Vignettes

November 4, 2019

Greetings from the vignettes,

I was running down a narrow road one mile from my house and I saw a deer frozen in the lane ahead of me, posed like he wanted to be on a Deer Xing sign.  Anyone who lives nearby knows that if there is one there will be others.  Beyond the hill in front of me I could hear a car coming.

I watched as another deer pranced across the road, and the two of them disappeared in the brush.  To my right I saw a few more dawdling there, browsing for whatever deer are interested in.  The car crested the hill, a small sports car, moving too fast.  I knew he could not see the rest of the deer, hidden by trees.  I was running toward where they would meet, already seeing the timing would be tragic.   I moved into the middle of the lane so the driver would have to see me and began waving my arms wildly.  He would not know what was going on, but I hoped I would make him wonder.  I heard the engine sound change and I sensed he had seen me, perhaps was slowing.  And then the rest of the deer walked into the road in front of him.

It occurred to me after how unique the interaction was to each player; the runner, the deer, the driver of the car.  We all left slightly different for different reasons.  And there were echoes from other days.

Earlier in the week I was driving to work, down a busy five lane road, and drove past a woman walking in the grass between businesses.  There is no sidewalk here, she was carrying the ubiquitous white plastic bag, from Rite Aid or the Dollar General. I drive by people in this same situation, on their way to the apartments nearby, or to work or to the bus stop, but that day, rainy and cold, I decided to see if she needed a ride.  I rolled down my window and slowed to ask her.

Behind me a man in a truck, clearly not knowing what I was doing, leaned on his horn.  I rolled down my window and waved him around, which may have looked like something else, and that made it worse.  When he roared around me, he blared the horn again and waved back, using the universal sign for disapproval.  I glanced at the woman who was now moving way away from the curb, wanting nothing to do with whatever poison was being whipped up.  Now the moment was awkward and spent.

I drove on.  I didn’t put it into the right words then, but this morning I realize again how unique the interaction was to each of us in that thirty second tableau.  I imagine each of us went on into our day telling our version of the scene, each with a color the others of us would be surprised by.

On a different day I yelled upstairs to Suzanne: “Could you bring me an old pair of my running shoes?” Which prompted: “How do I know which is an old pair?” I realized immediately this was a fair question. I counted later and discovered there are nine pair of running shoes in my closet.

“Bring the brightest pair.”  I said, a little frantically.  I was not thinking clearly; just minutes before I was in my neighbor Pam’s basement witnessing a chaotic fountain of water spraying where typical homeowners would prefer it did not.  I had run home to get tools, and a pair of shoes I could sacrifice to the water, a situation Nike did not foresee.  

A couple minutes later I was soaked from standing in the torrent, desperately trying to hold two pipes together to staunch the flow, wondering in one corner of my mind about being electrocuted. After, disaster suspended, all the energy spent, we were all different people, slowly settling into whatever perspective we would take from the moment.  Each would tell a version of the moment from our own experience, shared as it was. 

Another day, under a smudged grey sky, rain soaking the outside world.  Standing on a narrow, worn porch in neighborhood where abandoned houses rivaled the occupied holdouts.  We were working, my protégé Jeff and me.  I knocked at the door, smelled the cannabis, and Jeff stepped up behind me and held an umbrella over my head.  He is well dressed, taller and younger, and I imagined that when the man came to the door it would look like I brought my butler with me to keep me dry.  I managed not to laugh as the door opened.  Later his mother would come in saying “I saw you on the porch and thought you was religious people.” And said something in vivid terms that illustrated her disapproval of that possibility.  In the days since then I wondered what all four people thought of our brief intersection, with all the contrasts, and the strange humor.

Yesterday I ran along the river and then into the woods, weaving through the trees; the entire forest was carpeted with yellow maple leaves.  Ahead of me a dozen deer ran up the path and melted into the colors in front of me.  If you were watching from the path, you might have thought I was running with them.  I followed them up to the top of a bluff and listened to them chuffing in the trees, tiny snaps of branches and the crisp sound of hooves on leaves.  I stood there, high above the river, and listened to the morning around me.  I could feel it settle on me.  I waited, feeling my pulse everywhere, felt the world turning, and silence pushing back against the tiny noise of the leaves, tick tick tick, as they fell.

Running back down that hill I was watching my feet, picking through the roots and rocks, still covered with leaves, and so I was not looking ahead of me and nearly collided with a full-grown doe.  I skidded to a stop two yards from her, and she stepped casually to the side.

“Didn’t you hear me coming?” I asked without thinking.  The doe did not reply.  She stepped a few feet away and turned to look at me.  She leaned down and selected an acorn and raised back up, chewing.  I could hear the nut crack in her mouth, heard the sound of her tongue working the shell and spitting out.  It was so clear, so defined, it was unsettling.  I couldn’t name the emotion. 

I bent and picked up an acorn and tossed it to her, now ten feet away.  She bent, pushed a leaf out of the way to find what I had thrown, and then selected it with her lips and looked at me and ate it. It was an intimate moment, this strange connection of species.  After eating a few more nuts I tossed to her, she moved silently into the brush. 

I laughed as I ran away.  I laughed until I could feel the tears on my face.  I didn’t think about why, it just poured out of me.  I ran past a group of runners going the other way, still laughing, and I am positive that I was as topic of conversation.  They could not have imagined what had just happened or what strange beauty had overwhelmed me.  If I could have explained to them, somehow, what I had just seen, I suspect the telling would have spoiled it.  A mile later I knew what had possessed me.  Delight.  Pure, unspoiled, unfiltered delight.

This morning I have been sitting here waiting for these words to form.  I looked at my reflection in the window in front of me and imagined someone’s face looking at me through the glass. You.

You would be seeing me, understanding my perspective, how I felt about each confluence of events, each person I saw and how they responded.  Deer and man and woman and rain and forest and the feelings they all inspired.  You would see amazement.

It is why I am writing these words, probably why I always write them.  The hope is that if somehow you see how I am thinking, how others have felt or thought, it will change things for you, for the better.  It might create a pause during your day when you wonder about the next person you meet.  The truth is, it might be what is most important today; to seek to understand and be understood. 

Hope this finds you expecting,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith