Looking for Signs, Listening for that “Still Small Voice”

 New twists in the road this week...

Four times this week I have been visited by an enormous, white-throated stag.  I think his antlers have ten points. Until now I have never seen one, let alone at the edge of my yard. And I've seen no does here since about 1994, when more houses were built in this area.

He came first last week, on the Monday when R. blew my world apart. Funny thing. R. said, when I'd mentioned it, that he wanted to think that was him, watching over me. Perhaps I should have listened to the small voice in me that jumped when he said that. It asked, "Why would I need a buck when I have you?" Not so much. But I think  he meant it at the time. It's in retrospect we see other things...

But then, I did not see him again--the buck, I mean--until this week. He came on Wednesday morning,   Thursday at dusk, and this morning, at dawn. Two out of three times, he seemed to hear me upstairs here, in my kitchen. I stared down at him as he drank from the brook at the culvert, and he looked up at me. We locked stares for a slow five or six counts, then he bounded off, down away from the street,, into the wetlands and woods. Even that is odd. Mostly the deer used to be on their way UP from my house, to cross the street and follow the wetlands to a town sanctuary. The woods cut across town several miles, so they have a good run.

But there he has been. I want so much to believe what I read in Native American lore, and even in Celtic lore. The stag is a power totem/symbol. He watches over the  creatures in his kingdom. He is a transcendent figure, a harbinger of love, of peace, of grace. He gives strength to transcend pain. And he has appeared during two pivotal weeks of my life. I wonder if I dream him... then I wonder whether that matters. ... And I need strength, and some sense that I am safe. No. I have seen him. I don't think my mind is playing that sort of trick.

Last week, I lost the promise of a love I'd never known in my life. It was a time of anger, pain, abject grief, confusion. I felt torn apart inside. That, on the heels of realizing my career as I knew was pretty well destroyed. I cannot say I handled that well. I didn't. In fact, there are times I don't believe I was myself at all. I think I went through it pretty quickly, but that's mostly because, at 57 I just don't have the time to waste on something I will not ever understand from my perspective alone. It is a relationship that spans more than forty years, whether or not this latest permutation was short. It can only be understood when there is conversation. I haven't the luxury of angst, or of trying to figure it out any more.

But then this week? I have been having odd spasms in legs and arms. My right hand keeps going numb. I had another headache that lasted three days. I went through the initial phase of applying for disability--have to finish up the application this weekend, then let my lawyer do her thing. But I called the doctor Tuesday. After writing the last angry note in, yes, desperation--I just wanted to figure it out still, at that point, and I was so frustrated and angry. Feh. I am human. I mess up. But I tried to find closure through anger, which is never, EVER a good way to go.

But almost immediately after I hit send, I made the appointment with my doctor.

And I will be having new tests. There may be problems in another part of the central nervous system. There is reason for real worry.

As if there weren't enough reason for worry? And I realized that I had no time for anger. Or hurt. In the space of a sleepless night, I realized that I had to turn everything around, and I had to do it now. I wrote about my grandmother, after my buck appeared again. YES, I will think of him as mine. It is egocentric, and perhaps silly. But sometimes seeing good signs can help. He is so beautiful.

And I began to write to R. My friends would not be pleased. They want me to stay angry. They feel I never get mad enough for long enough, but I disagree. It is not that I do not have reason. It's that it will cause me more pain. It will close doors I do not choose to close, from my end. It will keep me stuck in that place where I pound my  head against the wall, trying to understand what will never make sense... because it just doesn't make sense.

Not everything does, though. And matters of the heart have nothing to do with logic. I had to get quiet. I had to stop the static of my friends, of my pain, and find the center that is me. I am human and I don't stay in that place, but I've found it again. And I will stay in it longer and longer, if I give it time. Love. Peace. Gathering the troops for a rough time ahead.

It is hard. Since April I have had three very big dreams placed in my hand, and snatched away without warning. And my spine seems hellbent on attacking me. I call the pain Louise. I named it years ago, when I had pain management therapy. My father's mother's named Louise. She was not a nice lady, though she loved us in her way. She was one of those women who holds grudges. She was the first to give pies to the poor through the church, but would criticize the women for being too fat.  Kind to everyone but her husband. And her daughter-in-law. She resented that her daughter moved to Alaska, but my father understood why.

He once said that he thought that all three kids were conceived by  fission, because he never saw them kiss. He and my mother used to shudder visibly when they talked about Grandma and Grandpa's marriage through their eyes. I just thought they didn't like each other all that much, but I was very small. When Grandpa commit convoluted suicide because he tried to dig a basement in the cottage--shoveling dirt by the hour and carrying it outside--with a heart condition, Dad always thought that "Paw just couldn't see another ten to fifteen years cooped up with Ma."

I thought that was mean. But maybe he was right.

I mean, Grandma mourned the day her catalog no longer sold whalebone corsets. I was twelve! Tied up and rigid, my daddy's mom.

But she also taught me how to cook, how to sew, and let me make a total mess all over the cottage living room on rainy days. She taught me canasta. She introduced me to a world of books about nature, about life in the old days. She was the one who told wonderful stories about life in the "Skinnah girls house."  About old-fashioned weddings, and jelly jars, and how the girls saved bits of handmade lace from their wedding gowns, night gowns, and dresses special for Sundays. She had a rhythm of her own, and her stories sang like a creaky Boston Rocker, and made rainy days fly by. When I was small, I loved to ask her about her childhood.

I grew out of her in a far more serious way. Through her meanness to my mother, her snappishness at Jack,  through her manipulation to get Jack and me to tell secrets about our parents, to confess to her about things she did not approve of... I learned a lot about the kind of person I did not want to be. I valued her. I loved her as a child, but grew to learn she could not be trusted. I respected her because she was there. She was a part of me.  She made me stronger and some of who I am. But I did not have to like her.And I never, ever wanted to be all buttoned down and tight, closed off to the sweetness of life. And to be safe in the world, to have all things go as expected, to have everything look right--these were her goals, so much of the time. And if things did not suit her, it was never her doing--someone of us, particularly my  mom or my brothers, had always let here down. Not that she would complain, mind you. Nothing, to her, was pure joy. There was always something not quite good enough. And once disappointed, she punished for years. I thought it must be so hard to be Granny. There was a heart in there, but so protected by thorns, it was next to impossible to find.

I named the pain Louise. My middle name. I'm named after her, something for which my father will never be forgiven. EVER. This pain is part of me, whether I want it or not. It has taught me lessons and I can only accept that it's here, and learn to live around it, in spite of it... and, if I work really hard, because of it. And deep within, below the thorns, the pain has been a gift.  I needed it to grow strong, to battle something other than myself. To stop trying to kill myself, and get up and live, instead.

But Louise is growing stronger these days, and it would seem there are new lessons to be learned. I do not want them. But it would seem, I will be getting these "gifts" anyway. For now, though? I don't have to like it or look for anything other than why Louise is shouting me, and attacking from all directions. I'll figure the rest out later.

So I wrote R. today, but I may have written too late. My anger may have been the last he could bear to read. I hope not. I hope he could see I had reasons and the right to write. I hope he cared enough to read, but it's okay, regardless.

When we throw love out into the universe we have to accept that we may never know whether it is received. I miss the man. The friend. I had found myself writing something funny, totally forgetting for those five minutes, that he is gone. As I said, I am not wholly in my right mind. But I realized in time... I miss my friend far more than the man who would be my love. It's not wanting all or nothing. It's wanting the best of who we are together, and we were always friends. I realized this week that I would not have been able to go on anyway. That friendship's all I have the strength to offer now anyway, and leaning's not an option.

I need to stand on my own through this.  Leaning on someone this soon isn't right. My ex-husband courted me in the hospital, and he wanted me to need him. He wanted me to stay needy, and turned away as I grew to be stronger.  I do not want to be loved because I am in need. I want to be strong.  I want to be loved for my strength, and supported for that.  It's a little different, I think.  We all want to lean sometimes, but it isn't the place to start.  Not for me. Not again. And it seems just wrong to ask or expect support in a time like this, of anyone newly back in my life. I would have asked him to let us step back for a time. Irony hurts.


The last thing I want in my life is to burden my son with me, and we may have  some options that will limit that. And I have to believe that my stag came for a reason, one I just don't understand. And perhaps R. came for a reason that I'll understand with time. I don't mean that some puppeteer is in the sky, messing with my life. I use the phrase "for a reason" more metaphorically.

I think I mean that perhaps the lessons that these things have to offer will come with time.  And if that small voice in me is saying over and over, "All will be well. There are no lies here," perhaps I should listen.  I read Jo's blog today about listening to that voice that warns us. I think we should listen to us when it clearly says "THIS IS RIGHT."

It said that when R. came back to me. All is well. This is right.  It says it still, beneath the anger and pain. So I let go of ALL of it today, in the only way I can. I wrote it. I left the door open because to slam it, so that I have supposed control?  That is to be someone else. I can let go only with a door wide open, and trust that only  my friend will ever come in. If he chooses never to come, so be it. But I felt as if a weight had been lifted from me, so that's the best I can do.

I have done this before; I write. It's who I am; it's what I do. Love beats control, it beats fear. And every time I panic about the money, that voice says, "No. Just stop." And when the pain in my hand catches me off guard and I tip over the water onto my work, it says, "Just breathe. Just breathe."

And I do. I am afraid for my future, but as two friends said, "Even if you are in poverty, you will not fly off the face of the earth. You are not alone."

And my buck stared up at the house, but I was at a different window. I smiled inside. That deer is mine, and he's watching over me, telling me I can do all of this with grace. I named the pain Louise. But Helen is in me, too.

And my mother's and my sister's blue eyes loving me, from wherever their souls have flown. And my daddy's arms and Old Spice cheek enfold me still. And I will let R. go, and the still small voice reminds me, friends, in my life, are the ones who always come back... in their time, in their way. I have to trust the marvelous boy in the man. I have to trust myself. I must stop listening to everyone else. And I will bask in the love of the twelve--the women friends who are in my life. Give where I can, but for now, this time, receive their love--and ask them to let go of their anger, too.

I have had loss.  I have had pain.  I have had dreams disappear just as they became real. I have never had so much of it happen in so short a time.  And the consequences this time are far greater.  I may lose my home or my independence or both. And the pain will not go away. The old dreams are gone, and I will need to find some new ones. But not today. I don't have to figure it all out today. There is a poetry chap book to work on, two paintings to finish. I have an application to finish. There still is a little time before it all hits too hard. I must use it well.

There will be lessons enough in all this; I need not rush them. I must rest. I must gather myself inside, be still, and listen.

And, of course, write. It's what I do; it's who I am.