I love to meditate outside early in the morning, before the sun comes up.
So when I signed up for a writing retreat I was delighted to see there was a room with a balcony and I put my request in right away.
I arrive at the retreat, see the balcony and know something special is going on because there is a huge dragonfly sculpture on the balcony and dragonflies are what show up when I need a sign. Too many times to count.
So the first morning I wake up and slip outside in the dark and sit on the little gliding bench and stare up at the stars and listen to the river nearby and the wildlife waking up. Lots of wildlife here, birds, squirrels, cats, a bunch of dogs barking and then something that sounds like a coyote. Raw and howling, close enough to give a thrilling sense of danger, far enough to feel safe.
I’m letting my mind do it’s calming thing while I watch the sky starting to just barely lighten and then something flits by near my balcony. Obviously a bird of some kind, a dark shape that moved through my vision too fast to see what kind. And then another one, closer. And then the sky has lightened a smidge more and a dark shape comes flying around the corner of the balcony, cutting across the L shape of the railing.
That felt close enough to make me jump a little and then it came again, zipping around the corner wall and swooping by a foot from my face.
Holy shit, that was a bat!
I wonder if I’m sitting near the entrance to their roost. Maybe I’m blocking them from getting home. I wonder if the next fly by will actually be an attack. I move inside, pulling the screen door shut and sit just on the other side of it on the floor watching for what will happen next. Now that I’m protected I can be curious, and then I think maybe the bat was just curious. Have I heard of actual bat attacks when they are not provoked? I can’t remember.
But what I do remember is a bat in our house when I was a kid.
When I was seven year old, not long after we moved to our new house, a split level 70’s modern wonder, I was woken in the middle of the night by yelling. I opened my bedroom door into the hall with the high vaulted ceiling and my dad yelled to close it as he ran up and down the hall waving a broom. My mom was screaming too. “Get it! get it!”
My brother yelled “What’s going on?!”
My dad again said “Get back in your rooms!”
There was a bat in the house, flying back and forth in our bedroom hallway, scaring the crap out of the entire family.
My dad would be the first to say he was not the man for this task, but he was valiantly trying to protect his family. There were ladders and golf clubs and various ill-fated attempts to guide the bat outside and then more attempts to capture it before someone finally decided the bat had outsmarted us all and the thing to do was let the bat sleep in that corner by the I-beam and let us go back to sleep with our bedroom doors firmly closed. In the morning my mother would call someone with the wherewithal to remove a bat from a house. There’s a whole process and he did it efficiently, said he’d go release it.
In my family (like many, I’m sure), the unfamiliar was coded as frightening. My parents sprayed worry on us like sunscreen, believing it was a protectant, not noticing how worry can shrink a life. Not their fault, their parents did it to them too, in our family anxiety was passed down through the generations like recipes and good silver.
Looking back as someone who has learned a little about managing anxiety, I now have a different perspective. I’ll bet that bat caught in our house was scared shitless, got lost and couldn’t find his way out. I imagine when he finally got released he flew back to his family and was like “You guys are not going to believe the night I just had. I got stuck in some structure and these fuckers were throwing stuff at me and chasing me and I was sure I was going to die. They were nuts! Very aggressive!” And then that bat family passed down fear of humans to their descendants like my family passed down fear of bats.
Maybe we are all just scared creatures and the way through is not to immediately assume the thing you don’t know about is out to get you. Maybe the first reaction should be to keep your mind open, have some curiosity.
I’ve spent a good part of my adult life discovering that I want to expand my life not shrink it. And have no doubt, fear shrinks you. Doing things despite fear expands you.
So I tell the check out girl I like her tattoo (worry says keep to yourself) and we have a lovely discussion.
And I have a hard but honest conversation with a family member (survived it, expanded).
And I sign up for a writing retreat and, gulp, read my work to other people (useful feedback but the win was in the doing of it).
So this morning on my writing retreat, I went back out in the dark and sat on the little glider, the dragonfly sculpture silently reassuring in the dark. I did some extra calming in my brain and body, and waited for the bat to come back. I was a little bit scared but a lot curious.
And wouldn’t you know it, no bat.
But I have high hopes for tomorrow morning.
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