Tangled

  I find myself untangling myself from things sometimes. In the chicken houses, I’ll be toodling along and then next thing I know, I’m face planted onto the litter, still holding the dead chickens in my hands. My foot has gotten tangled in an errant piece of cable or rope or wire that has somehow made it into the house, usually by the feed lines where it lies in wait for me to not see it and send me sprawling in the most ungainly of manner.

  Years ago, during our first batch of chickens, I drove Clint’s truck around the houses to check  a cow due to deliver any day.  I drove up near the burn pile and saw the cow in question. She was fine, and I drove home. It was when I hit the highway, I noticed a strange noise. I pulled into the driveway and got out to investigate.

  That’s when I noticed the thin  silver cable attached underneath the truck, trailing out behind, ending in a bundle of tangled mess 100 feet behind. I had, apparently, driven over it during my trek around the pasture. It had been left from building the chicken houses, bits and pieces not long enough to do anything with. I crawled underneath the truck, hoping to dislodge it before Clint came outside to see.

  It was wound around the axle just the slightest  and all I could do was cut it loose…I didn’t have any tools with me, so I crawled out and got some needle nose pliers and wire cutters and cut and picked and plucked and pulled and had it almost completely out when Clint hollered from the porch “woman! What in the WORLD are you doing??”

“umm…nothing. Just…umm…getting this cable cut off.” I yelled back.

“how in the WORLD did you do THAT?” he asked incredulously.

I pulled the final chunk loose and worked my way out from under the truck. “ummm…I’m not sure, really…” I said.

He sighed and walked over and rolled the huge mass of wiry silver into a giant cable ball and threw it into the back of the truck.

    I’ve been in dressing rooms, trying on some garment with strings and ties and sleeves and stays only to find myself stuck, with both my arms up in the air, some sort of fashionable straight jacket. I do NOT want to yell for help, so I quietly work my way out, as a sort of a chubby, female version of Harry Houdini. I’ve learned that those garments give you a tiny bit of warning, a tightness when you pull them up your arms. I go no further than that and toss them to the side. I figure if I keep going, I’ll end up thrashing around on the dressing room floor, trying to quietly escape from a Blouse of Death. So untangle myself, I do, and avoid those things.  

  I once was…well, not really thrown from a horse…what happened was she and I at the VERY same time decided I would be better off on the ground and not in the saddle, so she bucked as I slid off and…there I hung, by my…well….top undergarment as she trotted and my feet were still 2 feet off the ground. So, I pulled myself upward and with one hand…well….let’s just say, I got untangled from the saddle and walked over behind the tree and put myself back together as best I could.

  Today, I hopped on the Kubota to check chickens and took off. Maggie My Dog likes to ride with me, so she ran toward me to hop on. I slowed to let her on and heard a crash behind me.

  How this happened, I still don’t know. I have (well, actually, HAD) a soaker hose in my flower bed with the water hose hooked up to it. I’ve been meaning to move it around  to reach some of the flowers better but have never gotten around to it.

  I turned to see that the water hose was tangled around my left back tire and I had drug it and the soaker hose 20 feet. I had ripped up plants and planters, strewn mulch about, pulled concrete stepping stones up, and the hose was as tight as a banjo string around my favorite young tree, pulling it toward me slightly.  

  Sigh. I got off and untangled the hose, pulling it back to the flower bed. I tried my best to put it back, but I had torn up so many plants I had to pull those out first. I never did get it really where I wanted it, but it’s ok for now. My favorite young tree is fine, perhaps a teensy bit shaken, but fine nonetheless.

  I then turned my attention to the garden hose wrapped around the tire of my Kubota and by backing up and forward and getting off and unlooping it, I got it straightened out.  

 I pondered on untangling things and thought of an Alison Krauss and Union Station song. “Deeper That Crying” is the name.  They have a song for every occasion in my life it seems and I hummed and sang it all the way to the chicken houses.

“this path is not the one I choose to travel

Even as we watch what tied us unravel

and the tears fall like rain

Deeper than crying, the loving still remains”

       (goes the chorus

                          and it ends with)

“so, I’ll the one to pull our tangled lives apart,

I won’t dodge the angry words that hide a broken heart

and my calm fare thee wells cannot obscure

that deep inside, my heart is hurtin’ so”

   I hum that and think of untangling lives, of taking bits and pieces of me that I thought weren’t big enough to do anything with only to find that they ARE, and that untangling was the best thing for me.

    See, I cannot move forward with cables and hoses tingle-tangled all around me. I’ve got to cut them loose, before they rip everything I’ve worked for apart. I didn’t choose this path, I simply found that in my daily walk and work that I was dragging things  behind me that were destructive and bad, a noisy, useless coil wrapped around an axle.   

  So…I’ll be the one to pull our tangled lives apart. God will show me how. Then, Clint will help me roll the mass of tangledness into a ball and throw it away. I’ll cut back the dying flowers and put the soaker hose back where it goes, maybe even in a better place so that every plant gets its due moisture. I’ll spend the time I used to spend on them, getting tangled up in nonsense, on my children and their spouses.

  Oh, I know that inadvertently I’ll end up tangling myself up in something again…but…I’ll recognize that tightness earlier on, that straight jacketedness so quickly…I’ll feel that familiar tightness…I’ll recognize it before I rip anything up. I’ll pull myself away before the wire wraps around my foot, tripping me up… I’ll slide off before I get bucked off and straighten myself up as best I can.

I’ll be the one to pull our tangled lives apart.

    I am the only one that can and so, I shall. I will remember it and write about it in vague ways that will remind me of how quickly I can get tangled up with someone I love, someone who, the entire time is cutting me away, while I wrapped myself up in them… they were unraveling me  the entire time.