We are fortunate to have a home in the Beaverkill Valley, a
beautiful, remote part of the Catskills.
As we arrived from Manhattan late one summer Saturday and passed our
nearest neighbors, my wife, Margot, noticed a dog in front of their house.
They’ve never had a dog. There were no cars in the driveway. Certain no one was home and that she
was seeing things, I stopped the car and backed down the road to disprove the
phantom canine. Margot was right; a large, black, furry creature was busy on
the lawn. Margot was wrong; the large,
black, furry creature was ursine, not canine. A juvenile black bear methodically foraging for grubs, bugs,
or children’s leftovers.
I drove in the driveway, both in an effort to get a closer
look and perhaps to snap a picture with my cell phone. The bear studied the car and ambled off
camera shy into the nearby woods, while my effort at cell phone photography was
a fruitless all thumbs exercise. I
did get a close enough look to be pretty sure I’d seen this fellow by the side
of the road about half a mile from our house earlier in the month.
We drove home, quickly checking our blueberry bushes to make
sure the ripening fruit wasn’t part of the bear’s diet, unpacked the car and
continued on to another confrontation with local wildlife, the ant colony that
had emerged in our kitchen the weekend before. Armed with some heavy-duty bait procured from an exterminator
in Manhattan, we were ready to reclaim our turf. To our relief and delight, the colonists were gone; perhaps
discouraged by the commercial ant traps we’d set out immediately upon their
arrival. At the time, the little
fellows showed no interest in those traps, preferring a mysterious round trip
from the corner of a windowsill to a spot behind our sink, and back beneath a
crack in the windowsill. Whether
discouraged or enticed by the traps, there was no evidence, but the pests were clearly
gone, the parade ground abandoned.
With things in control inside the house I headed outside to
check on progress in the vegetable garden. The life of a weekend gardener can be full of
surprises. This time I never
reached the garden. Down in the
meadow below our house was the bear, rooting around. I retreated inside, alerted Margot, grabbed the cell phone
and a “bear whistle” that makes a high piercing sound. Thus prepared, we headed to the small
balcony outside our bedroom that looks down on the meadow. The bear, unaware, posed for several
photographs this time, too busy in its search for food to pay any attention to
us. Satisfied with my results as a
wildlife photographer, thanks in part to a subject that was graciously moving
steadily toward house and camera, I decided to test the effectiveness of the
bear whistle. A C+ at best. A series of shrieks and the bear
begrudgingly shuffled off into nearby weeds before stopping to turn to inspect
the location of the insistent whistle blower. A prolonged standoff between whistler and inspector ensued
before the whistler began to speculate about the effectiveness of the whistle
in a confrontation at closer quarters. It was unclear what was on the bear’s
mind, unless it was finding a quieter dining spot, as it finally thrashed away
through the weeds.
Down from the balcony, I headed out to the garden
again. Just as I finished
harvesting the first broccoli of the season, I heard our neighbors returning
home from a late afternoon swim. I
thought they’d like to know they’d had a visitor, so I crossed the upper meadow
to their house, a strange combination of pruning shears, fresh broccoli, and
bear whistle in hand. I emerged
through a thicket of ferns to tell my tale and administer caution about leaving
bear attractants like garbage, including garbage with soiled diapers outside
the house. Caution, bear stories,
and thanks shared we went our separate ways.
A little while later I returned to the neighbors, this time
to share cell phone portraiture of our neighborhood interloper. In the interim the bear had returned to
their yard again. He was
particularly intrigued by a soccer ball sitting on the lawn. We speculated on why a soccer ball
captivates a bear. Scent: leather, grass, human sweat? Color? Dreams of being a circus performer? The prospect of edible contents? Whatever drew him to it, one can only
imagine his surprise at the sudden pffft as his claws deflated the
object of his curiosity.
The ball belonged to a ten-year-old girl who had gotten it
while attending a soccer camp recently.
It was in fact, her birthday.
The bear, the ball and the birthday set off a reaction in me. Sitting in our basement was a bag of at
least a dozen soccer balls. It
seemed only right to go get one, pump it up, and give the birthday girl a
replacement. Our basement, in
fact, is filled with all sorts of sports equipment that belonged to our son,
our son who had died of an accidental heroin overdose barely eight months ago. More than sports equipment: books, CD’s, furniture, drums,
furniture from a failed attempt at living on his own in an apartment, a seldom
deployed vacuum cleaner, games, martial arts paraphernalia, the list goes on. Not to mention everything from early
childhood on that has been stored awaiting its next station in life. A tricycle, bicycles in several sizes,
a rubber raft, toys from sandbox days.
And that is just the basement.
There is his room, which is still painful to enter. There are clothes and belongings in our
New York apartment.
We are faced with a kind of triage. What just goes to the dump, in truth
probably should have gone to the dump even were he still alive? What do we sell? Where? What do we give away? Where? What do we keep for sentimental reasons? Where? Virtually every object has a story or is a reminder of a
period in his all too brief life.
What is healthy to keep? What
is healthy to dispose of in one fashion or another? These are the questions we ask ourselves. The answers are often painful, sometimes
irrational, and not always easy to agree upon.
A bag full of soccer balls. Easy, grab one and make a young girl happy. Not so fast. Not the ball that came home from a family trip to the World
Cup in France in ’98. It’s never
been kicked around. Kept as a
memento. Somehow to give it away
now is to give away a larger piece of William than I’m prepared for. Likewise an all black ball he brought
home from a trip to Switzerland. A
celebration of a European Championship. Balls from with various soccer camps
William had gone to. What
will we do with them? I don’t know.
My sensitivity to the differences in those soccer balls is nearly as refined as
the bear’s sense of smell. I sat
on the basement stairs, taking far too long to make the decision about which
ball I could part with. Which part
of William I could give away with less grief and possibly some happiness.
I’m not much different from the bear. Using all my senses to see what an object
might yield. In the bear’s case most likely
gustatory delights. In my case,
some magical restoration via sight, smell, touch, however brief, of William
himself. Unlike the bear, however,
I’m careful with how I treat these objects. Any and every careless mishandling, every pffft,
puts me at greater remove from the boy I already mourn so sorely.
I have no idea how long this process will go on, with
everything from soccer balls, to overcoats, to socks, to old computers. I have no idea what is healthy. I know that there is a painted paper
mache and aluminum foil turtle named Herbert created in a middle school art
class that will always stay. I
know there is a hockey puck from a Rangers game that stays. I know that a baseball bat engraved
“Iron Will” stays. Maybe a time
comes to say good-bye to objects, to let go. Shouldn’t I get to hang on to objects that are pieces of my
son’s story for as long as I like?
A time will come when Herbert, a bat, and a hockey puck will be
meaningless to someone. For me,
that time is not now. For, now a
soccer ball is, as they say, enough to get the ball rolling on sorting out what
to give up and what to keep close.
