Explaining the Vixen in my Life

 If I start at the end, I might catch my breath. If I start at the beginning, it might make more sense. My dilemma is that I dont know where the beginning is. 

Her smell: Let's start with her smell. In winter, when we walk the trail through the woods, her musk fills the air. Not burn-your-eyes as bad a musk as a skunk, but still pervasive. We learned that she was using one of the downed black walnut trees for her den. In early spring, her tracks became more evident, presumably because she was leaving the den more often to find food for her litter. 

Spring turned into summer and the trail through the woods became deep with weeds and ticks. Our neighbor started seeing young kit foxes playing in her yard. I thought to myself, "what a great thing to see looking out your window!" Time passed.

Every now and then, I would catch sight of her fluffy tail and hindquarters dashing across the road, into the ditch and across the field. Weeks passed. The month of June began quiet and cool, but rainless. Early one morning, as I wandered through the garden, I found a little tuft of black and grey fur. When I bent to pick it up, it was the tail of a squirrel. No sign of the rest of it. 

The very next day I found a dead mole in our yard. Not eviscerated, so not killed by a cat. Interesting though in part because I have never seen a mole in our yard.

The following day was like someone opened the doors of the abattoir. One dead juvenile robin, one baby starling, one chipmunk. 

That night I could once again smell her faint musk on the air, almost skunk-like... but my eyes didn't burn. I closed the windows when the smell became too much for Nancy to bear. Somewhere in the early morning hours I heard something that can best be described as the sound of a kid screaming. It was obnoxious and loud. Loud enough to be heard through closed windows. At three in the morning, I assumed it was one of the local coyotes tormenting a fawn as often happens after the spring births. 

Early the next morning I went out and began string trimming the fence line. I had been running the machine maybe 20 minutes and was getting close to the corner of the fence that borders the woods. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I can see a flash of red midway up our deer fence. I stopped the machine, lifted my facemask, helmet and safety glasses off my face to find a red fox stuck, half way through the fence. Probably three feet off the ground, fully half of her body was through the fence, but her hips couldnt get through the wire fence. She was dangling off the ground, suspended by her hindquarters. She was doing everything she could to get out. Twisting up and through the fence, getting more and more stuck the harder she tried. But she wouldn't go backwards.  

I ran inside, trying to figure out how to explain what had happened. Leto was awake and starting to head into the shower when I caught them. I think I said something about call Wildlife Rehabilitation and maybe mentioned a friend of ours who cares for injured animals. Not terribly lucid. 

Then I put on my thick Carhartt jacket I save for when I need to prune the roses. Grabbed my heavy gloves and went back outside to see if there was a way I could coax the fox back out of the fence. 

By the time I got back to the corner, it was apparent that any effort I made to help her back up was going to be met with teeth. Not a happy patient. I called out to Leto to bring me pliers and maybe wire cutters. They came over to the corner with an armful of implements of destruction. Best of all, they brought the bolt cutters! Nice long reach to keep those teeth at bay!

I walked over calmly, speaking softly and reassuringly. I kept hoping that maybe she'd get the clue and just back out of the hole she was stuck in. Nope. She made one last twisting effort to get free which resulted in her bending backwards up and over herself, twisting almost 180 degrees so that her head and back feet touched but she was now looped through two holes in the fence mesh. Sigh.

The good news was that her bity end was now facing away from me, allowing me to get in closer with the bolt cutters. One swift cut and one tiny welded wire popped, and she was free. She left a tiny blooded tuft of fur and was gone! I stood there shaking for a good ten minutes. Then I started to cry. I was overwhelmed with the feeling of shame and guilt that I had left her in such a horrible precarious position all night long. I should have come out to figure out what the noise was all about. I should have checked on her. 

Now she was gone. Safe.

The next morning, I was out tending to the early summer growth of the thornless blackberries. It was time to start tying new canes into the trellis. I was occupied and my eyes were looking down when I heard a swift motion coming through the woods. Looking up I saw her climb halfway up the fence and then dive through the gap in the fence like it was a window. Swoosh! She was inside the yard. Walking towards me at a fair clip, sniffing everything as she ambled my way. With the blackberry brambles partially obscuring her view of me, she came within about six feet before she smelled me. Looking up she and I made eye contact. Held it. Then I asked her how she was doing. She tilted her head just like Georgia Rose used to. We called it Wookie-head-tilt. I think that was the moment she realized I wasn't a blackberry shrub. And without so much as a goodbye, she turned and was back up the fence and through the fence like it was water. Poof. Gone.

Once again, I stood there and shook. Just astonished to feel such great fortune to be a part of such a marvelous experience. Stillness. My heart beat so hard in my chest that I could hear it in my ears. I kept watching the woods, waiting to see movement in the undergrowth letting me know where she'd gone. Nothing. She was gone. 

 A few days later, I was sharing these stories with our neighbor on the other side of our little woods. Turns out, the fox had four kits this year. Even better, my neighbor had been taking photos and videos of the kits playing in her side yard. (These are Rebecca's images above)  Apparently tossing around the dead critters that the older fox had brought back for them. 

About a week later the foxes found their way into the chicken enclosure at Rebecca's house. Not a single chicken survived. No corpses. Nothing. A few days passed and I was working on digging out our new pond and I came across a few chicken feathers. Setting my eyes low into the brush, I found multiple half-eaten carcasses cached for later eating. All of which is to say, the foxes have all grown up nice and healthy. They are off on their own, learning to hunt throughout the fields and woods around us. Hopefully next spring, we'll see another litter of kits. 

Writing About Not Writing

 The simplest way to say it is abrupt. Like dropping a coffee cup on your foot. Now your toe hurts, you have a mess on the floor, and no coffee. But it's over. You can't spill it any further than the floor.

In therapy, I tried to explain my fear of putting the words down. Saying them out loud or writing them down... it became real. Suddenly I was responsible for the action of my words. Unsaid: they were bullets unfired, matches unlit. 

Knowing that it is over doesn't make the ending any easier. The words are still full of resentment and frustration and anger. None of that matters when it is actually OVER. When there is still hope, still some glimmer that things might change, resentment, frustration, anger and fear all play tag inside the mind. Some days, I feel like the last kid waiting to be chosen for a team, knowing full well I cant play worth a damn... but I dont want to be picked last. 

Each night, as the house winds down, I have been trying to sit and write. To compose ideas as much as to compose myself. But really, it is avoiding going upstairs to bed. Avoiding the conflict, avoiding the crying rage that inflicts my wife. Avoiding the stories I have heard hundreds of times now. Stories of abuse, neglect, trauma, and fear. All of her anxiety floods our bed with woe. She won't kiss me anymore. Not for years now. She blames the chiropractor who touched her years before we were married. I look around our house and I see memories of the love and compassion, now covered in shadows and cobwebs. 

She doesn't remember anything more than about 2 or three years ago. Except for her childhood. That is bright as sunshine and hot as summer asphalt. Indelible. College trauma is still like a new penny. But our life together for over twenty years may as well be written in cuneiform. It requires translation. Anything that jogs her memory only makes her afraid that she is losing more of her memory every day. If I say "remember when we _____?" The inevitable answer is no, followed by angry tears. Anger at me for remembering, anger at herself for having no memory of it at all, and then even more anger and fear that somehow everything about this recollection is a judgment. 

It has made me afraid to recall the time before now. We were happy once. Sure, there were antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, you name it. There were explosive violent times dealing with my ex-wife. There was the coma. There were all the surgeries after the coma. But we were happy once. There was always a future to look towards. 

So now that I have written this and stamped it into being... I have to say that writing it is easy. I haven't written much in the last two decades. Work stuff, emails and shit. Writing feelings, meaningful writing has eluded me probably for the same reason her memories refuse to come when she calls. They are afraid. I have been afraid to write the honest things that I feel out of fear that they will reveal things I am terrified to see in the daylight. 

A title is just a placeholder for what everything really means when you get to the end. Here we are, at the end. It's over. Maybe the title will change, maybe the ending will change. 

Everyday. Loneliness

 Every day that passes leaves me farther down the road. I imagined that by not dying, life would be easier. Instead I find myself wondering if I should have chosen differently. The road is hot and dry. Baked sun bounced off the tarmac burns the underside of my eyelids. Dry heat swells my tongue, leaving me wordless. 

For a time, Death was a friend I looked forward to visiting with. We spent a great many years together. It was a difficult relationship with lots of that c'mere, c'mere, go'way, go'way. The closer we got, the stronger the pull apart it seemed. So much time spent divvying up the record albums, over and over. 

Books on the shelf went into boxes. The assumption was that we would be moving. Forward. Onward. Instead we moved apart. The tiller that steered the ship broke. Then the mast snapped in two. Over five years now, adrift.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink. 

It is hard now, to look upon those boxes, sealed with tape and not to wonder if the pages still have words. Have the pictures faded too? Are the road maps stained with oil or with rat shit?

We have grown apart. You and I. In years past we stood back to back, cudgels in hand, ready to fight off all comers. Now we sit rooms apart, silent but for the solitary sounds within our heads. The music doesn't cross between us as it once did. Even the bread grows stale. Only shadows are shared, overlapping but never becoming one. 

Each passing day leaves me wondering if I have enough shoe leather for another journey. My lungs are filled with water. My eyes are rheumy too. All this water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. 

Weeks without rain have left me cracked inside, dust falling softly into dark places. My wooden joints ache with stiffness even in repose. Relax they said. I was better off walking. At least then my legs could carry this burden.