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The limerence is over with the squirrels in my backyard.
We were having a great time in our co-housing community, or so I thought. I had just built them little platforms off the ground to eat the peanuts I set out every day. I even put up those tiny drink umbrellas to protect the peanuts in case it rained.
When we moved in a couple months ago, I was clear it was they who ruled the yard. I told them so, and felt like I acted accordingly. As soon as I noticed their presence, I began the peanut offerings. I would sit and drink my coffee, thinking we were communing quite lovingly. I even placed a squirrel sculpture, complete with baby squirrel, that my aunt had made and gifted me, right near their feeding area.
We had a thing. It felt like it was going somewhere. I thought they really loved me.
And then something happened.
Out of nowhere. No red flags. (Though, to be fair, I have missed quite a few in the past.) They seemed like old-fashioned squirrels, like Bushy, my childhood squirrel friend, who would eat out of my hands and whom I visited first thing every morning.
But this was not something Bushy would have done.
Sunday morning I went to get in my hammock, as I sometimes do when the world feels slow and I give myself more than usual permission to rest. I had recently set up another hammock and climbed into the new one, at about 9am, sun rising into the yard.
And then, boom.
The hammock fell to the ground. With me in it.
It hurt. A lot.
I knew I had set it up properly, so I was perplexed, along with dizzy and startled. I looked up and saw someone had gnawed through the rope on both ends. Not tree friction. Teeth. Deliberate teeth.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. In shock, I got angry and started talking to them. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they heard me. I told them it wasn’t funny. That I would not be bringing more peanuts. That it hurt. Not cool. At all.
I was fuming in this infantile way. It had “ruined” my day — the one I had planned to be productive after hammock time. Now, with dizziness and a bruised body, I needed to be horizontal. I felt sideswiped by my “friends” and turned it into a pretty wild mental ride.
From my bed, though, I tuned into my meditation class and heard what I needed to hear. The class was about karma — how difficult moments can be spiritual teachers. The old adage: if you don’t like your circumstances, change your mind about them. Be thankful for the hard times; it’s karma catching up so you can purge it, accept it, ride it out.
I began wondering about the gift in the fall. Writing this was a gift, a release, and gave me an opportunity to lean into the messages here, and share them. The fall had also kept me in bed all day and made me confront how I still have so much to learn about being able to fully rest. The unlearning of Protestant work ethic is still a work in progress. It made me reflect on how I build houses for people, and squirrels, they don’t even want or need. How I overdo it.
It made me consider how far down rabbit holes I’ve gone over hurt done by others. Former partners who snapped love nests to the ground. Or the ones I’ve gnawed through myself. How all we really have is this moment after the fall, and the choices we make about it. How we see it. How we care for ourselves. What gifts we extract from it.
Sometimes this is the quiet work we do in a coaching session, sitting together after the fall, gently untangling the story, and harvesting the gifts, without pretending it didn’t hurt.
I’m not pissed anymore at my squirrel neighbors. I’ve already started giving them more peanuts. I told them this morning that I’ve forgiven them, though I still don’t totally understand why they chose to chew off rope. Maybe some little one needed to do some filing. Bottom line, I sank into my Buddhist meditation a bit more, If that fall helped purge some harmful action from this life or the last, it was worth it. Full acceptance.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do about the hammock. Will I put it back up? Seeing it hanging there in the trees feels important for now. Going to see what other threads come through as I watch it glow in the sun and the squirrels continue to use the trees as wildly entangled free way in the sky.
What lessons have you harvested from your falls?
What squirrels can you now be thankful for — for getting you where you are?
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