WordSisters

Category: Community

  • Let’s Talk Turkey

    Spending last week with a ten-year-old and a three-year-old, daytime conversations focused on important topics like glitter glue, building Lego structures with or without directions, how many cookies equal too many, and the dangerous wild turkeys wandering nearby.

    One night we strapped on headlamps to walk in the meadow, away from houses, turned off the lights to look at a sky ablaze with stars. The granddaughters, bright eyes plastered upward, were thrilled until remembering it was December and cold.

    Star gazing in the meadow is the kind of memory shared in social media posts, but we talked about the wild turkeys longer. Burning off energy with the younger child, her father saw many turkeys roosting in trees along our driveway. Since a neighbor told me that the turkey brood pecking through our neighborhood slept in our trees at night, I had been reading about them. Mostly about self-protection. Our smallish dog has been rushed more than once by a mom turkey protecting her poult. When he made it to the house before me, she turned attention my way. Nothing stopped her approach. We’ve been captive in our house as turkeys peck through the garden.

    Mom turkeys can sit on their eggs for a month and have not one hatch. About 20% of eggs will hatch with only 25% of those surviving their first months. Clearly not cute, poults, or baby turkeys if you prefer, are fragile and a snack for many predators. Turkey poults require loafing and roosting sites. Got to like a youngster that requires loafing territory, or fancy word for shelter, during their food search. 

    Turkeys spend their day on ground pecking for edibles and their nights roosting in trees. Our garden and grassy areas provide easy shopping for mom turkeys. We are annoyances in their family protection effort. Woodlands provide some shelter while the poults are too young to fly up to the roosting zone.

    Thanks to tended gardens, grass and woods, our local turkey population expands. Mom and the recent four poults joined a multi-generational wintering flock of about two dozen spending each night. They prefer multi-story stands with mature trees. I’ve read that up to a hundred turkeys might roost near each other. 

    This potential does not thrill me. Even our current community leave enough excrement on the driveway or in easement near the trees. As a popular toddler book says, everybody poops. In the human neighborhood, poop is not cute. The turkeys don’t care.

  • Navigating Life’s Turbulence: Lessons from a Country Walk

    Candidate signs and Halloween decorations needed clearing November 7th along the country road where I walked. My feet moved slower than my thoughts of how to accept election results. 

    Five hundred feet ahead, at least a dozen large, wild, turkeys covered the road as well as both shoulders. They can be mean in a standoff. Future concerns fell to immediate safety. Should I turn around, my clap hands, swing a fallen branch to clear a path? Yelling and singing haven’t worked in the past. My walk was over.

    Two deer bounded out from woods on one side of the road, gracefully crossed the asphalt, and entered deeper tree growth in beautiful synchrony. The turkeys scurried behind the white tails. Here, then gone. The walk cleared.

     “Awesome” I said out loud at the display of natural beauty. Unattractive turkeys had been swept into a brief glimpse of something amazingly natural on another day of unpleasant election rhetoric and deep discord.

    Decades ago, St. Mary’s in Luxemburg, WI began my Christian orientation. Small towns, filled with relatives, made it easier to accept a set of beliefs and traditions. What I still carry is a careful relationship with God. Call it spirituality or faith, old-fashioned or unnecessary, I value the foundation. At the turkey and deer moment, I followed the spoken word with a silent “Thank you, God” for a reminder of good possibilities.

    In November, regardless of voting on the winning or losing side, many people remain thankful for family, friends, freedom to have a public opinion. I dread how politics and powerful men with money will affect the quality of life. 

    Fear feels like too powerful a word at a time when caution is critical. Fear was two years ago when I had major surgery to save my life. I knew what I feared that day. I could balance fear and hope. Today I can’t name what to fear beyond unpleasant changes. Fear and dread appear in definitions of each word, but fear has a more expansive description. 

    I’d love to be one of those deer easily running through the woods. I can accept moving closer to the speed of the wild turkeys shuffling through fallen leaves or awkwardly flying up to their nightly roost. During the day I will keep looking for ways to move the threatening turkeys out of the way of my walk and yours.

    Two years of thankfulness. More to come.

  • Basics of Love

    The basics of love can be as simple as the thrill of sparkling diamond fireworks appearing seconds after the burst of red and blue or hearing a particularly well-arranged version of a favorite song.

    The word may be more loosely than the emotions. We love a football team, a blue car, our neighbor’s tabby cat, the smooth sauce on a half rack of ribs. There are friends we love. Relatives we love. Family we love. The one most desire, a someone to love. 

    Loving is a gift of humanity as well as a trigger into dissatisfaction, loneliness, despair. Sometimes the search for a place where love can be shared is difficult and it isn’t always successful. It is helpful to identify that when it emanates from another human.

    “Hello in There,” a song by John Prine is the story of an older man who lives in a city with his wife. Their only son was killed in a war. Most days they sit around and watch the world. He encourages people to look at older folks passing by, remember how lonely they might be, and try saying hello. If possible, spread a thin little layer of love to someone in need, even an acknowledging smile to the person next in line. Maybe you prefer to think of that tiny effort as paying it forward. Doesn’t matter. May the love come back to you as well.