Three Laps Around the Garden

I hear what I need to hear when I need to hear it, if I am listening. Last night I walked in the botanical gardens, during the flashlight tours, so the path was lined with docents showing families snakes, lizards and night owls. I had just participated in a one-day writing workshop with Laraine Herring and she made us breath before writing (she let us breath during writing too). Whenever I focus on breathing I realize I'm a shallow breather, so I wanted to practice deep breathing. As I walked in the garden I tried to be a deep breather, which was pleasant since the air was fragrant with creosote. Walking seems to make me listen better, and so, apparently does breathing, or at least breathing attentively, because while I'm walking and breathing I hear a docent say "Anything with an exoskeleton has to shed it if it wants to grow." She's talking about me, I thought to myself.

The docent thought she was talking about a scorpion, but the statement holds for any hard-shelled creatures, like me or my hermit crab.

When my daughter was in kindergarten she came home from a play date with a hermit crab. We went through a few small crabs with brightly painted shells before we learned enough about hermit crab natural history to keep one alive. Turns out hermit crabs breathe with gills that need moisture to function. In a desert climate they need a daily misting or they suffocate. They also need a range of shells to accommodate their eventual growth. The lone surviving crab is Crabicus and he/she (it's hard to determine gender) is at least eight years old. Crabicus sheds his (I think of him as a boy, not sure why, maybe because he's shy and pinches me) exoskeleton a few times each year. He finds a quiet corner of his crabitat and throws off all his armor, exposing the tender soft new shell. There he'll sit while his new shell hardens.

Here's the crazy part. He eats his shed skeleton. He eats it! From an ecological/sustainable point of view, this isn't so crazy, since the discarded shell is a good source of calcium. And there it is right next to him. He's too vulnerable to crawl around to the food bowl, so Crabicus eats his old self in order to make his new self stronger. There's a metaphor for personal growth there.

Oh, I Have A Choice?

Sadness and loss. That was probably the real bond with Calamity Jane. Not all the misanthropic bravado. I've picked heroes whom I either look up to or see eye-to-eye with. Calamity and I were eye-to-blurry-sad-angry-eye. How does one crawl out of protective armor and does an eye-to-eye hero help or hinder the escape?

Hinder. Here's why.

I had found someone who solved her sense of loneliness, vulnerability, and sorrow by being a bad ass. This had great appeal to me in my teens and early twenties, living on my own as I did. Back then, I never cried. I never revealed weakness or need. And I slew any and all who tried to finger their way past my defenses. I was a. . .select a metaphor:

• Hermit crab
• Brazil nut
• Saguaro cactus
• Armored knight
• Oyster
• Chocolate-Dipped soft-serve from DQ
• Cowgirl with a revolver and whiskey breath

Anything soft on the inside, hard on the outside. That was me.

Though not all those hard-out/soft-in possibilities are alike. Some, like hermit crabs, will die if they are separated from their outer shells for too long. Other than the occasional times they swap shells and for one split second show their pale, exoskeletonless rears dragging behind them, hermit crabs stay protected. But an armored knight can chose to shed his metal suit, set it by a walk-in fireplace in a big drafty castle and go on to live a happy life. It's a matter of choice for the knight. And the cowgirl.