Bag of Spuds Set
“Truisms are true; hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” - From George Orwell’s 1984.
I noticed the mother goose first. I saw her through a gap in the bushes, back toward the smaller of the two ponds, which was behind her. Her black and white markings contrasted the greenery. Then I saw a bushy ball at her feet. The small mass of brown and yellow fluff could’ve been a plant, but then it moved. Then I saw more of them, five altogether. They were her babies, new to the world.
They emerged as a group. The mother goose dropped her head to the ground to move the babies along. They moved in fits and starts, taking a few steps, then wobbling on their feet, then plopping down on their bellies, then getting up again. The mother snatched up grass in her beak and munched it down. The babies copied her.
They all moved in their loose group from the bushes, across the concrete walking path and down to the edge of the larger pond. The babies and their mother dipped their beaks into the water to drink. Then the babies waded into the pond, going only so far so that their tiny webbed feet just cleared the bottom, and the transparent water took their weight. Then they scrambled back to dry land, the water having left markings on their fluffy bodies, which were covered in what looked more like fur than feathers.
Like so many of us, I often struggle to grasp meaning in this life, but as I watched the goslings and their mother, I was able to hang on to that vision. It felt like ground under my feet. It felt substantial. The water was wet. The pond’s edge was solid. The geese were being themselves. I still don’t understand why any of it was happening. I still don’t understand the meaning of life. But watching the geese, I was able to live those moments absorbing the sights, understanding, insomuch as I might understand anything, that I was there, and that the pond was there, and that the geese were there. Watching the geese was the sum and substance of my life right then. In the absence of any deeper understanding, I understood that about our lives, and I still do.
