The Squirrel at the Monastery

How do we look to her when she halts outside the window—paws spread, ears alert, tail stiff with hair in all directions—as we sit on the gompa floor, opening the tin from Costco and passing the cookies around? She cannot smell the spicy tea we sip, its warmth wafting over our cheeks and noses. Cinnamon, clove. The creaminess of half-and-half. Our mugs mere white blocks that rise to our faces and come back down.

We have just emptied the water bowls into buckets, dried their insides with towels, and refilled them to a rice grain from the top. They gleam on the altar in one long line.

The gompa is darkened—to her, not us—as she stands fresh in air, sunlight, her little pupils even littler than usual. Do squirrels’ pupils expand and contract with extremes in emotion, with changes in light?

Do squirrels’ pupils expand and contract with extremes in emotion, with changes in light?

Studying neuroscience in college, we learned that some neurons in the eye are visual only, so if you press into your closed lids, instead of pain you notice shifts of light. It is not recommended you do this. We all pressed to confirm.

That one weekend prior to the exam the library sat empty—football was in progress—and I crawled through my text and highlighted nearly every word. I kept telling myself, stuck on a paragraph, that only six pages remained. I leafed them together, held their slimness in my fingers.

The book was used, sour-smelling, and I know as a writer I’m supposed to love the smell of old books, but I wanted to gag. And if you had asked me then where in the world I would like to be instead, I would have thought the only options were football and this, and I would have nosed through the pages like a dog sicced on a scent.

A failure of imagination. Another not-great thing for a writer.

Two decades later, on the gompa rug, I am wrapped by silence so deep I can hear cookies crumble in closed mouths.

Two decades later, on the gompa rug, I am wrapped by silence so deep I can hear cookies crumble in closed mouths. Light from the windows streams in—outside, green fields spread with dandelion clocks—and the squirrel at the window darts.

Does she notice, in her dash to the woods, those white bulbs that meet her at every corner, which tower over grass? Does she see how the wind pulls and tugs their pappi, carrying some off? And how some tendrils, tangled together, remain hanging off the plant?

Bloomington, Indiana