The Deer Days of August

These days, I watch the progression of summer from the seat of my bike. It's been an unseasonable season, often fall-like, offering up no more than a handful of dog days so far. The calendar says it is August, yet I have barely broken a sweat. Still, Mother Nature perseveres, and the foliage on both sides of the bike path has grown as thick as it always does this time of year. The trees bend toward each other with the weight of summer leaves, forming an opaque canopy overhead.

Nature's sun screen, nature's umbrella, nature's blind spot. The weather outside may be frightful, or not, but the trees are thriving, right on schedule. The other day, with the lushness of summer growth blocking my view, I didn't see the tiny family of deer at the edge of the bike path until I was staring at point blank range right into the large watchful eyes of the doe. She stood perfectly still, her right foreleg slightly bent, her two babies like statues only inches behind her. Mother Nature's performance art. I tightened my fingers around my brakes and slowed my pedaling, poised to stop if a child lurched forward. The doe remained calm, but her eyes followed me as I passed. We were two moms, suspicious and protective, both seemingly in control.

We moms have a lot in common. We are tenacious, we stick to the schedule, we make sure our babies grow and thrive. I wonder whether the doe, or Mother Nature for that matter, doubt themselves the way we human moms tend to do. I met someone this week, a mom. A human one, my young neighbor's mom. She is visiting from out of town, helping one daughter move in with the other, spending her days caring for all the dogs and unpacking and breaking down empty boxes and organizing so the new living arrangement will be as perfect as it can be. She is about my age; we spoke across our backyard fences the other day, and all I saw, really, was a doe, doing what does do, without really thinking about it. She was taking care of business.

This morning, we spoke, face to face. We were both bleary eyed, wearing sweats, dragging garbage to the curb. Within minutes, we bonded, in a way that only women who have been daughters and sisters and wives and mothers can bond. We have both experienced great joy and suffered great loss. We are both, for a variety of reasons,

in a place now of change and uncertainty, and we are both trying to find our way. She is upset with herself in ways I have been upset, and I am scared in ways she has been scared. Her story is not mine to tell, and so I won't tell it, but we both saw our meeting as a gift. In some way or another, we each offered the other something that would carry us through, that helped answer some nagging question. She is leaving soon, as soon as her work here is done, but we have promised to keep in touch. I hope we do.

Before we spoke, this other mom struck me as so sure of herself, so completely in charge. Like Mother Nature, who keeps the leaves growing in spite of the cool and sometimes gray days. Like the mother deer, who silently watches out for her babies, wordlessly keeping them out of harm's way. Do they wonder, as we do, whether they are doing enough, whether they are doing it right? I don't know for sure, but I doubt it.

We human moms can learn a lot from those other moms. And, as luck and fate will have it, we can learn a lot from each other.