Cerebration
Cerebration is the product of thinking and I did a lot of that while at the elephant sanctuary this weekend. The product of which is that I am shedding my skin and at the same time trying to keep the old me on life support. It’s sad and difficult to let go of the old me – I’ve grown very attached over all the years. But I’m up to the challenge because I have faith the new me is going to be a whole lot better.
I arrived to a group of people and a place that for whatever reason share an affinity for elephants. S and H came to it via jobs at zoos when they were very young and starting out, others came to love elephants because they are fascinated by their size, intelligence, and community, still others came to their love of elephants because they love all animals big and small and want to love them. Like M, who kissed the muddy tough hide of Booper and couldn’t stop kissing her. Others were there because those they love, love elephants and by proxy they have come to love the creatures too.
The good thing is that S and I spoke about a book project we might work on together, which was good news for me. S looks and talks just like Billy Bob Thornton. Kind of surreal.
There are 13 elephants at Riddles – 10 Africans and 3 Asians. The hardest part about meeting them was dispelling the myth that a human can have a deep ultrasound type connection with one of these mammals. As H said, “They are too big for you to buddy up to them.” The good part about being there was to see how healthy the animals were and adaptable to their environment. PETA would have you believe they are suffering because they are not in the wild, in their natural habitat, but PETA would have them dead rather than alive in captivity.
It was educational observing the human group as well. The young couple and the couple that had been together 17 years as well as S&H who have been together much longer and share a strong common bond besides their children – that being the elephants – they have a deep admiration for each others skills and knowledge of elephants. The 17 year couple operated as a single caring unit – D took care of T because he knew T took care of him. At home they shared children in common, but out there on the sanctuary they shared their love for each other in common. On the plane ride home there was a quote by a woman that said to all men – “Knowing that you love us makes us strong.”
Every morning I rose early and walked through the meadows. All through the day I learned about elephants – their history, their needs, their ways – and I learned about people – their infinite capacity to love and take care of those they love. And at night I lay in bed and cried – so sad to be letting go of the old Rachel, so scared to be allowing the new Rachel to be fully alive.
But even as I got on the plane to come home, dragging the old Rachel and all of her life support system like a ball and chain through one airport terminal after another, I realized it/she was getting old and tired and she/it was holding me back from my better life. So the new Rachel woke up in her bed this morning and said to whomever she needed to that she will not be friends with a man who broke her heart and to the man who did not value her or a marriage enough to understand give and take – she said leave me alone right now, I won’t be stonewalled by you. The truth that came so easily to me this morning – or to the new me – is that I was rendered paralyzed for a long time for fear of losing S, then of losing N, that I behaved like a dote towards them, while my needs went unfulfilled. This is so unacceptable to the new Rachel for whom I have put out the red carpet.
In Pachyderm Paradise as L called it, I learned a lot about the behaviour of mammals – I learned about how consistency tells a lot about a person. In an article I read on the way to Arkansas, a psychiatrist asks you to remember what your first argument was about as a couple – S and I my first real argument was about not getting married because he did not want children and I did. He stonewalled me but refused to get a vasectomy, which made me believe he would change his mind. The psychiatrist posits that the first conflict is what you argue about throughout your marriage. While the simple truth is that having a child or not having a child seems like the crux of what went wrong in our marriage – the real, underlying truth is that we wanted different things and we entered a marriage knowing that and to make it work I had to give up what I wanted. And one day I woke up and giving up something as big as having a child was not acceptable anymore.
While I gave one pachyderm a pedicure, S said to me that I held the file with confidence as if I had worked on horses before, and I thought if I have all this confidence why do I not employ it for what I truly want? The world is bigger than the people I now know and the places I have been and the music I have heard and the stories I have told. Having the charge of continuing my narrative – why limit my next chapter to more of the same, or to what I know, what if a moose knocked on my door bearing a box with a key and a map to me?