A Beautiful Day

Bob Haslanger

April 26, 2009

 

He was a dog on a mission. Rowdy pushed open the back door, ran down the steps, across the dirt piled in the back yard and out into the pasture. He raced passed Tobe standing amidst the big rocks strewn around him. He circled back, stopping and sitting just out of reach. He dropped the soft flying disc he had in his mouth and gave out a bark. This is going to be fun, was his attitude. Stop what you’re doing and let’s play.

 

Tobe looked at his dog and had to smile. Rowdy was a fine companion on the way. No guile, no hidden motives, his dog was always in the present with a clear agenda. He was engaging. You knew when he wanted to play, when he was hungry, when he wanted some affection. He could entertain himself by hunting mousies in the pasture while Tobe worked or chasing crows just for the fun of it. Tobe thought how different his attitude toward life was than Rowdy’s.

 

Tobe was a worrier, a questioner. His internal monologue often centered around the word “why.”

 

He had been standing in the pasture looking at the large basalt rocks that were spread around him and asking, “Why did I start this project?” Earlier in the spring, Tobe had begun the work of creating a rock wall, a bulkhead, to make a terraced back yard out of the upper part of the pasture that sloped away from the back of the house. He would build the wall from 2 man rocks; 800 to 1000 pound black basalt boulders piled up to four feet high and back fill it with dirt he scraped from the pasture just below the wall. It would create a level area behind the house where he could put in a small orchard and raised bed vegetable garden.

 

He had started in April by plowing the pasture and moving the topsoil above the area where he would build the wall. He ordered several truck loads of rock, enough for the 150 feet of wall he wanted to build. He had planned to build the wall and put in the orchard and garden before the rains began in the fall. He would do this after work during the week and on the weekends.

 

He moved the rocks one at a time; rolling them with the tractor or by hand with a long steel crowbar until they stood the right way up. He would chain them up, around the middle and over the top, and hoist them with the bucket of his tractor, moving them slowly into place. It was slow work. If he went too fast, the rock would roll away, sometimes a good bit down the slope of the pasture. Occasionally the chain would slip and the rock would fall out of the chain harness and he’d have to start again orienting the rock, re-chaining, hooking it up to the tractor bucket. More than once a rock went in an unexpected direction, nearly crushing a foot or a hand. He wore steel toed boots but they wouldn’t be a match for a half ton boulder.

 

Rowdy barked again. Hey you! That’s enough with the woolgathering. Let’s play. That was Rowdy’s job: to bring Tobe back to earth, to bring him into the present. To let him know it was a beautiful day to be alive and to play, especially with his dog.

 

Tobe picked up the disc and spun it down the hill. It sailed just above the ground and Rowdy chased, leaping and catching it as it settled back toward the ground. As he ran back he gave it a good shake.

 

The morning fog had burned off and the sun was warm. A light breeze blew making the disc rise and fall differently with each throw. Rowdy rarely missed. When he did, the disc suffered for it. Rowdy shook it several times with great determination if he had to pick it up off the ground.

 

Tobe was grateful for the break. When he had started that morning the ground and the rocks had been wet from the fog and a little drizzle overnight. Everything slipped and slid in the wet. He had learned from earlier in the spring when he worked in the light rain that wet rocks and wet ground made everything more dangerous, more frustrating, and much slower. He hadn’t gotten as much done as he expected. The rocks were stubborn today.

 

Patience had never been one of his virtues. This particular work had played to his fault. He had learned that patience wasn’t just a good thing when working with rocks this size, it was required. It had taken more than a month of cussing, high blood pressure, nearly tipping over his tractor, having to redo sections of the wall, and a sore foot from kicking one of the rocks before he began to find a rhythm to building with half ton boulders. He started to understand rock speed. No matter how fast he wanted to go, no matter how much he wanted to get done, he could only go as fast as the rocks would let him work. He didn’t have a backhoe with an opposable thumb that could pickup and place these rocks in a matter of minutes. He had to move each one by a painstaking process of orienting, chaining, lifting with the tractor, and placing. And once it was in place, the rock often had to be adjusted with the steel bar to fit just right.

 

Rock speed was a meditation, as well. By being present at each step, starting again as if for the first time when the rock tipped or fell, he found that his work left him calmer, tired but relaxed instead of worn out.

 

It was a lesson he needed for the rest of his life as well. The last few years had brought him changes he wasn’t prepared for. Losses he wasn’t reconciled with. His father and his brother had died; his father of cancer, his brother in a car accident. He hadn’t known how to deal with either of those events.

 

He felt lost with the death of his father. He watched as his father fought against the disease that turned him grey and thin, turned his lively walk into a shuffle, and finally left him just wishing for relief from the pain. Tobe had worried. He had asked why. He didn’t understand. This man who had been so large in his life was made helpless before death. A man with a great education and a gift for speaking was left silent. His ability to charm anyone at any time was useless against cancer.

 

Then a few months later, his brother was killed by a drunk driver. It made even less sense than his father’s death. His brother was a good man. Tobe had never heard him say a bad word about anyone. He had been a wonderful older brother. He had just the right knack of calling when Tobe was about to do something he shouldn’t. His brother never had to ask or say anything, but Tobe just knew he knew.

 

It appeared to Tobe that his brother’s life was filled with grace. He often told Tobe not to worry so much. “Don’t borrow trouble,” he said. “Do what’s in front of you and be nice to people. It’s that easy.” Tobe wished it were that easy for him.

 

When you lose family members, you lose part of your history. You lose someone who knows the stories, the family jokes, the inside stuff. You lose someone who remembers you falling through the pond ice and both of you kept it quiet from your parents, and he really did keep it secret. You lose someone to remind you of the trip you took together that was a real mistake because he wanted to go to the museums and you wanted to go to the beach. You lose someone who knew you when.

 

While he felt lost when his father died, he felt bewildered and somewhat guilty when his brother was killed. So often it was his brother that reached out to him, called him, came to visit. Tobe had accepted that as the way it worked. After he died, Tobe wondered why he hadn’t made more of an effort to engage his brother. To go out of his way to be a part of his life as his brother did with him.

 

His father had named him Tobias. It meant “God is good.” His brother had shortened it to Tobe. He wondered about his name. He had accepted God as good. His life had been good. He had two wonderful men to watch over him in this life, to guide him. But not anymore. He had come to feel quite alone.

 

Rowdy had wandered off to hunt mice in the tall grass. He could see the white tip of his tail waving as the dog snuffled through the grass and then pounced where he thought a mouse might be. Then followed some furious digging.

 

Rowdy’s hunting had scared up some deer that were lying in the shade of the giant ornamental plum tree in the next pasture over. They trotted off toward the neighbor’s property. In the mornings, the deer would come by and inspect the progress of the wall. Tobe was sure they were gauging how easy it would be to leap up and get to whatever goodness the human was going to plant for their grazing pleasure. Tobe knew it meant a deer fence was in order if he was to have any hope of an orchard and a garden.

 

There was so much to do if he wanted to get this all done by the time it started to rain again. But he had the time. He was just starting his project, when the evenings were still short and he had yet to come to the understanding of rock speed, when his wife, Barb had announced she was going to visit her sister back east where she had grown up.

 

It was unexpected because Barb wasn’t particularly close to her sister and there hadn’t been anything to give him an idea that she was intending a trip on her own. They had always traveled together. They had done most things together. They even went grocery shopping together. Barb called it their wild date to the grocery store.

 

Before she had announced her trip she had seemed preoccupied, distracted. She spent a good deal of time on her computer and often seemed to be just hanging up on a phone call when he arrived home. He was a worrier. He didn’t understand.

 

She left on her trip, leaving him to fend for himself and care for Rowdy and Underfoot, their cat. He didn’t hear from her but once while she was gone. That was unusual too. He went to work during the day, worked on his wall in the lengthening evenings.

 

The day she came home she announced that she was moving back east. She wanted to be closer to family. She wanted warm weather and warm people. She wanted a change.

 

There was no changing her mind. Barb packed her Subaru until you could barely see out the window. She put Underfoot on the front seat next to her and drove off. She’d send him a list of what she wanted shipped once she found a place.

 

And there he was. Just him and Rowdy. And the deer. And a whole lot of big rocks waiting with the patience of, well, rocks. He was heartbroken. He was going to have to learn to live alone. “Do what’s in front of you,” his brother had said. So in the next month he learned the lesson of rock speed. Moving at the speed of the rocks as he worked, taking each day as it arrived, attentive moment by moment, he found a rhythm to his new life.

 

Rowdy was back again with the disc. It was time to play again. Tobe had moved a big rock and a smaller one so he agreed to the demand. After a single throw, Rowdy came back and lay down at his feet. Tobe was struck by the soft breeze and the bright sunshine. It was a beautiful day. He was struck by the clarity of the moment. There was a presence of otherness with him. He felt as though someone was there. It was as if someone were speaking to him without words. He just understood.

 

He saw that those events which bewildered and worried him, his farther, his brother, and now Barb were not about him. These were events in their lives that he was witness to and a part of.  He was free to move on. He hadn’t failed to live up to his father’s dreams. He hadn’t rejected his brother’s love and care. He hadn’t driven Barb away. Even further, he saw that he played a part in every life he appeared in. He was not responsible for the outcomes of the lives of even those he was closest to. His was to contribute to them as best he could.

 

He could choose what happened next in his life without regretting the past.

 

Rowdy stood up and walked over to the disc. He looked back at Tobe. Tobe could swear the dog raised an eyebrow. He told Rowdy to bring the disc and they began to play again. Tobe’s mind was at once clear but at the same time wondering what just happened.

 

Tobe was a church goer, but he resisted what he called, “the magic-y stuff.” He thought of burning bushes and angel visitation as metaphor and oral history folklore. He had no personal frame of reference for what had just occurred. These were not thoughts he would think on his own. Guilt, self-doubt, questioning, bewilderment and putting himself at the center of the world were much more his style. An authoritative understanding of forgiveness, a perspective that put him as an actor in a much larger scheme of other peoples lives, that came from somewhere outside of his own thoughts.

 

But there he was, with a changed perspective from where he had been just moments ago.

 

He decided he had moved enough rocks for the day, even though there was plenty of light left. Across the big pasture he could see his neighbors, Jeff and Linda working on the pole barn they had for their sheep. He’d walk over there and see if they needed a hand. The rocks would still be there tomorrow.

 

And they were. The rocks remained. They hadn’t moved on their own. The deer still inspected his work most mornings on their way past the buffet of his garden borders. There were still many weeks of work with the rocks and then the dirt and then the fence before he could plant the trees and put in the garden boxes. The reward of the harvest was in the future. His reward now was the meditation of the work, the satisfaction of the daily rhythm which brought increments of progress.

 

Three weeks later there was a voice mail from Barb when he got in after working with the rocks. She said she missed him. She missed Rowdy too. She wanted to talk about coming back home. Tobe thought about it and decided he needed to have dinner before he started thinking about that. Moment of clarity or not, life kept on coming at him. There was no less work, no easier choices, and no fewer challenges. He needed to do what was in front of him and not borrow trouble. He would try not to worry. He’d figure it out. He really wasn’t alone.