Love Pulls Us Toward The Difference

There is a shotgun hanging up in our closet, just below our hat rack. I put up hooks for the lean gun to lie steady on. I held my breath as I drilled holes for the gun rack. I don’t have a good history with drywall plugs. I never use the right size drill bit and then the hole comes out too big. I usually don’t have the right sized plugs to begin with because I just use whatever is in the shed or, when I hammer the plug into the wall, the plug bends and gets stuck in the drywall. Then, I have to hammer the plug further into the wall until it disappears, a yellow, orange or red plug forever embedded in the bones of the wall. I know the plug is there and it bothers me. A wall should not be made up of lost drywall plugs. A wall should be cleaned and tidied. Clear of rat feces, clear of old mud from previous abode walls that have been drywalled over. You should know, that behind your wall, is everything a wall should be. Just the clean necessities. Wood. Screws. Nails. Air. Maybe some chicken wire and thick, dried mud if you live in New Mexico. Adobe guts. 

Next to the shotgun, is my record player. It’s in the closet right now because I haven’t settled on a place to put it yet in our bedroom. Every morning, I wipe dust off the top of it with my hand and then onto my pants wishing I had just used a damp cloth or a paper towel. I wipe the dust off as a promise to the record player that one day, it will become useful again and until then, I will keep it clean. 

You should know, that in the shotgun lives a man who carries around turkey calls in his suitcase when he travels. He has one call that sounds like a raven. One call that sounds like an owl. These calls provoke the turkeys to make their turkey gobbles. Sounds that will reveal the turkey to the man who is hunting them. In the shotgun lives a man who does not sharpen his chainsaw blades but prefers to replace them. In the shotgun lives a man who splits three cords of wood for us without gloves on. In the shotgun lives 200 acres of oak trees and maple trees — the kind of land you can only afford to buy on the east coast. The kind of trees that make hard wood — not like the quick-burning wood we have out here — piñon, juniper and pine. In the shotgun lives a man who mounts deer, elk and bear heads on his living room wall. In the shotgun lives a man who knows what time of year to plant strawberries and how to tell if your onions are getting too much water. 

In the shotgun is my father-in-law, of course. 

My father-in-law is real. He is here, at our farm. He is so real in fact, that he sits down at my kitchen table on a Tuesday morning. There is a large hole in his blue t-shirt that opens up onto his belly. I can see freckles and moles making their way to the surface of his skin from the sun that gets in through the hole. He moves the terracotta throw pillows from behind his back and places them on the far side of the bench he is sitting on. When he gets up, I will put them back in their place and fluff them. He will move them again when he sits down. We will now play a game of pillow chess. I will move my queen. He will move his bishop.  He drinks a cup of warm water with two lemon slices — “Good for my kidneys,” he says. I drink bitter, Peruvian maté that makes him twist his face into a confused scowl. 

While he sits at my kitchen table he introduces me to the term, “shock gobbling.” Only he says it like, “shak gablin” because his upstate New York accent hits hard on the A’s. As I chop my almonds and figs with a large butcher knife — cutting the tops off the figs to feed to my dog — I ask, “What is shock gobbling?” I say it so that every syllable is felt and heard in my mouth. I accentuate the GOBB-IL-ING. Overpronouncing it to feel our differences. To feel the different way the land has moved inside of us and shaped our tongues. My land — the desert, tall Saguaros and sky and his land — dense woods, lakes and sugar maples. 

The man who lives inside the shotgun says to me, “Shak gablin is when you make a loud sound so that it scares the turkeys and they gobble.” He takes a small sip of his lemon water, his hands shaking slightly as he lifts the glass to his mouth. I learn that all kinds of sounds can scare a turkey — a car door slamming, a human scream, an owl screech, a gun going off. I take notes as he tells me this, bent over the counter scribbling on a small, yellow sticky note. I use three sticky notes, then four as I run out of room. There are so many ways to scare a turkey. 

“You’re taking notes?” He asks me. “Why?” 

“I’m going to write about you in my blog.” I say. 

“Huh. I would’t think anyone would think this was interesting.” He says. 

You should know, that in the record player lives a woman who grew up on the cool and misty coast of California, running between orange trees and sour grass that sprouts long, yellow flowers. In the record player lives the sun and purple and blue wildflowers that grow up on the grassy hills. In the record player lives women who divorce men and become professors and single mothers, making their children whole wheat pizza crusts. In the record player lives women who gather around pianos and sing the low part of the harmony because they’re voices are deep and strong. In the record player lives women who’ve worried about numbers and budgets when all they wanted to do was worry about poetry. 

In the record player is my grandmother, of course — and my mother.  

But somehow, the record player and the shotgun live in one closet. They now share one wall. They have somehow found their way to one another despite the fragility of the needle on the record player arm. Despite the gravity of the barrel on the shotgun. Despite their different weights, they are now together, on one wall where there are probably orange drywall plugs going about their lives inside the wall.

But then, the shotgun and the record player got married.
They got married outside, underneath the red rocks of Sedona when the spring wind was threatening to be very strong but ended up being manageable after all.
There was a wedding. And the record player even wore a white dress that she ordered one week before the wedding. And the shotgun wore her hair in a bun and put on a white, button-down shirt. And rings were exchanged. Rings with great turquoise stones inside of them.
And the red mountains smiled. They were pleased that two such different items would wind up married and doing the work of negotiating such difference. 

I have thought that the shotgun and the record player were too different — that they had no business sharing one closet with drywall plugs lost in the framing. The shotgun belongs on a dark-paneled wall where the deer and the elk heads watch over it. I have of course thought that the record player only belongs on a white, wooden table overlooking steep bluffs lined along the coast in southern California. But over and over again, I find these two objects back in the closet together. Like two teenage lovers who keep sneaking out at night through the window that won’t ever fully latch. I swear I locked the window. 

But perhaps what the shotgun and the record player want more than anything — even more than what they know they want — is to create something new that exists because of their difference. To birth something that embodies the union of their differences. Through their impossible union, they are able to create life.

Maybe I am just beginning to understand the purpose of being married.
Love pulls us toward the difference. 

At first, it’s a trick.
It looks like awe and wonder and lust and beauty.
And then, the trick unfolds itself, belly up longing to be scratched just under the chin. 

The trick, of course, is that the awe and wonder and lust and beauty is the difference.
We can only fall in love with everything that is not us. 

I can sing Joni Mitchell to our cows while my wife fires one bullet from the shotgun that scares off the coyote that circles our chicken coop. I can write a song when our first calf dies while my wife digs a grave into the hard desert earth. I can plant beautiful wildflowers while my wife chops the head of a sick chicken off with dull hedge clippers.

At first, it’s a trick.

To think the shotgun and the record player could share one wall — a wall with the lost, orange drywall plug.
And then, it simply becomes art.