A wild goose chase
The phrase, “a wild goose chase” describes a futile pursuit. The chase is pointless because, according to Google, catching a wild goose is nearly impossible to do. It is an expression that my mom used often. Even now, I can hear her saying it with a tone that means she was either rolling her eyes or throwing her hands in the air at my insistence on not listening to her. “You’re on a wild goose chase, Amy.” “This is not going to work out.” “Why are you wasting your energy on this?”
A pointless pursuit?
I wonder if my mom would deem it a wild goose chase that I am spending time and energy going through the boxes of papers, pictures and other “treasures” that she saved. Maybe. After all, I think her impulse to save, to create memories and heirlooms, might have even confused her a little bit. She left a note on the top of her carefully wrapped baby clothes that made me laugh out loud. It read, “My baby clothes. Who knows why I have these?”
I can imagine her asking me, “What is it you are hoping to find?” and I don’t really know the answer. But I know I want to go on the chase – even if it proves to be a wild goose chase. I have always felt a desire to understand where I come from and to feel part of a bigger history than just my small story. I want to understand her and her story better. I think this could help me understand myself a little better. Why am I the way I am? Do I share my quirks with anyone else?
Another meaning of wild goose
It turns out that “Wild Goose” is also a Celtic-Christian metaphor for the unpredictable spirit of God. The child in me insisting on doing things my own way loves this. Because sometimes (not very often, but sometimes) what my mom deemed a wild goose chase would work out. And those moments, when I would get to smile and say, “I told YOU so!” – well they felt like a divine wink in my direction.
At the very bottom of a very large box, underneath a mishmash of marriage and death certificates, a stack of papers proving the breeding line of my grandfather’s hogs (he was a man of many careers), photos of my great-grandparents that I did not know existed, a JV letter for cheerleading, a very detailed and carefully annotated crumbling scrapbook kept by my grandmother (perhaps she was the source of my mother’s own impulse to save everything?), I found a letter that my grandmother wrote to my mom on September 27, 1963.
This letter was written two years after my mom married my dad; a year after she finished college; and four years before I was born. My mom was 23 years old and desperate to have a baby. And it wasn’t happening. She had many miscarriages before I came along and had apparently written to her mom in the wake of one of these and this letter was my grandmother’s reply.
“Quit this trying to get pregnant bit, relax and learn to enjoy life … I do feel if you would throw caution to the winds, you would be a lot happier.
What if the table has dust on it – or there’s a finger mark on the wall? And if you don’t get the ironing done, I’m sure you and Bill could wear your undies unpressed or a different shirt or blouse. The same goes for work – if there is overtime, I’m sure Bill could get a hamburger -what the heck.
As you can read me, honey – to heck with it – and in the due course of time nature will take care and you will have a family. If not, then you can consult your doctor. The main thing is for you to unwind, relax, stop trying to please all the people and just be yourself. You have a mind of your own – an educated mind let’s say – use it. Don’t lose your own identity -we didn’t struggle to put you through school to have you bury yourself. Put your head high – say “I’m myself” and let’s enjoy the world.”
Finding this letter at exactly this moment in my life feels more like a divine wink than anything has in a long time. It is an absolutely perfect example of the unpredictable and tender way that God shows up in my life sometimes.
Finding my grandmother’s letter was like successfully catching a wild goose
I’m long past the age of yearning for a baby, but my grandmother’s words, written to her struggling daughter 62 years ago, hit home in my heart. “To heck with it!” says my grandmother. To heck with shoulds. To heck with someone else’s standards for you. To heck with appearances. To heck with anything that gets in the way of you enjoying your life and this world.
This reminds me of the opening stanza of a poem by Mary Oliver, which (I’m not kidding you) is titled Wild Geese.
You do not need to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to allow the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Beneath the surface, I hear my grandmother saying to my mom, “To heck with the world’s ideas of what a good life looks like for a 23-year-old new wife in 1963.” Even more challenging, I hear her saying to my mom, “To heck with your ideas of what your life should look like. Live the life you have. LOVE the life you have. Quit judging it against a fictional life that you – or the people around you – wish you had.”
Man. On all levels, my grandmother’s letter speaks directly to my 58-year-old heart. Who am I now that my kids are grown? Who am I now that my mom is gone? Who am I now that I have closed my yoga studio? Who am I now that I’m getting older? Who am I?
Mary Oliver answers poetically in the closing stanza of Wild Geese:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
My grandmother told my mom (and, inadvertently 62 years later, me) the same thing more baldly, “You are you and you should be proud of that. No matter what you do or don’t do, what happens for you or doesn’t, you are entitled to take up space and enjoy the heck out of this world of ours and this life of yours.”
I hope her words resonated for my mom in the same way they have for me. They must have, or I don’t think this letter would have been at the bottom of that box. I hope they resonate for you, too.
Avidya (YS 2.5) is the human tendency to misunderstand who we truly are. In our world, we get mixed up and confuse what we do with who we are. In her letter, my grandmother is trying to teach my mom the same lesson that Patanjali is still teaching his students 3000 years after he wrote the sutras: you are not what you do, or the labels people use to describe you, or your successes or your failures. All of these things aside, you have a place (to borrow from Mary Oliver) in the family of things.