Being there

I’ve been thinking a lot about noise recently. Not just the sound of gunshots in the distance as my rural neighbors gear up for deer-hunting season. Not just the voices of politicians who think they can score points by shouting each other down.

It’s the noise inside my own head that’s kept me from feeling at peace lately. It’s the thoughts and worries that keep me awake at night, that keep me from feeling truly “there,” wherever I am. I don’t know how to turn down the volume.

Yesterday, feeling less “there” than I had in awhile, I pulled out my tattered copy of Kathleen Norris’ “Dakota: A Spiritual Geography,” a book that’s about so much more than one woman’s move from the noise of city life to the “desolation” of the high plains, a place she calls “the beginning of the desert West.”

I put quote marks around “desolation” because as sparse as the Dakota landscape might be, you don’t get the feeling that Norris’ life there is “desolate.” Living in western South Dakota, she writes, has nudged her into a quieter – and richer – existence where she can think (or not) and write. She even stopped watching TV.

Scarcity, Norris writes, has helped her form a spirituality deeply rooted in the power of “less” – fewer distractions that can deprive you of the quiet in your own mind, a kind of peace you can take with you wherever you go.

Norris calls it “desert wisdom,” a wisdom that allows you “to be at home, wherever you are.” To be fully “there.”

Maybe I should move to South Dakota.

Front yard, 2 a.m.

The first night of last month's Perseids meteor shower found us standing outside, late in the evening, leaning against the car so our necks wouldn't hurt from staring at the sky. Between us we spotted seven or eight "shooting stars," two of them with brilliant tails. Not bad, but the next day we learned that had we gone outside between 2 and 3 a.m., the show would have been more spectacular.

So the next night I set the alarm for 2 a.m. Armed with an old blanket, I headed for the front yard. (It brought to mind another August night, years ago, when we lay in the grass, watching for shooting stars, and nearly jumped out of our skins when the cat tiptoed by and her bushy tail brushed against our faces.)

Back to last month.

I lay there, staring at the sky, waiting for the show to begin.

Nothing.

OK, I did see two garden-variety shooting stars, but none of this one-a-minute spectacle people on social media had predicted.

Disappointed? A little. But the stillness of that night, the cool air, the chance to lie back and stare at the sky reminded me that I need to do this a bit more often. Maybe not at 2 a.m. in the front yard, but somewhere, sometime.

It isn't just about finding time to be still, something else I need to do more often. It's about stopping long enough to feel how good it is to still be here.

You don't need more than an old blanket and a patch of grass to reignite your sense of wonder at something as "ordinary" as a shooting star. You just have to make the time.

103 and counting

My mother will turn 103 later this month, a fact I can't quite believe. But then, neither can she.

During my recent visit to the nursing home where she lives now, she told me she thought it was "kind of neat" the way people make such a fuss about her age. As they should.

She's lived through two world wars plus countless other wars, seen the emergence of television, watched men walk on the moon and witnessed the invention of everything from Twinkies to texting, among a million other things. She might not remember what she had for breakfast, but she can tell you in detail about the time she walked along a beach on Long Island in her new white shoes and got oil from a sunken German U-boat on them.

The year was 1917. She was five.

I try to imagine what the world might be like if I were to make it to 103. What inventions -- things beyond our imagining -- will have changed the way we live? Would I, as Mom does, recall the old days as better days, despite past hardships and disappointments?

Time will tell.

Just don't ask me what I had for breakfast.

Run like the wind

She had a pronounced limp and a scar on her snout when she became our dog. At just 12 weeks of age she'd already had a pretty tough life. She never complained.

A rescue pup from down South, she was everything I was looking for in the months after her predecessor succumbed to a quickly spreading cancer. She was friendly, long-haired (for some reason I'd always wanted a long-haired dog -- one too many episodes of "Lassie," I suppose) and cuddly. She was small enough to fall asleep in my lap as I drove her home for the first time.

Someone told us she was an English shepherd, and you can find out a lot about them if you Google that phrase. But a couple of people I met in England said there was no such breed. No matter. She was, to my mind, the best kind of dog: a mutt.

Despite a bum shoulder that the vet said was likely the result of an injury early in her life (I shudder to think how she got hurt) she could run like the wind and jump high to grab a stick out of my hand. I loved to watch her romp in the back yard.

Time passes too quickly in the life of a pet, but we know this when we welcome them into our homes. At 13 years of age, my mutt could, on a good day, manage a brief trot. No more jumping for sticks, though. Belly rubs were now her great joy in life.

I chose to put her through some heavy-duty surgery that I hoped would buy us time together, but things went south after just a few days. I was driving her back to the pet hospital when she decided she'd had enough. A hand to her heart let me know she was gone.

I cried my eyes out and wondered if I'd ever again feel ready to bring another pet into my life, knowing that one day I'd have to say goodbye. But that's the bargain we make, isn't it: That in exchange for their undying loyalty and love, we will be there for them until their time runs out.

I miss my dog. Miss her terribly. So maybe, in time, I'll find myself driving another pooch home for the first time, even though I know full well that one day we'll have to make another, sadder journey together.

Wherever good dogs go when they die, I hope there are big back yards to run in and sticks to jump for and someone, some very patient someone, to give lots and lots of belly rubs.

Run like the wind, old girl. Run like the wind.

The opposite of love

During my senior year at my all-white parochial high school, my social studies teacher arranged for a handful of us to meet with a handful of African American students from the local public school. We met in the cafeteria of my old elementary school and talked about our lives. It wasn't long before we realized we had a lot in common.

But we also came to realize that though we lived in the same city, we lived in different worlds.

The story that sticks in my memory, all these years later, was of an African American family moving into a predominantly white neighborhood and, within days, losing their dog to some fool who wanted to scare them away. The poor dog was doused with gasoline and, well, you can imagine what happened next.

I still remember the stoic look on the African American student's face as he told this story. Things got pretty quiet after that.

A few hours later we went our separate ways, changed -- if only a little -- because we'd made a connection with people who weren't like us and had, perhaps, begun to let go of fear.

The other thing I remember about that meeting in the spring of 1968 is that it took place just days before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down. It might have been the very same day, though I suspect that's just my memory playing tricks on me. The date doesn't matter. The lasting impression -- that we are all human beings meant to share this world -- does.

God rest the souls of those taken from this world out of fear, the opposite of love.

Triple Crown

The sky over Lake Erie was slate gray when I heard the first rumble of thunder. I knew then that I wouldn't be going to the 5 p.m. Mass that Saturday. I wasn't worried about the storm. I was worried about my dad.

A stroke had left Dad a semi-invalid, but it was more his lifelong fear of thunderstorms that made me decide I should stay home and ride out the storm with him. Besides, the Kentucky Derby would be on TV soon. We could watch it together.

And we did -- with the volume turned up a bit to drown out the distant thunder. Dad was more animated than he'd been all day as we cheered on whichever horse he'd had his eye on.

I don't recall who won the Derby that year. I do recall that the storm stayed out over the lake, so Dad didn't insist, as he usually did, that we turn off the TV until the storm had passed. He had good reason to fear storms.

When Dad was a boy, his father used to love to watch the storms that passed over their Long Island home and would coax Dad to join him on their front stoop. One day lightning struck their roof and started a small fire, which was quickly extinguished. But the fear of fire would haunt my father the rest of his days.

Dad's been gone more than 30 years now, but that day comes back to me every time one of the Triple Crown races is run, as the Belmont Stakes will be later today. I'll be watching, cheering on the horse many hope will make history and become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.

Somehow, I suspect Dad will be, too.

Mr. Zinsser

William Zinsser died last week. He was 92 and nearly blind, though from what I've read, age and infirmity did little to dull his quick mind.

Mr. Zinsser's classic guide to nonfiction writing, "On Writing Well," made me a better writer. It made me a better editor and teacher, too. I owe him a great debt.

Mr. Zinsser visited my university many years ago and said he considered it his mission in life to go around the country giving college students permission to be themselves in their writing. What a remarkably liberating message for young writers struggling to find their voices.

Mr. Zinsser believed in the power of brevity -- that when it comes to the written word, less truly is more. He could not abide the fluff and nonsense that clutter up American English. (The chapter in "On Writing Well" titled "Clutter" should be required reading for every high school and college student in the land. I can think of a few politicians and CEO's who might benefit from it, too.)

Simply put, William Zinsser respected the written word. He just wanted the rest of us to do the same.