We’ve never had a duck in our yard before. It was a delightful surprise when I went to open the shutters. Perhaps even more surprising, “canard,” was the word that popped into my head (french for duck).
That is the very thing that keeps me coming back to the page, the canvas, the morning shutter — this belief in the unexpected. This hope that I’ll see something new. Create something new. Feel something waddle across my heart.
And it’s never been about shock. Shock is simple. Anyone can severely rattle and create a response. But to find the beauty in the simple. To see the spectacular in life’s gentle and daily offerings, this, I think, is the extraordinary.
It may not sound like much, but for me it was a sign of learning. A sign of growth. And without that, what am I in this for? Sure it may be at a waddler’s pace, but I am learning continuously about life. And this is hope. This is joy!
He was a few years younger than us. Not that many if you counted them now, but in high school a couple of years made a big difference. And it was those few years that made us call him Pauly, not Paul. Just one little letter, a y, to differentiate.
He was my best friend’s brother. I had already learned that bad things could happen. Not just little things like a poor grade or a sack lunch you didn’t like, but gut-wrenching things, life altering things. But they hadn’t yet. So it was not only the news that shook them, but the surprise of it all.
And Hemingway had warned us in our English prep class. Told us how we expected to be sad in the fall, but not in summer. I could hear the change in her voice. How this brilliant sun-filled day had broken them, along with Pauly’s spine. He chose to dive and not fall off the shallow dock. And with that one impulse changed the course of everything. Changed the “y” to “why?”…and just like that Pauly became Paul.
We don’t always get to be ready before we’re asked to grow. Rarely, I suppose. But we will be asked. All. And we won’t be given the answers to the questions. But we will be given the chance. The spring.
I saw the blooming trees on my walk yesterday. And I thought of him. How far he had come from the endless days at the hospital. And I smiled because the why had returned to a y, and he was Pauly again. I touched the pink surprise of the bloom, and kept walking.
I was thirty-something when my bike was stolen. I ran up to my apartment for just a few minutes. Left the garage door open. How quickly things slip away. When I returned, it was gone. I called the police to report it. I remember thinking how casually he walked, this police officer, to my garage door. Like he saw it every day. Well… He asked for the brand and style of bike. I asked if they ever found them. “No,” he said. And then he proceeded to talk about how the drainage system in our garages wasn’t correct. So that was it? My beautiful bike was gone and we were talking drainage. He put the report in his pocket and left.
I stood alone in front of my open, improperly drained garage, and thought about my first bike. My beautiful banana seat bike that I pedaled into the ground. That I abandoned in ditches on VanDyke road. In the Olson’s Supermarket parking lot while I ran in to cool off in the refrigerated section. In the front lawn of the public library while I read for hours. On the beaches of Lake Latoka while I splashed until summer’s end. I stood in the gaping mouth of my open garage, missing much more than my bike, wanting so desperately to feel surprised. Wanting to be that banana seat bike riding girl, that girl who trusted everything and everyone.
I wrote about it — that beautiful feeling of trust — in my book, Leap of Faith:
“It was the greatest. All my friends loved it. (my banana seat bike) But Ididn’t even need a lock for it. Nobody ever stole bikes from the beach. It was kind of like our sacred ground. . . and we knew that in order to get to our sacred ground, you had to have a bike, and to take that away from someone, to take away their chance to fly on the way to that glorious one of 10,000 lakes, well that would just be a terrible crime, so we didn’t do it. I don’t think I realized how beautiful life without mistrust really was. . .How could I know? You can’t. . .until it is taken away — and only in those rare moments, when you let yourself remember innocence, can you feel the slip of beauty.”
I reread that passage often, and I think, as Joan Didion wrote in her book, Slouching towards Bethlehem, “Was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was.”
Not that much surprised her anymore and she felt badly about that. She wanted to live in a world where it was surprising when someone left the one they promised to love. In a world where the words homeless and lonely weren’t commonplace. A world that was surprised, horrified, by violence and lies. Where it was simply unheard of to hurt a child. Where were all the surprises? Where was the pure and astonishing beauty of kindness? Was she foolish to believe such a world could exist?
This morning at breakfast I tasted something for the first time. When making jam, you have to boil the fruit with sugar for a long time. As it boils, a frothy substance rises to the top. Google told me that you spoon that off so your jam isn’t cloudy. Dominique told me to save it. It seemed strange to me, but so far, he hasn’t led me astray, so I saved it. We put it onto our croissants this morning. It was the most creamy, peachy deliciousness I have ever tasted. I guess goodness still rises to the top. I have tasted it. I believe in it.
Just the fact that I can trust the person that sits across my breakfast table, with my whole heart, is a beautiful surprise. The world may not be a perfectly surprising place anymore, but some people still are… therein lies the hope, and the most beautiful surprises of all.
