11 things after a deer sighting

The ephemeral nature of awe

There are TWO SPOTS left for the 2024 Sound of Real Life Happening group. We will write 11 things each day for 11 days at a time, once per season beginning Thursday! This is going to be a very special group of humans. Won’t you join us?

11 things after a deer sighting

1. Several days now of the teensiest possibility of getting sick – low-grade fever over the weekend, scratch in my throat, a sniffle. I don’t think I’m sick but I’m also being hyper-vigilant. Everything is going around. Covid is back with a new strain and a vengeance, along with colds, flu, RSV, stomach bugs. 

2. We’re lying in bed under the heavy blankets, facing each other. My breath could drive off a coven of vampires. I’ve been eating spoonfuls of raw garlic in honey throughout the day, chased by hot water. We are talking about deep things but the intensity of my breath brings a bout of laughter. 

3. I’ve been instructed to be presentable by 9:30am. My birthday is in five days, and apparently, today is an early present. I have no idea what it could be. I’m at my desk writing 11s, a giant water tumbler with two packets of raspberry-flavored Emergen-C. I am so determined. As if determined could deter illness. If only that were true, but this reality check will not keep me from trying. 

4. The stories we tell about what others may or may not be thinking, saying, feeling, experiencing, or doing… The older I get, the more I believe that developing the practice of observing one’s thoughts is not just a good idea but a crucial life skill. 

5. I’m standing at the kitchen counter mincing garlic for today’s elixir. It’s early, but I’ve already been up for an hour or so. Yesterday’s blue sky has gone grey, and the snow cover is welcome after weeks of weirdly mild, rainy weather so far this winter. I glance up and my eyes widen: Two deer at the edge of the backyard. 

6. We hear a lot about awe. There are books about it. There is research about its effect on our brains and our nervous systems. There are self-help courses designed around it. And then there is this moment, where I am not thinking about awe but rather experiencing it. I watch the deer as they forage. One seems to hang back and barely moves; I get the feeling he is perhaps standing watch while the female pulls berries from bushes a bit more exposed to the world. She stands on her hind legs, grabbing onto a branch. I squat on the loveseat peering out the windows of the cold sunroom, watching, marveling, feeling wondrously lucky. 

7. A few years ago, a coyote crossed our path. We were driving through a neighborhood in Rhode Island, where we had gone for a few nights to an Airbnb that turned out to be terrible. The coyote was quite large, and he sauntered across the road mere feet from our front bumper, unbothered and not in a hurry. Amidst the manicured lawns it looked wild and feral, as if to challenge us to see what was real and what was illusion. 

8. “Are you afraid of change?” is one of the questions I found when I googled coyote symbolism. When we moved into this house in August 2022, I heard the coyotes at night. The first time, I almost called 911; it’s awful to say but it sounded like children being murdered, the most bone-chilling screams coming from deep in the woods. Eventually, I got used to the sound, though it still startles something primal in me. 

9. Walking with my infant son in a front pack, his three-and-a-half-year-old big sister holding my hand as we crossed the street to get ice cream cones by the lake one evening, the most encompassing sensation of knowing myself as a mother overcame me. Like seeing the deer this morning, this was not an intellectual or cognitive moment but an embodied one. I distinctly remember the feeling – a mixture of complete presence, belonging, and peace. This, too, was a kind of awe, a wonder, the feeling of tremendous luck in life to be there just then, my daughter’s face sticky with sprinkles, my baby with his fuzzy tufts of hair. 

10. The thing with awe is that it’s big. It eclipses, if only for fleeting moments, our minds that constantly judge and evaluate, fault and fix, react and rationalize, plan and plot. If you seek the etymology of awe, you will find the Old English ege, meaning “terror, dread, awe.” The Hebrew word for awe is yirah, which also means fear. Why do we fear that which might also evoke reverence? Maybe it reminds us of how small and fragile our lives are. How susceptible to illness and loss. Maybe the fleeting nature of awe-filled moments makes us experience our mortality more acutely. Maybe those moments, like the deer, come to say: Instead of fearing change, embrace every moment exactly because it is all so ephemeral.

11. Other sightings this past year included black bears and a bobcat, owls and hawks, and the smaller critters like chipmunks and squirrels who leave little holes all over the yard. We are visitors here, not the other way around. I think about all the ways I have judged myself harshly and I picture the deer. Their message is one of gentleness and grace. I worry about them, knowing heavy rains are coming. They know how to cope with winter but none of us knows how to cope with these changes, faster and more furious with every passing year. I have been instructed to stay in the office while the surprise comes. I wonder what it will be. I am in awe of life. My beautiful kids are now 21 and nearly 18, my spouse and I will celebrate our 10th anniversary this year, and I get to write, create, and connect for a living. Instead of looking for sufficient words for my gratitude, I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. Heat rising, dog snoring, clock ticking, breath breathing – these are the sounds of real life happening.

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