to say. What actually came out of my mouth was:
Hassha dinkoo deen, oo tassy torg? Hassha dinkoo deen, oo tassy torg? Hassha dinkoo deen, oo tassy torg? Urda tassy, tassy torg! Woof oo wuss! Dess him wuss!
This is a source of strong embarrassment for me. I just know that someday, someone is going to catch me talking to Jinx in this way, and I will be forced to move to upstate New York. Or to become Latvian Orthodox, or take up cobbling in Italy. For the time, I am grateful that I live in the country and that my nearest neighbor is not that near.
When I return home in the evenings, I am the most happy man. When I find everything in order, the dogs eager to greet me, the birds scattering and then regathering at my approach, the mellow, clean scent of the house itself, the evening rituals awaiting me, my heart is a rowboat on a calm pond, floating on a reflection of all that is around me.
And I find myself thinking of returning to my boyhood home after many years. How small it all seemed. Was that tree ever so enormous as it remains in my mind? Was that little patch of garden ever so full of dinosaurs and savage Indians and gangs of opium-driven Chinese warriors? Did that field over there really have Johnson grass high enough to hide me when I was standing fully erect? That road, once so broad and unknowable….was it always so narrow and shaded? And where is the old beech tree to which I once tied my stick horse? Ah, there’s the manhole cover where I once sat in the sun and felt God come down to me and speak to tow-headed me in the lemon-colored sun. And there is the spigot where the tragic little frog once lived and recited his verse. It all looks so small. So familiar, yet so foreign.
Did Christ, upon returning to Paradise, look around and think, “That galaxy looked so large when I was first hanging it in the black expanse, and now it looks so tiny…those trees…was I really thinking they would fashion an instrument of torture and death when I planted them? And that soil. When I placed the iron ore within its folds, was I thinking of how it would one day be extracted and fashioned into cruel spikes? That tempest…it looks different than it did when I first blew it out of my nostrils…”?
Do any of His children, upon returning to whence they came, cast their eyes about with the mist of memory and the rime of reality fogging them? Do the saints wander through the old places and sigh? Do overwhelming things like star clusters and glaciers find a place of sentimentality in the chests of those who lived long, desolate lives and then finally returned to the site of all origins?
Did Jesus of Nazareth have a dog when He was a boy? And did that dog greet Him when He walked through the ripe fields of the Kingdom upon His return?
As someone once said, to ask the question is to answer it. At least, this is so within my small acre of mind and spirit.
~ S.K. Orr