A few days ago, Fate lifted some organic hamburger meat from the kitchen counter. I countered with a plan to surprise her in the act, and caught her zeroing in some haddock. I frightened her off and thought she had learned her lesson. Then, this morning, some bits of bread for the equines vanished from the counter while Maria went outside for a minute.
So I came up with another plan, and this time, Fate showed me her stuff, this is a dog to be reckoned with, I was reminded of the old farmer warning to never get an animal that is smarter than you are.
I went to level 3, I got out the mousetraps, a good way to frighten dogs away from the counter. If they touch the food, the trap snaps and scares them and they stay away from counters. These traps are good for mice, too small to catch a dog’s nose. Dogs do not like loud surprises. This has worked for many people.
I told Maria this was sure to work. She seemed doubtful. Maria would just as soon forget about these transgressions and just keep the food away from the counter. She thinks Fate has earned her bounty. To me this is war, and I have to prevail.
So I spent a half hour or so setting these mousetraps, they are not easy to set, they kept snapping and jumping all over the place. Fate sat i the doorway of the kitchen watching my every move, like the Raptor she is. “See,” I said, thinking I was talking to an animal, “this will stop you from raiding the food on the counter. You’re about to be outsmarted.”
I finally got two traps set. I put pieces of turkey dog in each trap and some of the turkey dog behind it. It was close to the edge, it would be impossible for the sneaky dog to pass up. I set them both carefully, I was pleased with myself and confident.
I set the traps and went into my study to write, I wrote non-stop for three hours, listening carefully for the sound of the trap snapping. I heard nothing. From time to time, I got up, peered out the study door and saw Fate sitting in the same spot, dozing and sometimes watching the turkey dog. Sometimes, she chewed on her bone. As the hours ticked by, I began to wonder.
Why wasn’t she going into the kitchen? A few hours earlier, she had snatched bread off the counter. Surely, a turkey dog would be even more inviting. I wasn’t around. She couldn’t possibly have figured out what a mousetrap was, I told Maria, she was a dog.
The morning passed and I had to go out. Fate went into Maria’s studio, where she spends much of the day. I took the turkey dogs out of the trap and fed them to the chickens. I left one piece behind and pushed it to the rear of the counter, thinking I might try the traps again later. In the afternoon, we were back in the house, I noticed that the piece of turkey dog was gone.
Good Lord, I told Maria, she seems to know what the mousetrap is for. She wouldn’t set foot near the turkey dogs while they were in the trap. As soon as the mousetrap was gone, she snuck in and grabbed it. I can tell you that I do not believe it is remotely possible for a dog to understand the purpose of a mousetrap.
Yet somehow, she read perfectly what we were doing, and knew when it was okay to make a grab and when it wasn’t. She wouldn’t go near the food when we were in the kitchen, she wouldn’t go near it when it was in the mousetrap.
Both times, I was in the house. Yet when the trap wasn’t set, she went right in and did her thieving. Okay, I can’t account for this. Perhaps she used her vaunted instincts and senses. Perhaps she visualized what I was thinking. I am stumped. But only momentarily. She might be smart, but I am as willful.
Perhaps she is smarter than me. Fate 2, me 0. I am re-grouping, this is not done.
Scott Carrino closed up the sugar house at Pompanuck Farm today, he covered up the vats and bins and jarred the last dozen or so Grade B jars of syrup. He said it was a good season. I can’t even imagine going to the trouble of having a sugar house, I know syrup is a lucrative industry up where I live, but it is also complex and difficult. Hundreds of taps are set in trees, mules of tubes, medieval vats and bins and boiling tanks. Good syrup is a science, and I enjoyed learning about it.
It’s getting warm, the sap is not running any more. Scott said it was a good year, he got about 30 gallons of syrup from his taps. I can testify that is a lot of work. The inside of the sugar house looked like Merlin’s secret laboratory to me.
More than that, I enjoyed talking to Scott in the dark and steaming room with Red, and sometimes Fate. Red takes to the sugar house, he curls up in a corner and goes to sleep. Ed Gulley’s “Mr. Blockhead” looks at home in front of the sugar house, it was a gift to Scott.
The sugar house has a bit of an emotional charge for me, it is a place where men seemed to talk freely, in my experience they rarely make time to talk to one another in private and for any length of time. The last time he visited, Paul Moshimer came with me to the Sugar House, the three of us had a wonderful evening sipping Hot Toddies and talking. Paul joined our Fabulous Old Men’s Club, and we are still feeling his loss.
The next morning, Paul and I went to Vermont to bring a blind rescue horse back to Blue Star Equiculture, he killed himself shortly after that night.
Scott and I do not dwell in the past, we have moved on, we are making our own history, telling our own stories. We have built a lot of good and warm and rich memories in that house.
We have tipped a glass to Paul, to one another. Explained the past, imagined the future we both want for ourselves. It is an intimate place, perfectly built for connection. I’ll miss it.
The sugar house will be closed and locked up until next Spring, where, hopefully, Red and Scott and I will be sitting near the boiling vats, sipping our hot toddies, sharing the adventure that is our lives. It is good to have a brother.
In the meantime, the sugar house has richly added to my experience here, a radioactive seed of memory, a special place. Life is marked by crisis and mystery.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about what a friend is in the past year. I made some wonderful friends, lost some wonderful friends, felt wounded and betrayed by friends I opened my heart to and trusted.
This morning, walking in the woods with Maria – she is my lifetime friend – and the dogs, I thought about what it is that makes a friend.
There is no simple definition of friendship, and like anything else of value, it is different for everyone. We all have different needs, different wants, different hearts and souls.
I especially liked the idea of friendship written by Henri J.M. Nouwen, author of Out Of Solitude:
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
For me, this is the essence of friendship: openness and trust. A friend is not necessarily someone who comes rushing to your side when there is trouble, but someone who shares our pain with a tender and bounded hand. Friendships are not always what they seem, and trust is hard won.
My friend Paul Moshimer and I were becoming close, sharing our wounds, and when he committed suicide, I loved him no less for it, and I know he loved me, but I also realized that I did not really know him, I was so utterly unprepared for the fact that he died and the way that he died that I realized we had not yet earned the trust of one another.
But I also decided I would not be frightened off of friendship and commitment, friendship is a part of life, suffering and disappointment are a part of it, my response is to embrace friendship more deeply, that was Paul’s gift to me. I saw it’s value.
In some ways it was a difficult year. Some people I thought were my friends were not. I felt hurt and used and doubted myself again, as I did after Paul’s death. These friends were not honest, and did not care about me, they wanted something else, something more than me and apart from me. Perhaps they wanted their idea of me, I am not sure and will never know.
This has always been a problem for me, and I have to concede that it is compounded by the fact that I am a minor celebrity. People are often drawn to the idea of me, but not necessarily to me. I have always made people uneasy. What they love is not always me. I wondered once more if the friendship thing was worth the trouble and risk. You do have to open yourself up.
But I did not give up on it, and I will not. Friendship is important, part of the nourishment of the soul necessary to live fully and well. Friendships are the enemies of narcissism and selfishness, good friends pull us out of ourselves and into the world.
When I think of friendship, I sometimes think of Piglet and Pooh, created by A.A. Milne:
“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
“Pooh!” he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
And I think that’s the thing about friendship. A friend, I suppose, is someone who knows all about you and still loves you. And when and if the point comes that you accept and trust that love, then that is the moment when a friendship is truly born and will last.
“Don’t walk in front of me,” wrote Albert Camus of friendship, “I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me…Just be my friend.” I like that, it is simple, acceptance and trust.
A friendship is not born of drama.
Friends stand by you in hard times, they don’t take over the hard times for you or take it from you. Friends help you, but also insist that you help yourself. Friends are like parents in a way, the goal is not simply to take care of you every minute, but to help you take care of yourself.
Healthy friendships do not end in anger and confusion.
Lasting friendships are not dependent or co-dependent.
They don’t require your giving pieces of yourself away, or taking more from others than they need to give or should give. You don’t get off the phone wondering what was said or what was meant. You don’t do he-said, she-said. Quite the opposite, they are nourishing and affirming. You feel bigger, better, healthier, never diminished.
The best friendships are always bounded. Don’t follow me all day, don’t come running. That is about you, not me. Just be my friend.
What is a friend? There is nothing I would not do for my friends. And my friends would not permit me to do all that I could do, nor would I accept that from them. Friendship is selfless, if it is to live at all. What you don’t take is as important as what you do.
I have drawn closer to a new friend, a poet and painter and pastor named Tom Atkins, it took us awhile to get to know one another, but I have come to cherish our cups of coffee and lunches together, we have taken the time to open up to one another. He is gentle and authentic. He is accepting.
This morning, he wrote a beautiful Open Letter To His Depression. He is a brave man, a warrior for life. His creative spark is fierce. Any man who can do that is worth knowing, and we share a passion for openness.
He has become a friend. Just like that.
I am making progress, slowly but steadily, and maybe that is the lesson. I make a lot of mistakes, but I am learning all the time. Friendships are rare, they can come slowly. They do not fall off of trees, not for me, like apples. They are precious.
Maria is my best friend for sure, our relationship began when we became close friends, when we shared our wounds and hopes and touched each others pain with a tender hand. She knows the bad parts of me as well as the good ones, and sees both clearly. She has never been intimidated by me in any way, or even noticed that some people think I’m famous. She does not think I’m famous. I have never had a closer friend that she is, our souls are fused in purpose and love.
I will not likely ever have another.
Out of friendship grew trust and acceptance, and then love. I am sure of you, I told her today. I have never spoken those words to another human being in my life. How beautiful they sounded.
Radical acceptance is essential to me when it comes to friendship. To be my friend, you must accept me. I often tell the readers of my blog that some days they will get the good Katz, some days the bad. Life is like that, friendship is like that. But you will get both.
Last night, my friend Scott Carrino called, he is in the middle of a campaign to buy the building his cafe is located in, to save his cafe. He was calling to ask about my tick bites and to make sure I was applying the right medication to them.
Over the past two or three years, we have grown closer, our friendship born in the safe and cozy confines of his sugar house, where we learned to be honest with one another, and open. Now, it is natural.
“Hey, I said,” I like for you to accept the post of brother, if that’s okay with you. My own brother and I have never figured out how to be brothers to one another, I’d love for you to be my brother.”
Scott thought about it for a second or two. “Sure, great, bro,” he said. “I’d love that.”
And so that new element of our friendship was born, we put a name on it.
I’ve always ached to have a brother, and here I am, in what some people like to call advanced middle age, and I finally have the brother I wanted, and a good one. Scott and I have traveled through the crucible together. We know everything about each other and we will love each other.
I am sure of him. And that, I think is what friendship is about.
In the morning, Fate loves to hide behind the Skid Barn and ambush Red as he does his very wide outruns. Red is torn between practicality and duty. He will never pause or alter his outruns for anyone or any thing. But I notice he is going wider, hugging the fence as he comes tearing around the corner of the pasture, it gives him more room to maneuver around Fate.
But she has him, she knows where he will be, and she rushes out and races alongside of him as he finishes the outrun. Fate manages to find joy in every moment of her life. She is great fun to be around, and Red is the best straight man since Bud Abbott.
Zelda is one tough sheep. She has knocked me down several times, led breakouts out of the pasture, trampled Red. Now, she terrorizes Fate, who is not really into biting rebellious sheep on the nose, she would rather run than fight. This morning, Fate was trying to visit Maria, who was visiting with the sheep at the feeder and chatting with them, as she does.
Zelda charged her and Fate backed up quickly, approached Maria from the other side. And she sat right behind Maria, where she knew she was safe. She doesn’t mess with Zelda, and that’s fair. I don’t either. She and Red have a very respectful true. He doesn’t put her hard, she obeys orders in her own time.
Fate doesn’t fight, but she doesn’t quit either. Two strong women in their own way. But Fate is not headed for blue ribbons at any trial. She’s a winner to us, though, we love her dearly.
