After wildness comes the healing
Imay have mentioned that I live in the wild wilderness of Franklin County. My high school mascot is Hillbilly, and that is exactly what we are. Hill people. Like Appalachia, but Arkansas.
There was a bear on my parents’ deck the other day. My dad got up to scare it off and it scuttled down into their side yard, a small fenced section of grass they keep within safe boundaries for their two little dogs. The bear could barely haul its big rear end over the fence. It bent the chain-link in its efforts before making it to the other side and ambled off into the woods.
On any given night I can step out into my front porch and hear coyotes screaming. I frequently stop on my driveway for wild turkeys and deer to cross. And cows. Always cows. These gentle creatures live with us on the Triple F Ranch, in pastures cleared out for them over generations. Along with our plethora of dogs, they add a relative tameness to some of the landscape. But even they can “go savage,” as my kids say. We got that term from the movie “Zootopia” and apply it when any of our animals who are supposed to be tame seem to hear the call of the wild.
This happens between my two neutered male dogs on occasion. Simba, a large and leonine golden retriever, mostly lies around the house eating and soliciting our affection. We must sweep the house every day to keep the tumbleweeds of his fur from taking over. He has huge brown eyes with extravagant eyelashes and a pink tongue that lolls out the side of his mouth. Simbi, as we lovingly call him, is technically my daughter Adelaide’s dog, but belongs to all of us.
He would make at least five— maybe six—of Mugsy, my Boston terrier. Simba looks like a lion, yet Mugsy has the heart to be king. He carries himself with perfect posture, shoulders back, puffing out his tiny chest as he jaunts along.
Mugsy is a ball of sinewy muscle. He sleeps in the bed with me and snores. He has a snuffed bulldog nose and pronounced underbite with crooked tiny teeth. If fur were clothing, Mugsy’s everyday attire would be a black satin tuxedo and fancy white collared shirt.
They were in the house snoozing one day over Christmas break. It was early, and I decided to traipse down the path to Jim and Heathcliff’s in my new red Victoria’s Secret pajamas to drink a cup of coffee. By the time I returned, one of the kids had let the dogs out. By some freak of nature I will never understand, Mugsy and Simba got into a fight for my undivided attention. Usually I can run enough interference to get them to come to their senses, but this day they were not having it. It was like they were demon-possessed.
When Simba took Mugsy’s neck in his teeth and shook him like a rag, I knew my baby was about to be killed. So, hitting and hollering like a banshee, I grabbed Simba from behind, and we rolled around in the yard while I kicked towards his mouth, trying to knock Mugsy loose.
Thankfully the kids heard the commotion and came running out of the house with a broom. Mugsy was not helpful at all. As Adelaide extracted him from the literal jaws of death, he growled, barked, and snapped toward Simba, who in turn kept straining to drag me close enough to chomp into Mugsy’s flesh again.
In the midst of the mayhem during this attempted double homicide, someone bit me. I think it was Mugsy, or it likely would have been a lot worse. His little peg-like teeth broke the skin at one of my cuticles and bore deep into my nailbed. There was blood and bruise.
At the time I was more concerned about the grass stains on my pretty pajamas.
That was early January. It is now the Ides of March, and today I noticed that the bite zone—this weird, discolored, misshapen place on my nail—has traveled from the cuticle till it has almost reached the top of the nail plate to go over the free edge. But not quite. It is still in the quick, so I cannot trim it. I cannot paint it. I can’t even glue it. None of these options would come to any good. There is more healing to go through.
As I studied this science experiment happening on my hand, I thought about healing. It’s like the rhyme I used to do with my kids about going on a bear hunt. I learned it in kindergarten, but it is an all-oflife lesson, as true for the heart and mind as it is for a fingernail.
Surely readers will remember it, although my kids didn’t, so I played and sang along to this video till they begged me to stop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZY6cJYXCos&list=PLWZqls2fENnttzrJpSNr2PJJ1jDwhe8wA&index=9
For those not familiar, you sit in a circle and pretend you’re out for a big adventure, hunting a bear. You pat your hands on your legs. You’re going along your way; sometimes it is leisurely, and sometimes you run. Everyone pats their legs accordingly. You declare you’re not afraid.
Then you come to high grasses, a river, a canyon, or fog; whatever obstacle, always messy, gooey, uncomfortable, scary. At each one, everyone stops to figure out what to do. And inevitably, you can’t go under it! You can’t go over it! You can’t go around it! You gotta go through it. Hunting for bears in this manner is a barrel of fun for little kids and teacher types.
Healing, however, is not near that fun. But just like the dark forest on the bear hunt—and all the other difficult places—there is no way around it. You can stay unhealed, or you can go through the healing process. Whatever it takes. It is the only way.