Calling the Bear

Yesterday evening three swift knocks sounded at the door of my apartment.

I opened it expecting the faces of my downstairs neighbors —

a family who came to Georgia from Bangladesh

and just last week, brought home a newborn

who cries whenever my children’s footsteps thunder

across her ceiling.

But I saw nothing at my door except an empty stairwell,

and it was my children then who were up all night,

startled to attention by the mystery of who had been knocking,

their fear growing to fit the uncertain boundaries

of the unknown.

I have never seen a living bear up close, in real life,

but I have felt them in the forests of my childhood.

And a life-sized bear, stuffed by a skillful taxidermist,

greeted me and my children the one time in Maryland

when I took them camping on my own,

fleeing the makeshift loft in the instrument shop

where we spent summers in Osage, West Virginia,

winding my van along a spiraling path through unfamiliar trees

as darkness fell in waves.

The real life stuffed animal alerted us to the presence of the bears

beside our campsite.

Neither foreboding nor docile, it stood at attention,

a sign to be aware of your surroundings and act accordingly.

Meanwhile, the rangers who greeted us provided some guidelines

for living among the bears:

Try to avoid them.

Otherwise, hold your ground.

Reveal your humanity.

Speak clearly and calmly.

Slowly back away sideways.

Give the bear room to escape.

Above all, don’t feed them and don’t flee.

I watched as my daughter repeated the rangers’ rules,

but the most threatening creatures we encountered

were the officers who stopped me on the way home.

They directed me and my children to the curb

while they stretched gloves over their hands and searched

every canvas tote I’d filled with our belongings

for the trip that summer,

my 6-year-old daughter loudly listing the contents they would find

and taunting them as one might a rival team on a bright Friday night.

I soothed her with a reprise of what she’d learned camping:

These men are doing their jobs.

We will hold our ground calmly.

We won’t feed them our fears.

We won’t try to escape.

Meanwhile, my son, shy of 4 years old at the time,

words a new function of his autistic mind,

extended his arms, clapped toward our guarding officer

and said:

Hug Me.

The officer pointed to the steel strapped across his vest:

Not safe, Buddy. Too many guns.

Finally, the contents of our life poured back into our bags,

my license returned to my hand,

and we drove away slowly.

That summer was a declaration of independence for me,

though this rose like a long wave through the weight of years

filled with the muck of illness, infidelity and abuses,

laying bare beautiful wounds for healing.

In 2017, I joined women in Washington D.C. for the first march,

and then I joined women closer to home

within the mountain sweat lodge,

where we sit in ceremony,

honoring our ancestors and the Native American traditions

handed down through a legacy of grandmothers.

There are four rounds in the sweat lodge, and I learned

the final one is dedicated to The Bear.

It is also known as the round of the warrior.

Yet, it is always the third round which

brings visions of bears to my mind.

Symbolic of remembering ourselves and honoring our ancestors,

the third round begins, and I see myself sitting

with my head gently engulfed by a tiger’s gaping jaws —

at once threatening my life and protecting me from harm.

It’s a familiar state — the comfort of being at home

in a dangerous situation.

I ask myself how to safely get free.

The answer always comes: Call the Bear.

Once, a friend and I even lit candles, drew cards, burned intentions

and declared to ourselves and the universe:

We call the Bear into our lives.

Are bears lucky? Intelligent? Ferocious? Kind?

The picture that comes to my mind is that the bear

is a survivor.

And seeing them reminds us we

are survivors too.

Downstairs, the older brother of the newborn

breaks the blinds by pulling them apart to

peek out at the world of our parking lot.

His eyes preside over it like Dr. T.J. Eckleburg’s

watch over the expanse of highway

where Myrtle dies in Gatsby.

If anyone knows who darted up to our doorway it’s him.

As far as I’m concerned though, it was just the Bear,

leaving mystery and fear in its wake but

at last answering my call —

for the endurance of the survivor,

for the strength of the warrior

and for the memory of how it feels to be free.

This poem originally appears within my publication BAMF Mag on Medium.com. Please follow this link to subscribe to The Grey Rose Garden, where I share even more writing about the ways hope blooms in the dark.