A sky full of eagles
Take a deep breath, run faster
Last week, I stepped out of the house and left my 4-year-old alone with a bowl of frozen blueberries to snack on. This is not remarkable—he loves frozen blueberries, has a mouth full of teeth, and often prefers to sit with a book instead of coming outside on a frigid morning to do chores. The blueberries were small, he’s a slow and methodical eater, and I was close by, searching for the spot in our fence the dogs are using to escape. But after a few minutes, the image of my son asphyxiating on a blueberry came rushing into my mind.
I’ve had my share of anxiety in life, but it has never taken this particular form. Catastrophizing—that’s the term, one that I’ve only learned recently. It’s my mind making leaps. It’s taking a bruise on my son’s leg and worrying it’s leukemia. It’s watching the horses run in a slick field and waiting for a broken leg. It happens so quickly that all the steps between the noticing and the nightmare aren’t even a blur outside the window of my speeding mind. I’m just there, in one jump.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been able to approach worries or problems one step at a time. It’s the way I move through the world. It’s what makes me a good project manager, a good mother, a good writer. I can work through things.
But a series of unrelated events—the painful illness of my dog and his death, a 5-year-old friend’s near-fatal drowning accident, and another’s cancer diagnosis, not to mention the atrocities being inflicted on the Palestinian people, have combined to leave me in a particularly anxiety-riddled state. Maybe it’s the same for you.
I rushed through the yard, the rational side of my mind and the irrational side of my mind screaming at me, simultaneously—something I didn’t realize was possible until that moment. One part of my brain told me I was overreacting, that I was turning into my mother, who worries over many small things. If I can’t calm down, what does that say about who I am? I took a series of deep breaths. The other part told me to run faster, that he was dying or, perhaps, was already dead. I ran faster.
From the door, I called his name. “What?” he asked, looking up quickly at my tone, his mouth and fingers stained a deep purple. “What’s wrong, mama?”
When my husband and I first moved to the farm nine years ago, I worried incessantly about a bald eagle taking one of my two brother cats. I tried keeping them inside for a time, looked into reflective collars, and hung bells around their necks that were promptly lost in the tall grass. Every time I heard the peculiar call of an eagle and saw its shadow racing across the ground, I whirled in a circle, heart thumping, ready to save a cat.
Over the years, that fear has subsided. The bald eagles are preoccupied in their battles with the crows and have plentiful fish to eat out of our wide, winding creek. We have so many eagles on our land that I sometimes joke we’re inadvertently running a sanctuary. When people ask me when we’re going to get chickens, I gesture to the sky. No time soon.
The cats, too, have shown themselves to be savvy beyond my comprehension. They know every hollow, tree limb, and secret spot on this place and will often surprise you by popping out when you think they’re snoozing on a sunny window ledge in the house. They shepherd me from place to place, sometimes following along, sometimes running ahead. They watch traffic go by (when it does come by) before crossing the road and know which dogs are friendly and which should be hidden from. They seem, at times, to be fully omniscient, and I find comfort in this.
It’s been years since I’ve worried this particular worry, but then, just this morning, I heard the cry of a bald eagle. My old fear was there in an instant. I saw one of my champagne-colored cats clutched in the claws of an eagle in my mind. I whirled around, adrenaline surging, but there they both were, green-eyed, watching me from the porch.
I had to laugh. What else is there to do?
Holly - yes. I am the same. My attention to detail, the ability to think outside the box, and calmly find solutions amidst the chaos makes me an excellent producer for creative endeavours. Yet, like you, those very traits, when mixed with high anxiety can distort and catastrophically rearrange my calm into frantic in one short leap. The eagles, the cats, the death of your beloved dog, the near drowning of a child, a cancer diagnosis and the horrible loss of life in war - are valid triggers. I would be running back to check on my child, too. I struggle between listening to my gut versus my rather creative brain driven anxiety. Bottom line: Laughing at it is a kind and gracious solution to this ongoing dramatic, daily dilemma. Thank you.
I, TOO, am a fatalist. I wasn't born that way. In fact, I was a serial risk taker throwing caution to the wind at every turn. But from many life experiences, now, when I play the movie forward, just the anticipatory thoughts send my heart into overdrive. Up until four years ago we lived on a small farm. I worried daily about Clifford, our lovely orange cat, being picked from the sky by an eagle. Or worse, a coyote sneaking out from the blackberry bushes. I come by that fear honestly having seen a stellar jay plucked from the peanut feeder by a hawk while I was gardening one day. Right before my eyes! An entire flock of jays happily and noisily feeding while I was leaning into a veggie bed when suddenly, a hawk swooped in and grabbed one by the wing. It swept that jay up and away with a chorus of jays squawking angrily in quick pursuit. I leaped over the pasture fence with my dog and raced across that field as if my shoes could take me airborne. Screaming and shouting all the way! No luck. The raucous cries from me, my dog, the jay's family flock all disappeared into the sky along with the hawk. Farming is physical. But it also hurts the heart. I wish I could desensitize what has become so fatalistic. I'm in need of a serious deprogramming. When I see a stray dog or cat posted on our local FB page I can practically hear the tires screech and a 'thump'. When I see a picture of a tear-stained face from a little child in Gaza, or piles of rubble and animals roaming for food, I practically stop breathing and can hear my heart beat in my ears.
It's a beautiful day here on the west coast. Heading out to hike my dog. A daily settling of the conflagration of emotions I feel daily. I love your posts as they stir up so much in me.