A Quiet Story

In a recent storm, just after midnight, the neighbor’s oak tree fell. This magnificent, 200 year-old tree toppled over, breaking the fence at the end of our garden, damaging the water system. This was the first time I met our neighbors, as we talked early the next morning over the immense trunk of the fallen tree, its limbs spread on the ground.

A few days later, we met again. This time she shared that she had been having terrible headaches and had gone the doctor to see what was wrong, but everything tested normal. Her headaches persisted. She explained to the doctor that they started after the presidential election. The doctor’s prescription: no more than 20 minutes of news a day. If the headaches continued, she would have to stop watching the news altogether.

One night a week later, after the tree had been cleared, and our water turned back on, my granddaughter asked for a story while getting ready to sleep. It had been years since she asked for a bedtime story. But that particular night, weighed down by a presentation about the holocaust she heard that day at school, she asked if I could tell her a story from my life. A quiet story, and whisper it, so it doesn’t keep me awake.

I waited for a moment wondering what to tell her. Then a story came. That’s what stories do. They can carry meaning, and give us framework, sometimes years later.

Many years ago, I began, when we lived in Panama, a friend said he wanted to introduce us to a family he knew well. They lived at the edge of the rainforest, or cloud forest as it’s sometimes called, because it was always covered in mist and fog. He took us there a few weeks later and invited us to see the quetzal. The young son of the family, about twelve years old, knew the rainforest well and he would show us this rare bird with long, brilliant green feathers.

We followed the young boy into the rainforest, our baby in a backpack. She was lulled by the walking and fell asleep as we followed the young boy deeper into the forest. Huge vines rose up thirty feet into the canopy, winding around the trunks of trees, and we stepped around plants with large, broad leaves. The mist was low and thick. We rarely spoke as we walked behind the boy.

After nearly two hours, the boy suddenly ran ahead and gave three sharp cries, calling to the quetzal. He motioned us to follow him, and then he stood still, pointing, there in the distance, the green feathers. Everyone, including my husband and the other couple who came with us, saw the quetzal, except me. With infinite shades of green, all around us, I couldn’t see the bird. It didn’t matter. It was another world, with so many shades of green, everywhere, such density, and astonishing size of leaves like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was in wonder but also a little uneasy, and cold.

We followed the boy back to his house to find that his mother had prepared arroz con pollo in a pot over a fire. We sat on the bare wooden floor, my husband, our baby, the other couple. The mother handed us each a metal bowl filled with steaming rice, herbs, tomato. There was no table, no chairs, just the warmth this family shared with us.

The boy then showed me his bedroom, barely big enough for his bed. Just a few pieces of flat wood, with a thin wool blanket serving as a mattress. The window next to his bed had no glass. It was an opening to the forest surrounding them.

My granddaughter was nearly asleep, so I stopped talking and quietly left the room.

I wondered about this story, why this story, and I realized it carried seeds – of kindness and care, and generosity. This is our humanity. Not what we see on the news.

We need to quiet ourselves. This is a necessity and an urgent need ­– to quiet ourselves, so we can feel and listen. How else are we able to hear the subtle note within?  A note like the bell on a buoy as it rises and falls in the ocean, a guiding sound keeping away the darkness. To hold it and not to let it be diminished by the bombardment of the news. And to hold it for all life.

Stillness, even in a storm.