Field notes
A few minutes on the grass
Our older dog is stretched out on the grass. Black, struggling to cool down after walks, nothing will stop Maggie from baking in the sun and this is the first hot day of the year.
It is too soon in the year for this heat but the planet doesn’t care about what we want, only what we have created.
I am drawn to what it has created. The dirt and the grass next to my dog invites lounging and looking up, ticks be damned.
So I lay down next to Maggie, not too close, but able to rest my hand on her side. I put my straw hat on my face, bright light still coming through the holes. At first my knees are up because my feet are on the ground, but then I stretch my legs out.
My right backside kind of roaches up like part of me is trying to slide down a hill. This grass is not on that kind of hill. Before I can adjust, the other dog, Jealousy (not her real name, but her emotion in the moment), squeezes between me and her elder. She licks my hat, she licks my chest, she pants and wiggles with the need for reassurance.
Maggie leaves with a moan. She just wanted some time to herself.
Jealously presses against me.
As my limbs relax and my eyes close, I am jealous, too.
Jealous of the child me who did not know how good the evergreens and rain and slugs around her were.
Jealous of my wife as a child, hiking and birdwatching and wonder-wandering before the first hole in the ozone was identified.
I am also grateful. I am also joyful.
Unlike the women being assaulted in ICE facilities, I get to lay on the ground. Unlike the children in Iran, I get to see a safe sky. Unlike the people of Cuba, I can take five minutes off from regime-raging.
A congregant, raised on Nebraska prairie and a graduate of a one-room schoolhouse and devoted caregiver of a gone-too-soon spouse, once asked as part of a relationship-building effort on a leadership team, if joy and happiness are the same thing. We all agreed they are not. Happiness is fleeting but joy can exist alongside grief. Joy exists not in spite of, not to spite, grief, but as its own presence and present.
My back is starting to hurt. I think my ankles might be burning. Sitting back up is surprisingly awkward and heavy.
I do not have any insects on me that I can see. I am grateful for this time that I got to just be.
