The Nature of Relationships

60: (September 2018)

I feel incredibly lucky to live in the country, surrounded by nature. Having grown up in the suburbs and then New York City and downtown Boston, moving to a rural town of 1,300 people and lots of trees was not an obvious destination. Yet I’ve been here, happily, for 27 years!

I didn’t appreciate nature in a meaningful way earlier in life. As a social worker out of college, my focus was very much on societal problems and human behavior. I didn’t see a connection between that and the earth. I took for granted the ground I walked on, the air I breathed. I didn’t camp or hike or garden. I was essentially a city person. If I hadn’t wound up in the country (long story for another time), my connection to the earth may have been dormant forever.

This connection is a relationship, after all, that everyone has the potential to have — between ourselves and the natural world. My relationship with the environment was awakened and nurtured as a result of living in this rural community. With that has come a growing sense of responsibility, a growing desire to awaken that relationship in others, as early in life as possible so that we stand a chance of helping this beloved earth before it’s too late.

Years ago when I was living in Manhattan, I spent most of my hours walking on cement or working in tall, insulated buildings. Now, if I am not in touch with something green, something alive during my day, I feel a sense of longing. I love being surrounded by lots of plants when I’m indoors, and lots of trees when outside.

In a relationship, if you’re in love, you want to be near that person. You want to engage, to have some sort of communion. You also want to protect that person from harm.

So I’ve grown to love and appreciate the environment, and I want to help protect it. I have taken a job at a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting understanding and respect for the natural environment.

It’s time to take this relationship to the next level.

40: (September 1998)

Where do phobias come from? What are the seeds of irrational fears? When are they planted?

These are questions I asked myself as I huddled under the blankets, scared witless by the sounds of scurrying feet coming from the attic floor above me. Mice feet. Little, gray, tiny-toed mouse feet. My body twitches involuntarily when I hear that sound, my heart races, and I feel like my skin is turning inside out.

Just days ago, my younger daughter was playing on the floor and casually remarked that a mouse was hiding behind the door. Her calm amazed me to the point that I didn’t believe she had really seen it, until I saw the mouse run down the hall an hour later. My body jolted, and tears began streaming down my face. This hysterical reaction has been a link between me and mice ever since I can remember.

So do I hold onto the phobia into the next 40 years? Do I embrace it, baby it by allowing the feelings to flow, unchallenged? At my family’s urging, I am trying, instead, to confront it. And so, I am trying to overcome my irrational fears by forcing rational moments into my consciousness.

We caught the mouse in a have-a-heart trap and put it into a zip-lock bag for a minute, before it was released outdoors. The children begged me to look at the “cute” mouse. I forced myself to have a peek. It seemed a lot smaller in the bag than it did when it was running down the hall. I had to concede that it was sort of cute. Beatrix Potter would have loved it.

Yet a few days later, I huddled once again, terrified by the sound of scampering feet. Why? Was the phobic seed the stereotypical picture of a woman standing on a chair, shrieking, while a mouse ran about the floor? Was it the story my grandmother told me as a child, about putting her foot in a shoe and feeling a mouse climb up her leg under her skirt?

A friend suggested I think of mice as teeny-tiny dogs. This helped. I heard this itsy-bitsy dog scurrying around in the night as I lay in bed, hoping it would find the cheese, peanut butter, and cashew in the have-a-heart trap in my closet. When my older daughter awoke in the morning, I asked her to check the trap.

“Mom!” she scolded. “It’s not a trap. It’s his crate.”

Ah, yes, of course. Alas, it was empty. Maybe tonight I will bait the crate with a dog biscuit. I wonder if he can be housebroken.

60-40:

Well, I can’t say that I have overcome my irrational fear of rodents, but it has softened. I really don’t mind mice if they stay outside where they belong! On the whole though, as I reflect back on how I felt about animals 20 years ago, I realize I have changed quite a bit.

My gradual awakening to the beauty of the rhythms of the natural world and all the creatures who live in it changed me. I have a sense of awe that has grown exponentially, and it fills me with a sense of wonder and gratitude for the greater world. Yes, even for mice. But I still hope they stay outside.