The things that saved me

I’ve fallen prey to silent slow-moving melancholy.   

I did the things that seem to help, yank me out of my head and back into my feet.  I listened to music.  The song "Sons and Daughters" by the Decemberists saved me, at least for a while. 

I did not respond to a turnstile text, one that might have cast me into a deeper dark.  And that helped.  

I stood in my front yard for a minute and watched the maple whirligigs fly across the gusty sky.  Then I held a baby, the cutest baby I know, and that helped.  That always helps.   I bopped a balloon.  I mowed the lawn. 

But still a steady strum of glum. 

I went to see “The Great Gatsby” and for the life of me, I could not figure out why we would ever have had to read that in high school. What could it possible have to do with a bunch of suburban kids?  The only thing that rang true for me was the statement Nick Carraway said twice, “I was within and without.”  That seemed like something that might have had merit in tenth grade.  Being in a furtive something and on its distant edge, too.  Not quite engaged.  I thought I’d be long over that by now, but, I’m not – especially on days like today -- and not sure I ever will be.  Within and without.

I rode my bike and it didn’t necessarily act as a salve this time, but along the way, after I had pulled over to take a picture of this mill and was walking my bike, another rider slowed down to ask if I were okay.  That saved me, his blessing of benevolent kindness.  

Then, further down the trail, I saw a deer.  A loner crossing the canal swamp water slowly.  Looking at me, letting me look at him.  That was starting to save me, but then, what happened next is it -- the thing -- that helped me most.  A red-winged blackbird lighted on the deer's back.  It flew away a bit then circled back to land on its head.  Picked at the deer’s ear.  Then it fluttered off and settled on its back again.  It was something that you might see on a Hallmark card or on a folk needlepoint, but I was seeing it with my real eyes.  This simple munificence.

Again, I do not know how to end.  There will be sleep, there will be tomorrow.  Someday, I will be as free as a whirligig.  Maybe even tomorrow, I will be the rider checking in on someone.  One day, I will be a deer and someone will light on me to stay a while.  I have to believe that this is all true, even if I am barely on the very distant edge of it right now.   That's what we do, hang on.  Look for things to save us, even as we wade through the slowest day, hoping for it to pass.