This weekend, I am full of gratitude to be at the little cabin on a farm that I have been coming to twice a year for the last three years in order to write. This time, I’m also here to rest after my world turned upside down in the last four weeks (it’s so hard to believe it’s almost been four weeks!).
The days are full of the crunch of frost on frozen fields, the wind through stripped trees, flights of ravens and blue jays, the hum of the refrigerator, the woodstove clicking in heat. I’ve slept for long chunks of time. I’ve nourished and felt pleasure in the nourishing of my body with good food and tea and water.
But for the first time since I’ve been coming here, there’s been a new sound—cats sharpening their paws on the post beam near the back door and mewling to get in.
We are decidedly hungry!
When I pulled up in my car on Friday night, four cats came crawling out from under the front porch to greet me. They looked well fed, but cold. I sent the owner of the cabin a message asking if she would like me to keep them outside or if there was food I could give them or if she would prefer I do neither. She replied that she’d seen someone throw a pregnant cat from a moving car on the road. She’d made a nest for the cat in the garage and regularly fills up a food dish. The cat has since had three kittens, and whenever I step out the door to get firewood or go for a walk or to breathe some fresh winter air, the cats are there, hovering and pleading to get in. If they see me in the kitchen, they prowl around the windows. As I write, I can see them scampering after mice and leaves in the wind.
My heart, of course, wants to let them in. It is -15 out today, with snow coming. But they are feral and the owner rightly does not want them in her home. So, I say hello, then shoo them away. It doesn’t feel good or right.
This is How I Can Help
All of this has led to thoughts about offering — warmth, food, touch — heightened by things I’ve already been chewing on. Yesterday, I sent out a short essay on my TinyLetter space about how asking people how are we doing? falls short of what’s truly needed in human interaction. One of my very dear and wise yoga students/ teachers replied that an alternate, better question is “are you hungry?” (What would I do without my fellow seekers?)
My soup would not look this fancy. Just saying.
It’s such a simple question, yet somehow it gets right down into the belly of being a human. It allows for a simple response: yes or no. If the person is physically hungry, we can prepare them a meal, grilled cheese, say or soup or chocolate brownies. While I tend to fall into a thinking trap where food is something to be controlled, food, when offered this way, is love. It demands nothing. It says here. Rest. Eat. This is why people bring food when catastrophe strikes (for which I am so thankful). They are saying I love you. They are saying this is how I can help.
And maybe, if you ask the question, the person will respond with a need that runs deeper. Maybe if they say yes, they are speaking to the river running through them that they can’t find their footing in, that they can’t name, that they can’t manage to swim through to the bank, to grab hold of a rock or a tree root or overhanging branch.
This can be a grim place to be and a grim place to witness, especially when we can’t ourselves pull our friend out of that river. But maybe we can try to sit beside them in their suffering.
We’ll Probably Fail A Thousand Times
This sounds all well and good, I know. It’s hard. It requires us to climb out of our own cold rivers, which I myself am really and truly not very good at. It requires us to set aside our agenda for that moment in time, to put aside the things we must be doing (work, vacuuming, changing the litter). It asks us to make time. It asks us to climb over the barriers we build and society builds around us. And we’ll probably fail a thousand times before we get that one time right.
As I was packing to come here, my nine-year-old son came home from a long day rehearsing the school musical on a PA day. He and his sister started to fight. She said some unkind words, he kicked her. I yelled and sent them both to their rooms. I could hear him sobbing through the ceiling. I don’t have time for this, I thought. What is his problem?
Then I heard him fall off his bed, and the sobs escalated. I marched upstairs still in a pique, threw open his door and said, What is going on? Why on earth are you crying?
And my sobbing child on the floor said, I don’t know.
And something in that response made me grab hold of a branch in my own river, climb out to the bank, and see the little boy drowning in something he couldn’t understand. Many times in the past, I’ve chosen not to see, but somehow, in that moment, I chose to be there. I asked if he needed a hug. He climbed into my lap and we rocked in a chair for a few minutes.
Are you hungry? I asked.
Yes, he said.