We know that worry is an undernourished enthusiasm and even that worries us to pieces. Who hasn’t worried in the last year? We’ve had sad, sad killings, whether by bullets sprayed on shoppers or a virus 75 times smaller than a red blood cell that makes breathing impossible.
For the most part, our parents see to it that when we have a close call because we simply haven’t listened or haven’t experienced scary stuff, we don’t do it a second time. We comply and we stay aware.
When we’re born, we’re not afraid of anything or anybody. Our heart and lungs start pumping and we adjust to being provided with food and taking another nap so we can stay here.
We start to grow, and that goes on for about 20 years. By then we have achieved our height and girth, some opinions, some skill, some experience and maybe a dream or two. We master our language and create a life that works for us.
When do we learn to be afraid? It’s important because that’s when we start getting angry. Others just won’t behave the way we want them to.
Still, we persevere. We learn to handle Halloween, clowns, spiders and lightning. We think we could talk kidnappers out of stealing us, and we know if they come for us in the night to never, ever leave our house no matter what they tell us.
We adapt to life and plot how to beautify it.
Just when we think we’re clued in how to live an interesting and satisfying term on earth, along comes the unanticipated.
Yesterday texts and phone calls started coming in telling me that Carroll Electric was cutting down my front yard. Do you know that feeling? In your stomach? The one where your life has been interrupted by a bomb or a fire or a car wreck? It’s loud, heavy, hopeless.
I left work and went home. Sure enough. Cherry pickers with men and their chainsaws were acting like drones, going wherever. They left their diplomat on the ground to answer questions.
After he explained that I had signed an easement, which I hadn’t, he said maybe the previous owner did. Twenty some years ago. No, I said. Never happened.
“Would you rather have electricity or trees?” he asked.
“Trees.”
“You’d be surprised how many people answer that way,” he said.
“I would not. That cedar was awesome. One hundred years old. It rang. That oak protected the house from wind and provided shade and prevented people from looking at what I’m doing. That persimmon fed birds, deer, horses, and provided weather forecasts.”
“Yah, well, sorry they didn’t notify you. They’re going to put up taller poles and new lines.”
A small crowd of neighbors had popped up like mushrooms in a stump. They all slumped.
“Why can’t you put the new poles and wires on the other side of the road where there are no houses?”
“Too expensive.”
“But the wires cross the road right down there.” I pointed. I was beat and knew it.
Despair both lames and awakens people, but this was flat out numbing.
I love my trees, dead or alive. A whippoorwill sang me to sleep last night. And I finally understood what I Saw Arkansas really means.