This Boy

This boy,
Sitting across the dinner table,
telling me his life,
This 23 year-old, lanky boy,
With his swimmer’s build, chiseled face,
and perfect, sparkling-white teeth,
This boy who has lived so much so far,
Is smiling.

This boy,
Who never got the Barbie he always wanted,
Who chose his Easy Bake Oven over baseball,
and his art classes over soccer,
Still smiles.

This boy,
On anti-depressants at age 12,
With a physical tick-- a twitching of his head--until age 15,
Who counted dashes on the highway where ever they drove, for as long as they drove,
This boy somehow is smiling.

But his eyes still hold the pain,
still fear it all returning,
The depression,
The tick,
The checking,
The helpless rage.

This boy smiles,
But not yet with his eyes.


Copyright Ed Ishmael 2009

Turtles

So here’s the deal. My life has been turned upside down, and so far, I have survived. Oh sure, it’s a bitch at times, and there are aspects of how my life was before that I wouldn’t mind having again, but all in all, it’s not as bad as I feared. I’ve set off on a different and unknown path, and I have no idea where it’s leading. And for some reason, that's okay.

We have this tank on our property in the Texas Hill Country. When it’s full, it covers about 2 acres, but it leaks. So in the summer, it drains away to almost nothing, and this last summer/winter, it dried up completely. You can tell when a tank is about to go dry, when even with all your hoping and praying, rain isn’t coming any time soon. How? The turtles.

As you can imagine, it’s not an easy thing for a turtle to relocate. The decision to do so is a serious one, fraught with peril and requiring Herculean effort. Out of the water, they are awkward and exposed, not just to predators, but to the elements, the sun, the dry air. And it’s not like they have a map, or GPS. Guided by instinct alone, they head out clawing their way over this hill or that. It’s arduous, glacially slow going. And if they’ve miscalculated, you’ll find their hollowed, dried shell in the middle of the pasture.

So if the turtles leave the pond it’s because they know there’s nothing left there for them. And if you see them leaving, you can bank on the fact that the pond will go dry, or be reduced to little more than mud.

This last year, around the end of November, as I was walking to my parent’s house, my dogs were on the road ahead of me when all of a sudden they started barking, heads down, lunging at something on the road. I knew it was too late in the season for snakes, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell what it was, until I walked closer. There, in one of the gravel ruts, were two turtles, facing up hill, facing away from the tank. The dogs were beside themselves. They had no idea what these were, or what they should be doing with them, or waht it meant that all of sudden they appeared here on this hill.

But I knew. I knew that the drought would continue and the inevitable would occur. And sure enough, by the first of January the pond was nothing but mud, and by the end of January the mud had dried and cracked.

So the turtles chose wisely. They knew they could not stay, and even though leaving meant danger and hard, slow progress, they set out into the unknown searching for something better.

I have no idea if they made it. I hope they did.

The pond is back up now, the result of a 4 inch rain a few weeks back, but so far, no turtles in sight. But they will find it again. They always do.

Lost In The Fog

“I just want to go for two weeks with no major changes in my life.” That’s what I told a friend recently as we sipped wine outside on my back deck. In the last few weeks, my business partnership split, my boyfriend broke up with me, my bank account went nearly dry, and I was sick in bed for almost an entire week, longer than I can ever remember being sick before. To say that life has been merely difficult would be … inane. Life has, in fact, sucked.

And I don’t see it markedly improving anytime soon.

So how have I dealt with the stress? Probably not well. I did start working out again, and I’ve meditated once or twice. But frankly there isn’t much that can be done right now to change things.

I’m left with making my way through it knowing that the end is not yet in sight, knowing that tomorrow when I wake up these issues will still be here and will likely stay here for some time.

When I was in college, I raised money for my tuition by trapping. Back then, raccoon pelts brought $35 and tuition at UT was only $8 an hour. So if I had a good run during Christmas break, I was generally able to cover my tuition and most of my book costs. In addition to trapping, I would spotlight for raccoons after dark. Most mamals eyes reflect light, so a bright enough light is shown on them, the eyes can be seen from a hundred yards or more away. Once you spot the eyes, you give chase, run the recoon up a tree, and then shoot it. I know, gruesome, right? But back then it didn't seem so.

One night the air was warmer than usual and damp, and while I was out walking with my light and rifle a heavy fog moved in. Before I knew it, I was engulfed in the thick, quickly moving cloud and completely lost my way. The ground was only visible a few feet ahead as I tried to make my way home, but before long I truly had no idea which direction I was headed.

A 21 year old, a few hundred yards for his home, probably has no reason to fear even in disorienting fog, but I was afraid. I couldn’t find my way. None of the paths, or rocks, or trees looked familiar. I was lost, and I had no idea how to get home.

So eventually I just stopped, sat down, and calmed myself as best I could. The house could not be far away. I had not been gone that long. I had walked up the hill away from the house, and was walking back down now. All I needed was a glimpse of something familiar, and until I saw it, there was nothing to do except sit and wait.

Fortunately, it did not take long. The wind rose, and the fog began to move and as the cloud blew passed it grew thinner and then I saw it, in the distance, a hundred yards away, the light on our barn. I set my bearings and off I went, and even though the thick fog rolled back in, I was able to focus on just the next step, again and again, until at last I made the barn and home.

Chains

His head was lowered and his arms were crossed, resting on the table in front of him. Michael, 23, was just out of Syracuse, and working as an entry-level research assistant at a prestigious Dallas advertising firm. I first met him the summer before when he was interning. Back then, he was bright-eyed, excited to be graduating, and eager to enter the work force. But since joining the firm in May, he had endured back-to-back 70 hour work weeks for months. His eyes, still blue, no longer sparkled as focused on the place mat before him.

“I was happier bartending,” he said, still looking down. “It’s not at all what I thought it would be.”

I felt for him and wanted to say something helpful, but everything that came to mind seemed hollow and empty and useless.

In 1987, I graduated from Texas Tech law school and took a job with a downtown Dallas law firm. The money was great and, other than the head attorney of our section, the people I worked with were friendly and helpful. But I quickly realized that I was hired as a workhorse and not much else. My sole function was to bill hours, the more the better, and to fill my quota I would be working very late most nights. I hated it almost immediately. Just how much I hated it became obvious the day I returned from my first vacation after taking the job.

About six months after graduation, a friend in the Air Force was moving from Enid, Oklahoma to Phoenix and asked if I would drive with him. I was gone a week, and the morning I returned and sat at my desk my hands started shaking and my chest tightened. That physical revulsion was not lost on me--I saw it, noted it, knew what it meant. This life I had arranged for myself was not healthy. It was life draining, not life enhancing, but even knowing that, it took me 12 more years before I took the first small steps in getting out. And now, some 10 years later, I am faced with another chance to finally do what I’ve always wanted to do, to finally be what it is I have always truly been.

I thought about all this as I sat there watching Michael.

I know one of his bosses. I considered calling him and asking him if he knew what his company was doing to these kids, if they truly intended to suck the life out them and leave them as shells of their former selves. I saw in my mind a giant spider wrapping these kids in its web, then sucking them dry. Was it really worth it just so the partners could live in Highland Park in their big fancy houses with their big fancy cars?

But I also knew it would do no good. The chains that held me to the job I hated all those years, the same chains Michael wears, the same worn by his boss, are all self-imposed. No one can free us but ourselves. And realizing that takes time. No amount of advice can rush the process, and some of us never break free.

I hope Michael does. I hope the sparkle returns to his mediterean blue eyes, and his brilliant smile finds its way home.

And I hope I do too.