'Tis Folly To Be Wise

I got out of bed much earlier than usual on a recent Saturday morning. By 6:30 I was dressed in a winter work coat, gloves and a hat and was heading out to the goat pens. It was dark. The goats were still huddled in their shelters in small congregations of shared body heat, relatively comfortable against the sub-freezing temperatures.

Gum Drop and Clarabelle were not pleased, and they loudly voiced their complaints as I put a collar on each of them and led them out of their pen toward the truck, which was already running to warm up for the long drive. I lifted the girls into a crate, then went back for Sissy and Afton. They, also displeased at being so rudely awakened, dug in their feet and bawled as I half dragged, half carried them to the truck, where they took their place in another crate next to Gum Drop and Clarabelle.

We were heading to the goats’ new home in Livingston, Montana; 500 miles and, by my calculations, at least seven hours away if the weather cooperated.

With everyone loaded, I trotted back to the house, changed out of my work clothes, grabbed a bag of snacks we prepared the night before, and woke my wife, who was joining me for the trip. Within minutes we climbed in the truck and pulled down the driveway. Gum Drop and Sissy simultaneously bleated “Byyyyeeee!” to the herd they were leaving behind and someone cried back to them as we pulled away “Byyyyeeee!”

By 9:30 we reached Pocatello, Idaho, where we had decided to stop for breakfast and a quick break. I know many of you will not agree, but I believe there is only one place to stop for breakfast on a road trip. That’s right – McDonalds. “An egg McMuffin, a sausage biscuit, three hash browns, two orange juices and a large Dr. Pepper to go, please.” We were heading out the door and back to the truck in record time.

Clarabelle now resides in Livingston, Montana

Then: the unexpected.

Occasionally, when we are not looking for it, not expecting it, not ready for it, something happens that can change us. We can choose to not let it change us. When we realize it’s coming we can make a head fake and go the other way, let it glance off us, or just run like heck in the opposite direction. But sometimes we need to let it hit us. We need to take the full impact of the experience, like an over-filled water balloon dropped by our little brother from a second-story window.

Although she was yet to realize it, that is exactly what my wife was about to do.

As we walked across the McDonalds parking lot toward our truck, two women got out of their car. They appeared to be a mother and her grown daughter. In an instant both SueAnn and I realized that the daughter had Down Syndrome. And in the next instant, we realized she was headed directly for us at a pretty good clip, exclaiming “GOOD MAWNING!”

“Head fake!” I thought. I moved to one side and acted as if I did not see the woman coming toward us. I was not going to let this interaction happen. Far too uncomfortable. Too much trouble.

Not my lovely wife.

“Good Morning!” SueAnn said, mimicking the woman’s tone, if not her enthusiasm.

“I’M TRACY!” shouted the woman.

I caught her mother’s eye and tried to give her a knowing wink, while still making evasive moves toward the truck.

“Hi Tracy. I’m SueAnn.” my wife replied.

The water balloon was falling from the second floor! SueAnn had to see it. She was about to get soaked by a life surprise that could still be avoided.

“HI SUZANNE! CAN I HAVE A HUG!”

Oh! Too late.

Tracy raised her arms. SueAnn responded in kind and embraced this once stranger, now beloved friend in the McDonalds parking lot . . . in Pocatello, Idaho . . . at 9:30 . . . on a cold winter morning.

I glanced back at the woman’s mother. She gave me a closed-mouth grin while slowly shaking her head and rolling her eyes. But she did not seem to do this out of embarrassment or frustration, but rather an enlightened resignation that this simply was her daughter, shouting and hugging and all. I realized I was giving her the same look back – this simply was my wife.

As the last GOODBYEs and HAVE-A-NICE-DAYs and their accompanying exclamation points floated away into the cold, we got back into the truck. I looked at SueAnn. She looked at me. We started to laugh; not at Tracy or her mom or at each other, but at the shear and simple joy of the moment. As we laughed and smiled I let some of the surprise and simple pleasure roll off SueAnn onto me, and I regretted not taking the full impact when I had the chance.

Tracy changed our day. She offered us a moment of pure joy, pure happiness, bliss. As we drove out of Pocatello, I wondered out loud if Heaven might not be the best place in the universe because when we get there we will all have Down Syndrome.

And I was reminded of a few stanzas from William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations on Mortality.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,

He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

It may be true, as Wordsworth proposes, that the world compensates for lost innocence with experience and wisdom. Sometimes I wonder. But for a few fleeting seconds in that McDonalds parking lot I would have agreed with Thomas Gray instead: “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.”