By Eduardo Rey Brummel
A junior college in Dallas. Me, outside, taking a study break with a just-bought bag of cheddar goldfish to feed the campus geese. I pour a handful; offer them to the nearest goose. There’s hesitation and tentativeness. One goose-step shakily segues into others. I hold myself steady when the first ticklish peck pincers a cracker. Not five minutes later, I’m surrounded by a gazillion geese, each loudly insisting on being fed.
Also, I discover, I’m surrounded by fellow students, mouths and eyes agape. They’ve never seen such a thing, someone feeding waterfowl by hand; but for me, it’s an act without thinking, as expected as exhaling another breath, beginning further back than memory.
From the time I was two until I was nearly ten, our family lived on a wildlife management area. On the other side of our front yard fence was a duck pond, with its mallards, coots, green-winged teals, ruddy ducks, Pekings, and Canada geese. We three kids often joined Dad on his 5pm daily feedings. A pail of grain was filled and then toted to the duck pond. Our handfuls held out. Their cupped contents pecked empty.
How often in life do we learn to not put out our hand? And what amount of our outstretched offerings are rejected and slapped away? We’re taught to keep our lives close to the chest and our hands inside the vehicle at all times. Maybe we look; but we definitely don’t touch. How fortuitous, instead, to have one’s tabula rasa inscribed by the gratitude of greedy geese.
In a life and a world of uncertainty, most days, I’m winging it. But with geese, I don’t have to guess – I know. They remain a sure, true thing. Their in-flight asthmatic honkings bring me home, here on terra-not-always-so-firma.
When I left for college I intentionally left behind so many things of home. No surprise, I became lost, academically struggling and failing terrifically, which led to my transfer to that Dallas junior college. While I did begin getting my feet back under me there, did start sorting out who/what I was, nonetheless, I still remained somewhat battered and uncertain. So is it any wonder I sought the certainty of feeding geese?
Now advance the calendar fifteen years. I’ve lived in Colorado Springs – which insists on getting bigger and sprawling farther and further – nine years. Commuting by bike, I’m daily putting my life in others’ hands. I see the direction my life’s heading, and it’s not the right one. So, I’ve taken to visiting Salida, thinking maybe this is where I need to be, and can be.
It’s at the end of one such visit. The car is packed and I’m standing in the parking lot of the Woodland Motel, taking a final look around. Of all things, geese are copping a squat in the ball field across the street. As I ponder this, another gaggle of geese Vs directly over my bewondering head, circling around to join their buddies.
This is the story I’ve never told. The car and I returned to the Springs, but a sizeable hunk of my pulsing heart remained, waiting, in Salida. Those geese, like their Texas siblings, years and decades before, brought me home.
Eduardo Rey Brummel is also grateful for the people who’ve “goosed” him toward Home.
