Transcription
Around the Cosmic Campfire by Tony Wright
Chapter 9: The Totem
I have always been attracted to deer. I don't know why. You will hear me declare this time and time again. There are so many instances of deer appearing for me. I won't even get into all of them here, but you can trust me on this. My most precious wedding weekend photo was of me at the petting zoo at Opryland in 1980, and I was knelt down petting a deer. Or I cherish the time I was surrounded by deer at a private park in Austin, Texas, long ago when I was on the road singing. It seemed that deer just came to me. I have other stories about deer in my collection here as well.
When my family initially moved out into the woods, the first thing that happened was a fawn was stuck in our fence line. She just wasn't large enough yet to get out over that big leap, and we got her off the fence and put her in the pickup truck and raced her to the closest vet. Fortunately, that vet was very cool and didn't try to take her to turn her into the authorities. Probably today a vet would have, but he stitched up some wounds and kept her overnight. It was enough time for us to build her a fence in the area so she could safely recover, and I became her caretaker, a job I had no inkling would take so much time. I seemed to live in my bib coveralls for seven weeks as I went foraging for anything she would eat, as she would not eat any agricultural feeds we put in front of her. My poor human family wondered if I was ever going to get around to feeding them again. I picked violet leaves, ferns, honeysuckle, and I strung the fresh honeysuckle vines along her fence line to encourage her to start to get up from a resting position. She was just a little too large for me to pick up by myself, so I hoped some greens on the fence would be a big reason for her to arise. Of course, I had to name her Phalene—beautiful Phalene. I took a large pan of water out to her and an old wooden straight-back chair that looked like it was from the dump. I would go sit in her forest pen with her for hours, and she would get up at last, come over to me, and lick the salt from my arm, and I would feed her apples from my neighbor's fallen apple stash on the ground under her tree. Phalene loved apples. I would take cracked corn and other things, and eventually Bertha and Bill and Banty hen and rooster found us there and came to eat corn too. Then the cats would show up and sit on my lap and would gently touch noses with Phalene. The dog would come too, and it was certainly a love fest at that point. I was done caring for Phalene's stitches and wounds. Eventually, I knew it was getting closer to the time I would have to let her go back to the woods. One morning I went out to see my baby deer, and she was gone. The neighbor kids had left the gate open to her pen, and she had fled, hopefully to find her mama. I was excited for her, but I was heartbroken.
One year to the day, on my own birthday, a grown deer appeared with another deer in my backyard. They were down sniffing where her now-removed wooden fence pen had been, then walked through the yard. It was Phalene. I knew it was her because, in the places of her wounds, there was less hair in spots from the shaving the vet had done a year earlier, but she looked as if she had healed nicely. I have never seen her since that I know of, but I wonder if she has told her offspring about the lady of the woods who took care of her for six weeks of her life. I do hope so. What an amazing gift on all day's my birthday! I discovered that deer are probably my Native American totem if I was going to pick one. Well, deer and also owls. Owls fly to me when I'm out and ride over my car in the broad daylight just to say hello. I am thinking that is a tad unusual.
One thing I found out is that the deer, as a Native American totem, represents trust. Yes, I can always use that since I often trust so few about so much. In speaking about the now, my daughter Emily was about to embark on her first journey since having a kidney transplant in 2015. She was contemplating driving herself out to Oregon to go to school and live among a few friends from our hometown. I remember thinking, "No, I think not. Never mind that you are 34, you had a transplant, your medical team is here, you need your mom still. This is too far." The dialogue in my head went on and on, yet I knew I had to let her go, just like I did with my phone. I had given her my Honda when her car died. She could not buy another car since her medical situation of many hospital bills had been ruining her credit. She had no job; she was on disability; she was struggling through a surgery recovery for many months. So I handed her the keys to the Honda, still in great shape, and came to terms with buying something else for myself. It was a cavalier and unexpected thing I had to do, but necessary in an expression of gratitude that my girl was still alive. She had worked so hard to get this far.
One particular night, I was compelled to work on another story from my book, the book of short stories you're holding in your hands now. Emily was down working on the Honda and installing a little device to make her phone usable as she traveled across the country. That entailed using an electric drill and doing some things I would never dream of doing—drilling a hole inside this great car. Her needed technical part came in from online. I had charged up my drill, and she was in the driveway busy doing her thing. I was writing a story, talking about deer actually, and she came into my computer room and said, "Mom, did you ever have a toy deer?" My response was, "Certainly no, never. Why do you ask?" She signaled for me to come with her. We got down to the Honda, and she had all the screws out of the console, and a little compartment that holds CDs and other things were out, so so was the console; only the gear shift was sticking up in this console, which had no holes and no parts of entry. She had found a toy—a toy fawn. It was brand new, very sweet. She explained that she, too, was perplexed that there were no holes or ways for it to get in; no way for the glove compartment, no holes for it to enter. How could a toy fawn be in there? We tossed it around a bit but really came up with nothing much. But if it had fallen in there from someone's pocket, it would have to be at the manufacturer's end because I bought this car new. The question was, why was it a fawn and why not a dog or an elephant or a monkey or a horse? Why a fawn? And why would I be the one who bought that car and had never opened a console in the car before, ever in my life, nor had she? We girls have owned that car for 50 years and more than likely never opened the console. Was it something that was stuck in there by a clever universe? Can that happen? Can material things just show up and be there in some kind of divine order for us to decipher and hear messages? Some people say yes, it can happen. What was my message? To trust that she would be okay on her trip. It would be fine; all would be well. And let it go and give this up to the highest source, my dearest God, and to rest in it. I could think of no other reason that it happened this way, as this offering of these inexplicable little clues that make no sense. These are the kind of things that seem like only God could do in order to communicate. And then, of course, as hard as it can be sometimes, we have to be able to listen. I believe many people do not hear and do not deeply listen or take heed even if they do hear special messages given to them. Some are declared simply as coincidental than they seem impossible, but I'm here to say these things happen to me all the time, as the theme is continually represented here in my stories. Very simply, to tune in to the messages and find our own harmony with what comes through. Sometimes it is for certain about tuning your radio station to a higher frequency; maybe we could call this the God station. And sometimes it's just simply about the desire to resonate with something higher, as in thoughts of angels, and we can just tune right in. It can be completely impossible to believe anything the moment when you find yourself holding a tiny little fawn in your hands, sent from the universe. I believe, I believe we can manifest anything we want and need if we focus on it enough and have enough faith. Sometimes we manifest comfort and information. We are amazing beings, we humans, and what an incredible game we can learn to play in our amazement.
We let the fawn sit on my coffee table for a few weeks. I wanted it to stay there forever. As the day came up for Em to pull away from the house, loaded with suitcases and kitchen supplies, a large TV, computers, and life's smaller property, she took one last look through her room to see if she had forgotten anything important. The goodbye kisses and hugs to Ellie, the dog, were hard, exploding how sweet. When she got back into the car, she found I had placed the toy fawn on the seat to go with her and stay with her on the journey from now on. I could not really tell her the fawn was me; I was there in deer spirit. I would be with her no matter what. I would be there with her till the end of my time as her mother, as a loving fawn, as her spirit mate. I would be there loving her on every highway she would forever and ever choose. Travel well, my darling. Your angels and guides are with you always.