Peckers of the World Unite!

The colony of acorn woodpeckers that lives in the three oaks next to my house is worth telling about. Since we're next-door neighbors and the birds live their lives in the open, I've learned some of their habits by observation. What I've seen has driven me to bird books, for which I thank my grandfather and my mother, and possibly their grandfathers too, because I've read that reading is a learned behavior.

Both my mother and my Granddad carried nature-identification books into the forests and deserts we visited, and I remember the pair of them, sometimes with my aunt or uncles, poring over the guide books at picnic tables, laboriously trying to identify--by studying the minute features of it--some particular tree or bird or flower. They could spend what seemed like hours doing this. And some of the family still can't visit nature, or even our back yards sometimes, without hauling out the reference books and binoculars.

The acorn woodpecker excited the last nature discussions I remember having with Mom and family members. We're fortunate here in the oak woodlands to have these birds; their range is small, and from what my books tell me, they seem unique among woodpeckers. Both males and females wear a red cap and a black and white tuxedo, and they're exceedingly busy in the fall with their acorn harvest.

One of my three oaks is what's called a granary tree: This one large oak is where they store their harvest, in holes peppered all up and down the length of the tree's trunk and arcing out into its branches. It looks like this:

The woodpeckers in my oaks are great stewards of their resources.

The wonderful thing, the unique thing, about these woodpeckers is their community. They live as a colony in these three trees. Everyone harvests, everyone works hard poking acorns into well-worn holes, everyone helps. They share in the work, and they share in the bounty. We wondered if they harvest grubs that might grow in the stored acorns, but the books say they dine all year on acorns themselves (with insects as a side dish), stored meticulously in the granary tree, in holes that are reused and carefully selected for each individual acorn.

Lunch menu: Would you like it roasted, or perhaps in a wrap?

They even cooperate in raising their young, from sharing the duties of incubating the eggs to sharing the endless chore of feeding the young and, finally, training them to fly. The young belong to everyone.

I have seen this colony of woodpeckers work together also to fend off an onslaught of starlings that appeared one day earlier this year. The woodpeckers unified to protect their interest in the three oaks. Even though the numbers of starlings and woodpeckers seemed about even, after several hours of strategic swooping and chattering, the woodpeckers convinced the starlings to set up house elsewhere.

Together they protect their habitat. They are a sustainable community, taking care of their land and resources, reusing the same holes year after year. They diversify by consuming crops from different varieties of oaks, and they maintain emergency supplies, living on nature's bounty of insects when that "crop" is available.

They share in the rearing of their offspring, cooperating in raising up a new brood of responsible woodpeckers and sending them off to find new communities elsewhere, thus keeping their population stable and not overtaxing their resources.

It appears to me that the acorn woodpeckers illustrate the life of a good community. I hope my community's leaders make decisions that use our resources well and protect our habitat. I hope the spirit of cooperation flourishes in the state, national, and global level, that we and our leaders all work hard to be good stewards and share the bounty of our efforts with those less fortunate than we are.

The best I can do to make that happen is to bring such a spirit with me into this one day, today, and be alert with the people who come across my path this day, then keep on doing that, one day at a time.

It's easy, as one of the "99 percent," to feel overwhelmed, ignored, and powerless. But I fight to believe that my actions, my mindfulness, in the small sphere of my daily life makes a difference one human being at a time, one day at a time. I believe in the ripples in the pond: that my responsible, kind, thoughtful actions with the people I meet are used by the Creator to spread to others, in the same way they were passed on to me. May God bless us, every one, with an awareness of the small, but global, ripple effect of our personal actions in this new year.


Acorn Woodpecker courtesy Wikipedia

Just to prove I don't sit around all the time pondering nature and serious social issues, here is a recent poem inspired by these birds:

Two Woodpeckers Sitting on a Church Steeple


One woodpecker says to the other,
I’ve lost my pecker.
The second woodpecker says to the first,
It’s hanging there right under your nose, dude.
The first woodpecker says,
That’s not my pecker, idiot, that’s my beak.
They look at each other.
The second woodpecker says to the first,
Well, where’s your pecker then?
The first woodpecker says,
If I knew that, my pecker wouldn’t be lost.
They look at each other.
The sun goes down behind the steeple.





Top photo credit: Victory Dance and Family Feast, courtesy ShareTheRoad Productions

Chaos Theory in Relationships

I’m thinking hard about chaos. It is not just a theory. It is people! It is relationships with people!

What a messy business!

Chaos: a state of complete disorder and confusion.

Chaos Theory: a theory that complex natural systems obey rules but are so sensitive that small initial changes can cause unexpected final results, thus giving an impression of randomness.

Relational Chaos: I tell Myra that I like Joan’s new haircut. Myra tells Joan I think she’s cute. Joan tells my boyfriend that I’m gay. He ditches me and moves to Arkansas with Joan.

Relational Chaos Theory: While I sit around thinking broken-hearted thoughts about Joan and my boyfriend, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t opened my mouth.

While I was busy wringing my hands recently about relational chaos, here’s what I could have read in the little “Twenty-Four Hours a Day” book if I’d opened it like I should have done before starting my day in the chaotic world of people and relationships:

“He who made the ordered world out of chaos and set the stars in their courses and made each plant to know its season, He can bring peace and order out of your private chaos if you will let Him. God is watching over you, too, to bless you and care for you. Out of the darkness He is leading you to light, out of unrest to rest, out of disorder to order, out of faults and failure to success. You belong to God and your affairs are His affairs and can be ordered by Him if you are willing.”

So this is why I pick up that little book, I thought when I read it today. And now, this is what my little soul looks like:

Order.

It’s easier to eat crow warm while it's warm

I made a mistake in one of my magazine articles last month and I had to write an erratum for the upcoming issue. For fun I looked up quotes on the subject of being wrong:

“When you realize you've made a mistake, make amends immediately. It's easier to eat crow while it's still warm.” This is attributed to a gent named Dan Heist and seems to be the only thing he’s noted for. I couldn’t find anything else about him.

And then there was this from Yogi Berra, who knew whereof he spoke: “We made too many wrong mistakes.”

I especially liked this one from British broadcaster John Peel: “I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.”

My blunder was just sloppy research, not clever, but it got me thinking about a recurring topic in my household: How can two people with opposing viewpoints hold a courteous discussion, supposing one of them thinks the other is mistaken?

After two decades of discussing things with me, my husband, Joe, has a viable answer. In fact, he often is asked by friends if he will perform marriage counseling services for them (he politely declines). “The four most important words in a marriage,” he says, “are ‘Honey, I was wrong.’”

He’s right. I’ve forgiven him countless times. And vice versa. I know his method works because we celebrate 19 years of wedded bliss next week. Ogden Nash put it this way: “To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up.”

Mistakes can be useful in personal relationships. They give us the opportunity to be wrong for a change, which is restful since we all work so hard to be right all the time.

I’ve noticed we’re pretty quick to tell somebody he or she is wrong, especially when it concerns politics, religion, and family matters. This is based on faulty logic, that two people can’t both be right at the same time. It’s the gunslinger in us. “There’s room for only one opinion in this town, and that’s mine.”

In an AA meeting last week, a friend of mine said, “I often mistake my values and judgments for the Truth.” I think we’re all very nervous about ourselves, and we soothe those anxieties by insisting we harbor our beliefs because they are “true” in terms of reality or fact. If our views are right, then views that differ from ours are wrong. We even feel led to convince each other of such verdicts.

We mistake our opinions for facts. We also don’t know how to coexist with divergent perspectives. Even our language reflects this adversarial thinking. People have “opposing viewpoints” and “conflicting opinions.” From the get-go, we’re opponents in a boxing ring. Starting out as adversaries doesn’t bode well for discussions between husband and wife, parent and teenager, or any other duo. Pretty soon everyone will be blaming everyone else for being wrong, and dedicated to proving it.

I think we all need lots of reassurance, and we all find reassurance hard to give. It takes enormous effort to put our defenses on the back burner and encourage the other person. And getting both parties to do it at the same time? It’s a wonder our relationships survive. Many times Joe and I have tried to talk to each other about a prickly thing, each of us trying to choose our words wisely, but then I interpret something he said in the light of my own defensiveness, and immediately I stop being willing to reassure and become devoted to proving him wrong. Many times I have carefully used “I” words but he heard those blaming “You” words, and we wound up in the boxing ring again.

But I’ve learned that if I work at it, I can suspend my commitment to being right just a little bit more. We human beings respond well to loving reassurance that what we feel and think is important. I’ve got to give that reassurance if I want to get it. I’ve got to model it in my own behavior. I’m talking with someone I care about, for Pete’s sake. You’d think it would be easy to remember that affection even when we’re in conflict. But no. I’m too busy mistaking my opinions for facts again.

Joe and I get the best results out of our “discussions” if we give each other plenty of strokes, like admitting I am overreacting, admitting I am overly worried about myself and forgetting to think about him, admitting my flaws and my vulnerable feelings, admitting my love, my ignorance, and my desire to understand. It’s hard work, being loving, isn’t it?

About the photo: Yes, it isn't a crow; it's a blue jay. But it's eyeballing a crow, a warm crow, just out of camera range.

How Torture Turned Into Love

Coffee Love
Love has everything to do with coffee in our household. Joe loves me through coffee as thoroughly as he loves me in all the conventional ways.
When I arise in the morning, he has prepared my Mr. Coffee so all I have to do is touch a button. He does this at 4:30 a.m. while he readies for the gym. It is, for him, a loud and clear statement of his cherishing me, as clear as a diamond ring.

I receive that gift each morning when I rise at seven. Most days in my self-centeredness I fail to appreciate the fact that all I need to do is press the Brew button. Only occasionally do I pause and marvel at the love within a simple pot of coffee. For so long has he loved me this way, I forget that love is what fills my coffee cup.

I once thought love was a verbal declaration. If a desirable man spoke it, I pursued that man to the ends of the earth just so I could hear that soul-nourishing phrase again and again.
I repeatedly failed in such pursuits.

The men I tracked hightailed it to the hills for good reason: I pursued a man long after he grew tired of saying the magic phrase, long after I ceased to be the wonderful woman who warranted worship. I think I tried to lay hands on men who wanted miracles, forgiveness of sins, fine meals out of soda crackers, and other suitably godlike acts.

Hungry for love, I was a she-wolf in search of a meal. I thought love was a compulsion to worship and have riotous sex. The words were the nourishment I craved.

It was only through numerous miserable escapades that I became willing to adjust my concept of love. When I met Joe, I learned to recognize both my humanity and his. Our love is a desire to be kind, to accept calluses and farts, to find comfort in one another’s company.
The love expressed in that morning cup of coffee has the freedom of kindness within it. I shake my head in wonder at the love in the man. Then I drink my coffee. I drink it all.



Tracking

Twilight falls on me
belly to cold ground
nose pressed to the
imprint of your foot
searching for the
scent of you.
I am in hot pursuit:

However cold grows your trail
I’ll not abandon it.
I am the shadow
which trails behind.
I shall lay hands on you.



Chris Alba (c) 2009

I Used to Love Torture

Once upon a time, I was addicted to bad relationships. I must have loved torture.
Today I'm grateful that I can choose to have healthy relationships with people. Today I'm grateful to be in recovery, where I have learned everything I know about living life fully and making good decisions.
You know what tortures me today (besides everything that's evil in the world)? Those stupid tags they stitch into clothing, at the neckline, on the waistband, where they rub your tender skin. Who decided that stitching labels to clothing with fishing line was a good idea? Who decided that tags with sharp edges were just the thing to put on a neckline and a waistband? Whoever invented those stupid tags should be sentenced to wearing them all over their body, all day, all night, rubbing, irritating, torturing their stupid hides.

But enough of that. Let's talk about bad relationships. I've had my share. Drama and pain made me feel alive. Shoot, I actually thought suffering was artistic. LOL
I was such an artist at tortured relationships that I wrote this lyric poem about it (Warning: This poem contains rhyme!):

She Must Have Been a Masochist

Gentle jailor, blessed foe,
If you broke this yoke I would not go,
Nor would I were the lock ajar,
The cuffs uncuffed and the lash laid low—
If free of such, I’d not fly far
Before I craved the clutch of iron and chain
And my cold bed, where I have lain
And carved my name in stone
More nights than stars have known.
I know no home beyond these bars and claim
No wish to flee. I can’t abscond.
I have no lord but thee. Your scepter whip
Your reins and key are instruments of sanity.
What meaning lies in the land beyond?

Though my cellar be severe,
Sweet warden, all is clear in here:
These black shackles bond
My pale arms where they belong.
Had I not their iron grip, how should I stand?
How should I know the sun had dipped
Beneath the edge of land, without that
Slanting scrap of light?
How should I sense without your whip
To cut me as it kisses,
To burn me as it lays me bare,
Pealing has it hisses through the air?

My nerves have come to love the pain.
My neck would break without the chain.
I choose it so. I bear your mark.
My eyes have grown to love the dark.

Chris Alba (c) 2009

Trial by Fire

My marriage, 18 years strong, has not been all sunshine and roses. Both Joe and I had our fair share of failures before we met (in an AA meeting), but those prior failures proved to be our greatest asset when we were courting.

"I don't know how to have a healthy relationship," Joe told me. "Maybe if I do everything the opposite of how I've done it in the past, I'll do the right thing for a change."

We made an agreement: We will not run, stuff our feelings, or lie to each other. In the early days of dating, that agreement kept us going when old behaviors and old patterns of thinking threatened to do us in.

Our 12-step program gave us a good model to follow, and our agreement gave us compelling reasons to stay and tell the truth, as well as to be responsible for our own thoughts and feelings as we inched through the minefield of courtship and then marriage.

When my lifelong battle with depression struck again, and I went through a bout of drinking after 14 years together, Joe stayed and asked the most loving question: "What can I do to help?"

We survived, and I got sober again. Our agreement stood us in good stead through the perils of step-parenting, the death of Joe's parents, the normal disagreements of two married people. We have grown together and independently. Joe has said that the real secret of a happy marriage are four little words: "Honey, I was wrong." We have learned to practice forgiveness, of ourselves and of each other.

One of my meditation books this week used a sailing metaphor for the ups and downs of life. In sailing, one of the worst enemies is the dead calm, which leaves you dead in the water. Every bit of "turmoil" in the air is the sailor's friend. Our faith, said the meditation, is always at its greatest point when we are in the middle of the trial--the tumultuous wind that sends the boat scooting along to its destination.

Joe and I enjoy our periods of becalmed waters, when life is utterly serene. Then the wind of a trial stirs the air, and our sailing skills go to work. These trials make us better sailors and carry us further along on our journey. The storms exercise our faith in each other and in our Higher Power.

I remember that as I cope with my demented mom, with clinical depression, with an eating disorder, and with the other trials and turmoils that beset me.

Here is a poem composed when I was beset by problems caused by living life on life's capricious terms, and when my marriage and my faith were my sources of strength:

Powem

oh your smiling face
zzzts like a spear
into my chest
strikes my heart
stretches it
wide as a smile
I feel it
in my toes

Chris Alba (c) 2009