Hello, Friend...

Are you lost?

”Hello, friend,” I said as the full moon peeked over my shoulder hours before dawn during my daily morning walk in the timber. “Are you lost? How did you get here?”

“Did you fall from someone’s pocket? Your human’s pocket? Tell me, how did you get here, so far from anywhere, alone in the woods, laying on the cold, hard, ground amongst the leaves? You look so lonely. And lost. Woefully lost. You weren’t cast aside on purpose, were you? I hope not! How could that be?”

“Can I help you? Tell me your story…”

“Were you made in a sweatshop somewhere overseas, maybe? Perhaps by the small fingers of a child who should have been in school instead of doing piecework or laboring at a giant loom? Or maybe you were made by an older worker; maybe a woman who feels by the aches in her bones how her labors crush her, a bit more each day, but grateful for any job that pays her enough money so her family can survive, in a world economic system that’s been manipulated to the end where billionaires go on vacations into outer space laughing at the rest of us while so many toil in poverty? Do you remember her? Was she smiling the last time you saw her? I hope so.”

“Or maybe a wondrous machine wove you, zig-zagging warp and weft with giant, pumping, steel arms threading bales of yarn through needles until you formed as designed, then dumping you and your kin at the end of the assembly line to be packaged and shipped around the world? Plastic wrapped in cardboard boxes, then in shipping containers to travel across the sea, then on a train, then a semi, maybe dropped off at WalMart. Were you frightened in the cold, dark belly of the container ship? I would have been.”

“Were you a gift? An exchange with meaning and love? Or were you purchased by your human quickly, without much thought and no emotion, to serve their needs, and disposable? If you were a gift, then your loss is ripe with meaning. Maybe if you were handmade by someone, say a Grandma, with love; if so, your loss is a serious one. Is your human out somewhere in the world weeping, crying, “oh, my lost glove, oh, where could you be? And saying, “Grandma, I’m so sorry…I Iost the glove you so lovingly made; I’m so, so, sorry.”

“But that is so much better than disposable--we dispose so much and care so little. I hope someone cared for you and you them.”

“Or maybe a child lost you, and won’t tell anyone, because they fear being scolded by a parent for being irresponsible; a parent who acts as if they have never lost a glove before…

“And what is your mate, your right hand doing? Does their heart ache for you? Do they weep for you too? Maybe wail for you? Or for themselves because they fear for their future? Their very existence? That they aren’t needed anymore? After all, with you lost, the only human who might want them is a one-handed human, and the one-handed human and your mate finding each other is beyond our fates, even with the internet. No?”

“Here, let me make you more comfortable,” I said, straightening out your fingers and letting you stretch. “That’s better,” I said, to silence.

“Glove, are you thinking that maybe if you are quiet, you can use your fingers to crawl into the bushes, and the big huffing and puffing human with the giant feet, bright light, and camera, with steam coming out of his mouth, will leave you alone? And if you crawl far enough, maybe you can crawl to your human, who misses you?”

“Here, let me turn my back…”

“What are you made of, can you tell me? Natural fibers, at one with the earth? Or are you made of synthetic fibers, maybe petroleum-based, and the flesh of the dinosaurs is knit into your existence? Do the smaller creatures of the earth warm themselves or make homes in your knitted caverns, as I hope, or are you a small toxic oil spill where small creatures go to die? Regardless, I still care for you, and wish you well.”

“Should I leave you here, where your human might find you on another walk, or should I put you on a fencepost at the gate up high to be more easily seen?”

“You are smaller than my glove, which has kept my right hand warm for years. So maybe your human is smaller than me? I remember buying my glove and its mate at the Farm and Home in Knoxville, thinking these are the perfect pair of gloves for me, regretting I couldn’t take home all the gloves there looking for their humans, like it is so sad not being able to find a home for all of the puppies and kitties at the animal shelter.”

“I now see my glove is touching you tenderly…”

”Violet the dog, what do you know? You look concerned. Maybe your “nose knows” what happened! Oh, if you could only speak,” I said.

“I can speak,” said Violet. “All dogs speak. You humans don’t care enough to listen.”

---

This is how I think sometimes. I hyper-focus, except when distracted. It’s one or the other. I have ADD. Well, maybe I have ADHD. I was diagnosed with ADD as an adult, but before 1994 when doctors started using ADHD to describe both the hyperactive and inattentive subtypes of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

It was tough on me in elementary school, but over the years, I’ve learned not only to live with it but to thrive with it. I really don’t see it as a “disorder.” Instead, I choose to consider it a superpower. I see it as part of the marvelous range of human variation that society often stifles. If I could “fix” it, I wouldn’t. I think some of my best writing comes when my brain is flip-flopping around like a fish on land, and things that don’t seem to belong together pass so closely in each other's orbits that I see connections I would have missed if my brain worked “correctly.”

I know it happened with this piece in the New York Times in 2017.

So, here is how my writing process works. Something cues my brain, and it flops around, pulling things together, and then I try to hyper-focus to write the piece. It takes several hyper-focusing efforts and lots of rewrites before anything is any good.

And I always have to tell myself to stop hyper-focusing consciously. Like with this piece about this poor lost glove. I didn’t want to let it go. I could have written about it for months because it is so comforting. I had to tell myself to say, “stop!” I could have written a book about this poor lost glove, following my thoughts down myriad rabbit holes to wherever. It’s hard to explain, but it is comforting to keep digging in. 

---

What I did in this piece is animatism: the attribution of consciousness to inanimate objects and natural phenomena.

Children do this universally. This is how they play with dolls, trucks, sticks, whatever. Most of us outgrow it, maybe to our detriment, and to the detriment of society.

A year or so ago, I found these two worn, small, stuffed toy animals on a load to the landfill. They called out to me. “Help, help! We have lots of life left in us! Some child will love us! Some child NEEDS us!

Now they ride around with me in my old pickup wherever I go, just in case I meet a child who needs them.

Or if you want, I can give one to you, to comfort you, should you need comforting...

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Please take a look at the work of other Iowa Writers’ Collaborative columnists—they are doing amazing things. If you can afford it, please become a paid subscriber to their work. Here we are in alphabetical order:

Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines

Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa

Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politic Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Macey Spensley: The Midwest Creative, Iowa

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona

Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

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