Driving down Mill Road in Eastham a few weeks ago, I spotted a painted pond turtle on the pavement. Being a human who has enjoyed enough success, by my modest standards, to assume I know what is good for others, I knew immediately I could help her.
I knew she was a “she” because she was a pond turtle in the road — therefore looking for a place to lay her eggs.
Not wanting her to get squished, I stopped my car and moved her but not in the direction she was heading. That would have required her and her hatchlings to cross the road to return to the pond.
Ten minutes later, I came back. She had managed to get almost all the way back across the road where she wanted to go. Humbled and feeling silly, I lifted her the last two feet into a sandy garden. I don’t know where she laid her eggs, but I’ll be watching closely in about 50 days.
The turtle reminded me of other humanoid behaviors I too often engage in. There was the huge old rabbit I’d watched sitting, often for hours, in the same place in my yard. One day it perched close to my car. A generous Snow’s truck driver helped me get the grandparent rabbit boxed and brought to Wild Care. It was infested with ticks and likely on its last legs. Why didn’t I let it die simply (if death is ever simple) right there in the yard?
I spend more time in relationship to people than to turtles and rabbits and find myself worrying about our young folks. A friend was telling me over dinner about a recent visit to her 16-year-old grandson’s fast-food workplace. He came out from behind the counter and gave her a big hug. Something about that public expression of love for an elder from a teenager made me choke up.
We need antidotes to that desperate sense of helplessness in a world that feels like it’s gone to hell in a handbasket. How often do we not express emotions for fear of getting it wrong? How often do we reject offers of help because we’ve been indoctrinated into thinking that needing help is shameful? We are competent adults, and needing help, for those of us on the older side, is a sign of decreasing competence.
But maybe there’s another way to think. Maybe accepting help is a sign of strength, of having nothing to prove.
Asking for help is a way to build relationships when we need them. Relationships, after all, are one renewable resource we can all cultivate. They are the connective tissue of community. And many people like to be helpful. Even when we get it wrong, the message we are sending is that we are paying attention.
I’ve decided to start offering and accepting help whenever it makes sense and see what happens. I am prepared to sometimes feel like an idiot and at other times to be perceived as needier than I am. Maybe the first step in feeling less helpless is slowing down, stopping the car long enough to assess and then respond. I’ll let you know how that comes out.
