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We have a little dog named Finn, and I love him very much. A few months ago I nearly watched him get hit by a car.
This story is partly about how much Finn loves chasing frisbees. It’s a lot. We try to take him out for a good toss once or twice a week, and when he sees me reach for the disc up at the top of the coat rack, he starts leaping into the air, trying to grab it and squealing with excitement that the living room wasn’t built to handle.
It’s very rare that I outthrow him. Other ultimate players often start with the 15-yard “here you go, little buddy” toss, and I have to tell them he doesn’t have much patience for that. Rip it as far as you can. As long as he’s looking when you throw it, he’ll go get it, and fast. As soon as the disc hits the air, Finn is a miniature cheetah, his ears pulled back against his head and his body zooming toward the landing place, as singular a purpose as there ever could be.
.
What happened started with a walk in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. It was crazy windy out, but otherwise it was quite pleasant, and the afternoon wasn’t looking busy. Instead of the usual short trot around the block, I decided we’d go to the park. Finn’s frisbee came with us, of course .
We paused for a moment on the way, waiting for a gap in traffic at Williamsburg Road. The main route into downtown from our neighborhood, Williamsburg can be a drag strip, especially as it slopes downhill by the park. I usually grab the dogs’ attention before we cross just to make sure there’s no straggling; the coast only stays clear for so long.
Once a wave of cars had passed, we crossed and made our way up a short flight of stairs and into the park. Spartacus stopped to do his business where he always does his business, right on the edge of the grass. Finn then did what he always does, which is squeak and jump in anticipation, and so I did what I always do: I unclipped him and got ready to launch the first throw.
.
You could give me 10,000 tries to re-create what happened next, and I wouldn’t be able to do it.
I threw the disc so that it would roll on the grass rather than fly through the air, and it immediately hooked way farther to the left of where I had aimed. No big deal, though—it was still going somewhere, and Finn stayed in happy pursuit. Gravity would soon do its thing and the disc would spiral to the ground.
Except that didn’t happen. The wind managed to blow the frisbee astray while also keeping it up and rolling, and I watched as it traveled over the sidewalk and through another patch of grass.
Then, unbelievably, it continued into a narrow stairwell that was probably 100 feet away and located nearly 180 degrees in the opposite direction of where I had thrown.
Wild, I thought. Like I said: 10,000 tries.
My sense of awe was short-lived. As soon as I saw Finn disappear after the disc, I remembered what was at the bottom of that stairwell’s 30 steps or so: Williamsburg Road.
.
I took off at a sprint, terrified and panicked, screaming his name over and over.
Finn! Finny! Finny!!!
As I got to the top of the stairs, the screams turned into begging, shrieking.
Please! Stop! No!
Please. Whoever’s on the road at this flash in time, please hear me. Wherever you’re going isn’t as important as it seems.
This is our little guy. Please.
The scene at the bottom of the stairs remains clear in my mind, in all its relief and hilarity and of course-ness: there Finn was, in the middle of the road, pushing the frisbee with his nose, trying to get it to turn over so he could carry it back. A playful little boy, happy to be clueless. Cars lined up in both directions, their drivers aware enough to at least slow to a crawl and give this little dog a chance.
Still shouting something or other, I ran into the street and grabbed Finn and his toy. I half waved a “thank you” at the windshield to my right, and I carried him back up the stairs to the landing where Spartacus was waiting, knowingly.
.
When we got back up into the field, far away from the road, I threw the disc again, this time a standard flick. It didn’t go very far, but it also went where I intended. Finn chased after it and Spartacus trotted around, unconcerned.
I needed to sit down.
My breathing was shallow, and I wanted to close my eyes. I felt like I had collided with something huge. At the same time, I was numb, as though I wasn’t totally there. Something brittle and cold was cutting me in half; under my skin there was a volcano that couldn’t erupt.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t; the tears weren’t ready yet.
I shook. First my hands, then my arms, then my shoulders and torso and after that my whole body. I sensed I could get stuck in its shock, and shaking my body out helped move some of the energy around.
The tears came when I called Katharine. It happens that way sometimes, where saying the thing out loud is where the floodgate opens.
I had braced myself, in real time, for the extremely violent death of an extremely innocent loved one. Waves of helplessness and sorrow and guilt and deep love and sudden relief had knocked me over and thrown me around, all in a moment that had lasted maybe 20 seconds.
I felt this brush with death, that’s for sure.
.
What happened with Finn that day was a reminder of one of the most important lessons I’ll ever learn: trauma is physically real. It takes up space in the universe, namely in our bodies.
Once, my dad took the wrong combination of meds, screamed at my brother and sister and me that we should go drown in a river of blood, and drove away. Ten minutes later, the police were on the phone. He was fine, but he had jumped the curb, hit and destroyed a small tree, and rolled his Toyota over a full 360 degrees.
More times than I can count (seriously, I tried once), EMTs carried him out of our house on a stretcher. Same goes for the number of times he was in the hospital for at least a night—it was easily over 100, and for every reason under the sun.
He got the mall police called on him once because the cashier at Border’s wasn’t being agreeable; he broke the news that he had cancer by telling us we were fools for not listening to him; he screamed about hating our mom; he threw huge flower pots off the deck.
The list goes on. I never love saying it, but my upbringing was littered with fear and violence and abuse and neglect.
And I rarely felt it.
I did plenty of thinking: Dad’s crazy. Dad’s hurting. Dad needs help. Dad needs my help.
But feeling? Not so much. I didn’t know how.
Danger, shock, panic. It’s all of corporeal consequence. Without proper care, it gets stuck, leaving us to lug around both the weight and the charge.
For a very long time, the physical toll of my youth was an energy that had poured into me but then went nowhere. It was like a stopped-up pool of nasty water. My journey of healing and growth has been a process of learning to let it flow.
Workshop announcement! “A Masculinity that Works”
This whole newsletter is an exercise in something that as a man, I wasn’t always taught to do: talk about what I’m feeling.
Beyond not engaging with our emotions, there are lots of other societal definitions of “man” that don’t feel particularly useful. What has led to our current understanding of masculinity? Which parts are helpful and which are holding us back? What kind of “manhood” do we actually want?
A friend and I are leading a workshop called A Masculinity that Works to dive into those questions and more. Here are the basics:
When/where: Mondays; 7-9pm EST; Zoom; on 10/31, 11/14, 11/28, and 12/12.
Cost: We’re asking for between $100-$200 based on your financial situation, and if $100 is too much we’re ok with you just paying what you can.
Reviews: While this is a new workshop, people enjoy what we do.
You can get more info here, and you can register at this button:
Two more notes:
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Trauma, energy in the body, crying, etc. Between this newsletter and one I wrote a couple weeks back, I wanted to share some wisdom that has helped me move forward in life.
James Gordon runs the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, and he’s taught me a lot about both what being in fight or flight over the long term will do to a person as well as ways to reset and care for the nervous system. If you’re interested in his work, here’s something short and something long.
Be well,
Jonathan