Almost A Lot of Things

The other morning I bent to get a watering can so I could give some of my wife’s porch flowers a drink. When I looked down at the can, I saw movement inside. A butterfly was marooned inside, flapping its wings with less-than-vigorous motion. I reached in and scooped the little fellow up, then held him before my face. I have no way to prove this, but I could tell that the butterfly was exhausted. I held him on my hand for a minute, then called to Mrs. Orr and asked her to hold him on her palm so I could have some perspective for a photo. She whispered to the butterfly for a moment, the placed him on the flowers in the box on the rail, where he began slowly flexing his wings in the faint sunshine, warming and drying them. He stayed there for a long time, then flew away while I was inside. For some reason, God or the universe has selected me to frequently find animals in need of rescuing, and I try to do my duty by them. The feeling after such an encounter is a clean one, almost holy. For whatever else I might do or fail to do or do badly or irritably during the remainder of such a day, I can look back during my evening reflections and know that I made at least a temporary difference in a small and beautiful life. Such habits and such a mindset surely invites sneers? I don’t know. I don’t think about it much anymore.

***

My wife recently bought me James Webb’s memoir, I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir, which I sat down and read in just two days. This is significant for me, because I tend to be a slow reader, stopping often to chew on an author’s point, or to daydream about something he mentioned in the narrative. I enjoyed the book and appreciated Webb’s habit of remembering very specific and tiny details about important moments in his life…the dew on the grass outside a particular house, the nap of the wool overcoat worn by an officer during a ceremony, the slick and sweet smell of blood while trying to bandage a life-stealing wound outside the hamlet of An Hoa. I also liked his way of pulling himself out of significant moments and wondering what other people — strangers, theoretical people, not friends or loved ones — might have been doing at certain moments in his life.

I do this myself quite often. Many is the day when I arise and stand outside, shaking myself awake and yawning into the dawn, and thinking of some unknown man who is awakening that very morning for his first full day in prison. How does his life taste to him now? Or thinking of the young man who just scrawled his name on the enlistment papers and notices that the Marine recruiter is suppressing a smile, and wondering if this is just another mind game for the benefit of the new recruit. Or of the grandmother who stares out the hospital window, trying to ignore the beeps and sighs of the machinery circling her bed, she who would trade anything in the world to relive the last week and to just be back at home, in her kitchen, muttering at the oven that doesn’t heat evenly or the sugar that clumps up in the cannister. These people come to me entire in those early moments, and they are real to me, and I wonder at the moments approaching me, the ones I am almost prepared for, but never really. And I am thinking now of movies and betrayed husbands and sad-eyed animals in kennels and octogenarians who are being mistreated and used by children, and the butterfly’s dusty beauty is more important to me than ever, as is the lichen-painted trunk of the old locust tree I pass and lean against on my daily walks. I am almost changed, and I almost remain the same.

***

I have not seen our fox this week, though I suspect the dogs catch his scent when they go outside in the mornings. They split up and patrol the perimeter of the yard, then peer, whining, into the dark woods behind the house.

We watched the hummingbirds courting this past Sunday. The female sat with regal disdain while a ruby-throated fellow swung in a U before her, doing all his tricks, telling her his horoscope sign, hitching up his silky britches, following her to the feeder, offering to buy the next round. And in a matter of short weeks from now, they will both leave us for the warm southern places, and I will watch the feeders for stragglers until the first hard frost, and I will marvel at their done-in-one-shot journey for their overwintering in South America.

It is July, which means that the June bugs are out in force, eating all the pretty things and annoying me by flying right up in my face while I am walking in the yard. It’s too bad I have no taste for them. If Bill Gates has his way, perhaps some day I will be placed in circumstances where I will develop such a taste. Perhaps I will also be all goo-goo at the news that the Navy’s famed Blue Angels has just tapped the team’s first female pilot. Yes, I’m sure — almost sure — these things will happen.

***

Mrs. Orr bought us two of the three DVD’s for which we’ve been searching for some time: Robert Duvall’s Tender Mercies and The Apostle. If we can find Sling Blade (yes, I know it’s Billy Bob’s movies, but Mr. Duvall was subtle and powerful in his short scene in the film), we will have completed the Duvall Video Hat Trick.

Tomorrow will mark 49 years since the death of Bruce Lee. Next year, if I am still alive, I hope to write something on the 50th anniversary about the impact that little Chinese runt had on my young life. I make a promise to myself. “I wi-woe-man.” Extra credit if you know what I’m referencing there…

***

In the course of my duties, I spoke recently to an elderly lady who told me of her horrific osteoarthritis. She told me that her doctors will no longer prescribe effective pain medications for her, due to the current manufactured hysteria over the manufactured opioid crisis.

“I just lay on my couch as much as I can. I think about shooting myself a lot. I’m not playing. I think about it a lot.”

I offered her no platitudes, and I did not scold her for what she said about ending her pain by ending her life. I just told her how sorry I was, and Mrs. Orr and I prayed for her later that evening. And now in the mornings, when I think of those unknown people who are starting their days in certain ways, I think of her and wonder if relief has come to her in one form or the other.

***

The other day when we were returning home after running some errands, my wife pointed out a family of deer in our south pasture. I managed to get a photo before they ran, the gorgeous trio standing still and licking their velvety muzzles and switching their flag-tails while we sat in the car, delighting in their beauty. The car, however, was not pleased. It is now equipped with deer whistles, but it has a long memory, and it holds grudges. Almost human, that one.

~ S.K. Orr