The Things We Cannot Protect

Or, how an elderly terrier ruined my theory of safety.

Plus: sea turtles and a comic about cops and fairy wings.

Lebanese marine ecologist Mona Khalil, was killed an Israeli strike hit her home near Tyre.

These days I read the news with my eyes half-closed, my mind ready to turn away after the briefest of scrolls. I dive deep into stories only when I am holding a magazine in my hands, when the noise of the tube and my surroundings and crosswords exist to remind me that I am still alive. Yesterday, I broke my rule and read about Mona Khalil for hours, finding every scrap of information about her. I could not turn away from this woman whose life was transformed after a chance encounter with a turtle laying eggs on the beach, who devoted her life to endangered animals and had a special love for turtles on Lebanon’s coast. Perhaps there is no explanation required for why a stranger’s life and death should touch us. I drew this tribute for Khalil and the sea turtles she tried to save.

Related: This poem by Stephen Dunn is worth reading in its entirety.
Excerpt below.

"How to Live Among People Who Among
Other Atrocities Want to Turn You into Soup.

The committee was also charged with wondering
if God would mind a retelling of their lives,
one in which sea turtles
were responsible for all things
right-minded and progressive, and men
and women for poisoning the water.

The oldest sea turtle among them knew
that whoever was in control of the stories
controlled all the shoulds and should-nots.
But he wasn’t interested in punishment,
only ways in which power could bring about
fairness and decency. And when he finished speaking
in the now-memorable and ever-deepening

waters of the Gulf, all the sea turtles
began to chant, Only fairness, only decency.”

---

For most of my life, I thought safety meant preventing bad things from happening. This week, an elderly terrier under my care got bitten in the park and ruined my theory.

At 16, Toffee has the heart of a lion and the good cheer of a Jack Russell Terrier who knows he could not be adored any more than he already is.
He trusts people and he trusts dogs. That perhaps, was why he trusted that the dog he was sniffing and chasing a ball with wouldn’t bite. That perhaps, is why we both believed I could prevent anything bad from happening to him, at least for the two weeks that we were spending together.

Instead: a flash of teeth, high pitched yelps, flying fur and blood that I couldn’t find the source for, all in a matter of heart-stopping seconds. Later: several visits to the vet. Stitches, antibiotics and a very high-on-meds terrier.

In Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, Carl Jung describes a psychological rule:

"..when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves."

In less Jungian language: life keeps handing you the same lesson until you finally stop arguing with it.

Caring for Toffee, I realized the opposition within me looks something like this:

I am responsible and good at my work.

I am certain to disappoint anyone who trusts me.

The lesson life needed me to learn was this: both things are true, minus the certainty. There are no guarantees. Dogs get bitten. People leave. Projects go wrong. Hearts break. No amount of vigilance, planning, worrying or preparation will ever completely protect us (Toffee and I) from the dance and fight of being alive.

But the thing that keeps us safe isn’t staying away from the dangers and pleasures. It’s knowing that when bad things happen, we can give each other care, wrapped in a delicious treat. It’s knowing that even after we are hurt, we will someday be able to trust and to love again, to open ourselves to the delight of a summer day in a park without bracing for bad things.

Toffee is recovering and so am I. If you make it to the end, I have a(nother) poem for you.

Listen to your cabinet members, friends, but trust that you know best. Here’s the poem you were promised:

mother-tongue: the land of nod
Lucille Clifton.

true, this isn’t paradise
but we come at last to love it

for the sweet hay and the flowers rising,
for the corn lining up row on row,

for the mourning doves who
open the darkness with song,

for warm rains
and forgiving fields,

and for how, each day,
something that loves us

tries to save us.

More soon,

Nish