Doris and Me

There is Doris, the bearded dragon to my left clinging to the edge of a river tooth. She basks in artificial sunlight. Her natural habitat is the central desert of Australia. But here she is, glass-boxed and fed, artificially warmed, perched atop the knotted remains of a bald cypress, the tree that characterizes the bayou of Louisiana.

She’s sleepy. Cuddling the light, eyes drifting. Last night, she didn’t find the heated pad covered by sand near the giant snail shell. Instead she slept in a cold corner behind the river tooth. When I picked her up this morning, her body was chilly. I imagined she was happy to share some of my heat. Her tail relaxed, her belly pressed against my warm hand. She cocked her head several times, so that I fell in love with her and imagined she loved me too.

I hope Doris feels comfortable right now, warmed by the Repti Basking Spot Lamp inside Fluker’s Mini Sun Dome. I fed her a few meal worms earlier and she has a bowl of greens in her terrarium. I am sitting warm on this bed. Not long ago I finished a lovely meal of tuna salad on toasted sourdough. I’ll bake cookies then go to sleep after an episode of Deadwood. I’ll wake up with a sense of duty and I’ll write and I’ll research and I’ll fight the nagging suspicion that there is a wilderness within me I do not fully know.

Doris was bred in captivity. Her day is the warmth of ceramic heat emitters and the Reptisun 5.0. She has eaten crickets and fatty mealworms alongside carefully chopped pieces of kale. When she isn’t resting in the heat, she darts around the terrarium, past the shell I found in the swamp and the prairie dog skull I collected near the suburbs of Denver. Sometimes I know she’s stressed. I know, despite her physical needs being met, something isn’t right. Apparently this is normal after a transition.

To the right of the bed is a space heater. Sheepskin rugs meet my feet when I wake. The kitchen is filled with good food, plants and pictures of relatives. I eat well. I make love with a man I love. The city is beautiful. And when I watch her attempting to crawl up the side of the terrarium - glass surfing they call it - I relate. It’s a stress behavior, possible response to irritation at seeing her reflection. 

I am not a lizard. Yet I feel like I am inside a comfortable box. Where is the wild? Where is the end of my reflection shining from polished glass, through computer screens and selfward pointing telephone cameras? Where are the faculties I need to survive in a wild I was built for, but will never know?

Here safety is paramount. In our world it becomes increasingly difficult to connect in real time with the (often wonderful) strangers that surround us. I want to explore. I want to know what I am capable of, what this body can do, can feel. I want to understand how to take care of myself outside of the terrarium and I want to sleep over and over again under the stars. 

What do we lose to a lack of risk? What are we sacrificing to feel always comfortable, safe, at ease? I’m not at ease. I’m glass surfing up the sides of a translucent boundary I don’t know how to cross.

Maybe we can do it together. Maybe we can challenge one another, find the courage to feel awed, adventurous, sexy and capable. I can only make Doris feel more comfortable, but we, we can step outside the reflections of ourselves.

My Father, The Oak Tree

When my grandmother was dying of Parkinsons, she whispered (that was as loud as she could speak) that she wanted to see the tree my grandfather liked so much. It’s a large white oak that stands on the far side of our little frog pond. The tree reaches up, it’s branches proud and perfect, like the antlers of a stag, a king. This is in part because my father cut down the trees that were once in immediate proximity and groomed its symmetrical crown. It has always been my grandaddy’s favorite tree, but now it’s an edifice, a breathing column, backbone of my childhood home, forever strong and present. 

It probably took her a few tries to communicate the wish. Speaking was so strained those last days and my father, to whom she spoke, has a hard time hearing, what with all the chainsaws. When he did understand, he leaned over and picked her up, out of her wheelchair. Her body was small and rigid then, like a wooden doll. He carried his mother outside, onto the deck he built. The view of Grandaddy Oak (that’s what we all came to call it) is grand indeed from up there. The trunk appears pale and silver from that distance, striking against the forest backdrop. The reflection in the pond spreads through the water and the tree becomes even more impossible, shining in two places at once. 

But he continued on, walking the wooden steps and the stone path he made down the hill so many years ago. They went across the green yard that was once a pile of dirt. Past the boulders he so gleefully put there with the rented bulldozers and excavators he taught himself to use. He walked around the pond with my grandmother in his arms, all the way to the base of the tree. And he held her there and she knew he could because he is big and strong. He sat with her under Grandaddy Oak. She said, and maybe this time he heard her the first time because some things were easier for her to say than others, “It’s a good tree.”

I Remember the School Bus

I remember the school bus. The smell of exhaust and tired maple trees. I remember sitting there, kindergarten-small, wearing a purple wool skirt on that hot September morning. I don’t care. I love that skirt. I love things I love and I want that color everywhere. It doesn’t matter that I am sweating. Doesn’t matter that I can’t go upside down and do handstands. Truth is, I would have done handstands right there, even in a skirt. Modesty was alien to me. Still is, but for a mild feeling of discomfort. Tiny blister on my heel while I’m dancing. It’s there, but it’s invisible and usually, I rebel against it, moving passionately with the sting, dancing harder for it. 

Bus is all kids and plastic - sweaty, packed with fresh trapper keepers and mechanical pencils. I look around me. Everyone is first-day nervous, well behaved, sitting-put on their naugahyde benches. Sticky and wide-eyed. Vicky, the bus driver, is strict. Even as the year progresses, those rides are tight. We get silly and laugh, but we stay in our seats. When the back of the bus becomes rowdy, she sends Lesley and me there to keep an eye on the 8th graders. We are so little. I am in love with everybody. 

I can’t talk to them though, the big kids. I just sit there small with Lesley, reporting back to Vicky at the end of the ride. 

Her technique was effective. When the big kids wanted to talk sex and rule-breaking, they did it hushed. I remember being confused a lot. Quietly, I had fantasies of showing myself. Do they know who I am? Do they know I can do handstands, backflips? I imagined myself tumbling down the center aisle. Turning school bus to circus show, dazzling students with a sudden break of routine-transit. Bus seats to gymnastic apparatus; shuttle to traveling stage. I wanted to be seen - all the invisible beauty I could feel, I wanted it out. I imagined this place we all thought predictable, as a dynamic playground. Everything still, waiting to come alive.