Gates of the Soul

When I was a kid, my parents caught the fear bug that roamed freely around the Chicago area at that time. Kidnappers! Sadly, it was a real thing. Children disappeared on the way to and from school. Offers of candy and a ride in a nice car tempted innocents, and with the increased presence of regional news that TV brought to the 1950's, it wasn't difficult for fear to grip whole towns.

Of course, we were indoctrinated in the "don't talk to strangers" dogma, as well as the "stay in the house after dark", "if  a car slows down, run," and "if a stranger talks to you, run to any house and scream 'Mama, Mama, Mama,' and you'll trick the bad guy into thinking it's your house and he'll run because he'll think your mama is going to come out and save you by bashing a broom over his head" dogmas. I learned quickly, and I tried out all of the above several times, much to the horror of cars slowing to turn the corner and a few clueless gents who just happened to be taking an innocent walk down our street.

I was old enough to run, which I did, almost for any reason because I really bought into the fear thing. Hey, I was ten years old. I didn't want to be kidnapped by some Commie Pinko  which was what my mother called anyone bad.

My parents knew that me and my older sister could run pretty fast, but that "the little guys," as we called our two younger sisters, probably couldn't outrun an adult for long so my father constructed a small fenced in area where the garage currently stands to protect the little guys from all evil.

Protection was a point of view. My mother and father felt more secure that their two youngest daughters weren't going to be carried off by strangers in broad daylight. However, the little guys felt caged and soon tired of digging in the dirt with old kitchen spoons. The newly fenced in area wasn't landscaped by any degree, and consisted of dirt, a few scrubby bushes, a snowball bush, and more dirt. Here and there were a few anemic blades of grass, but it was no Eden and the little guys knew it.

I remember planting a tiny vegetable garden within the fenced area which interested the little guys for about twelve seconds. They had one thing on their little agendas: freedom. They were pretty good at escaping, too. A gate left unlocked resulted in tiny escapees toddling across the large back yard which must have seemed like the great state of Kansas to them after the little dirt pile they usually played in. My mother whose eagle eye was always scanning the fenced area for the two prisoners would go ballistic if she couldn't see them, predictably running outside and shrieking their names as if once escaped they would really run back into the fence just because an adult was loudly screaming at them. Those kids were smart. They usually hid behind the tool shed or in the neighbor's yard, but never far enough away that they weren't found and hauled back to their own little GITMO.

My mother decided that the solution to keeping the little guys safe was for my older sister and I to take turns staying in the dirt pile with them. Because my older sister had a social life (what thirteen year old doesn't?) I was most often the prison guard on duty.

It wasn't the worst thing a nine year old could do with her summer, but it was close. Bugs gave us a great diversion. We had a lot of bugs. The under the rocks kind, the crawly kind, the flying kind, and occaisionally a butterfly or some really pretty thing like a dragonfly. We made bug zoos with old jam jars
filled with (what else?) dirt and a few leaves from the bushes. We fed them sugar which we put in our pockets at breakfast. We had the fattest bugs on Campbell Street, but they didn't live long in jars so we were always catching new ones.

Often I read to the little guys or concocted some silly game for us to play. Hide and seek was disasterous in an area the size of a livingroom with no place to hide, but "I Spy," "Mother, May I?" and "Who Am I?" were favorites.
And there were tea parties using leaves for plates, and little stones and twigs for foods that with a little imagination was a feast. Mud pies were our specialty. Sometimes we looked at clouds. Others we counted cars going by on Campbell Street. Sometimes we had tickle contests. And sometimes we pounded on each other.

It wasn't the best of times, but it certainly wasn't the worst of times either, because we learned to make our own fun. We laughed a lot, and we made the best of our situation. In time, the little guys grew and the fenced yard was dismantled, but at the time, being fenced in seemed endless.

Of course, all three of us would rather have been outside the fence, running and laughing and picking the greener grass that always grows on the other side, but we had some pretty good times inside, too, and we could imagine we were elsewhere, doing amazing things and loving it. 

I call that kind of imagining "Gates of the Soul" because if the soul feels trapped or fenced in, no amount of freedom for the body makes you believe you are free. On the other hand, if your soul is free, no fence can make you feel trapped.

It takes less work and stress to imagine a good thing than for the mind to bear up under the facts of a bad thing. It's easier to enjoy something imagined than to hate something real. It's better to walk though gates of the soul than to sit by the fence and long for all your worth to be on the other side.

And that's how it is these days for Gary and I. By our own choice, we are fenced in by our circumstances as we care for my mother in her last years. We rarely have more than one hour away from the house at a time, and that, never more than two or three times a week at most. We haven't had a day off in a year. No vacations. No trips to the movie theater. No eating out. No weekend getaways. No sleeping in. Ever. No concerts or lectures. No visiting friends' homes. No church. No trips to visit the grandchildren out of state.

Stated like that, it sounds like we are in the little fenced in yard once again, digging in the dirt with spoons. But in reality, we traverse the globe,  meet interesting people, see breathtaking sights, take train rides, fly hang gliders, go to the opera, and travel through time. How? Through books, and DVD's, through radio, CD's, the internet, and television. 

We know ourselves well enough to know the things that bring us delight
and in every way possible, we try to create those within our fences. It requires imagination, creativity, and a heart that wants to help one another and build each other up, but those are small prices to pay for being free.
And so on a rough day, we can smile and know that over dinner that evening we will be once again dining in Wales or Ireland or Paris or Italy as we watch a DVD or read a book together. We can look forward to an afternoon at the opera via the radio. We can go on vacation again and again as we look at photos from past visits with our children and their families and recall sweet moments with them all. We can plan the trip of a lifetime online by creating an itinerary, looking at hotels, attractions, photos, and reading other people's travel memoirs. In short, we can be as free as we choose to be. 

It's not a perfect scenario, but what is? We are here until our job is finished. We are strong, creative, imaginative, and basically fun people who enjoy each other's company. We are happy and content and  madly in love and isn't that what really counts? It certainly beats digging in the dirt with spoons.