Beech Tree News Network

I apologized to my peony for moving it again.  It was the fourth time, after all.  A friend, who is now passed, gave it to me years ago, and I planted it below my clothes line, but it nearly met its demise compliments of the lawn mower, so I moved it over next to my fence.  The soil there proved to be too wet for it, so I moved it to the east end of my house next to the sweet peas.  The sweet peas nearly strangled it to death, so last Wednesday, I moved it near the crepe myrtles.  I told the peony this would be its permanent home, and I promised to tend to it better in the future.

My husband, Garey, came upon me as I was reassuring the peony.  He used to ask, “Who are you talking to?”  After forty-one years of marriage, he has grown accustomed to me talking to things that don’t have ears.  I probably picked up the habit from my dad.  He talked to everything he was working on, be it lumber or saw blades or truck parts.  He would say stuff like, “You Sumbuck, stand up there” or “get outta there” or “come loose from there!”  In the same manner, it’s not uncommon for me to tell a board or a basket or a bicycle to “sit up and act like you’ve got some sense.”

You know, it could also be an inherent thing—a cultural bent of the Scotts-Irish.  Long before my granddaughter was old enough to realize I was talking to beings other than human, she would fuss at objects.  She had these large magnets she loved to stick to the bottom of the refrigerator door when she was crawling around.  She thought they should also stick to the cabinet doors.  The doors were wood.  Predictably, the magnets would not stick.  When they slid off onto the floor, she picked up the magnets, yelled “Don’t!” at them then put them back on the door, where they would slide off again.  Just last year, after she toppled from a wooden bar stool, she told me how bad that stool had been to her, and that she would never sit on it again.  She hasn’t.

I’ve noticed there are people from other cultures who also talk to things that don’t have ears.  I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been reading the books of Marie Kondo, who developed the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing.  She says when you decide to get rid of an object, even a piece of clothing, you should thank each item for what it gave you then release it to give another the same service or joy.  

Even in the Bible, there are incidents where Jewish leaders speak to objects.  In Numbers 20, God actually tells Moses and his brother Aaron to “speak to the rock over there, and it will pour out its water” (v8).  Another leader of the Israelites, Joshua commands the sun to stand still in order for the armies of Israel to have enough daylight to soundly defeat their enemies, the Amorites (Joshua 10 v12-13).

It probably all comes down to a control thing, for me anyway.  There have been countless times when I’ve nearly knocked something over or nearly dropped something fragile, and I’ve found myself yelling, “Don’t you dare!” as if threatening an accident will keep it from happening.  Actually, it’s worked a few times, or it seems to have.  As long as there’s a chance, I’ll probably keep doing it.