This morning I woke up to rain and went outside to drag in all my patio cushions, and the air smelled salty, like the sea, and I thought, “I really don’t want to be spending my time doing this. I want to be writing, baking, exercising, packing for our upcoming move…” But the sea air softly landed on my cheeks, and I smiled as I had a fleeting childhood memory of being with my grandparents in San Diego, with their avocado tree and our walks to the beach. It made me feel a moment of warm joy, when you don’t have a specific memory, but just the feeling is there. I heard the birds calling to each other in the treetops, the raindrops soft and cool on my skin, the smell of wet earth and pine trees, the bright pop of pink from my flowers, and I felt a moment of beauty, my own “invincible summer” pushing back against a world flinging too many tears around right now.
I found this little piece of writing the other day that really resonated with me. By philosopher Camus:
He said, “In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that in the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger, something better, pushing right back.”
There is a lot of hoopla on the internet about whether Camus wrote this entire quote, or just the part about his “invincible summer” as found in his essay, “Return to Tipassa.” Whether Camus wrote it or some other great writer, or even Owen the Mad Walker of Orem, is irrelevant to its resonance to my heart, but I’d love to find out if anyone out there knows!
In any case, who is Owen, the Mad Walker of Orem? When I was a child growing up in Orem, among the orchards full of apples, cherries, pears, and the meadows of mountain wildflowers that have now been turned into Target parking lots, nearly every day we would see a man walking all over town with his long white beard, so long it passed all the pockets on his overalls. My parents would always say, “There’s Owen!” And I would watch him out my car window as we passed by, just walking, carrying nothing. We saw him at all hours, morning, noon and night, all over town, seemingly spending his days just walking.
No one ever said anything more than, “There’s Owen.” I have no idea who he was, but here I am 45 years later, remembering Owen and his overalls and white beard.
I guess this memory of Owen is mine to create whatever I want. Should I make him a happy hobo, wandering and exploring the town all day, pulling crisp apples off the tree when he’s hungry, watching the ladybugs and butterflies softly flutter by, or hearing his boots crunch in the snow? Did he smell the wood smoke from our fireplaces and look at the homes lit from within and wish he had his own family? Had he suffered some great tragedy that had left its mark so deep in his soul he could no longer chop wood or read a book or drive a truck? Or had he decided he didn’t want to be part of the hamster wheel of life, working-working-working to amass more-more-more, when all Owen needed was a pair of overalls and a comb for his beard? Or maybe he had worked his job, made a gazillions dollars, raised his family and was now free to do whatever he wanted? And he wanted to walk.
As the years pass for me, and I endure my own share of tragedies, losing the people I love so so much, I think, maybe Owen was onto something. Maybe his way of “pushing back” against a world with way too much hate, chaos, and tears, was to keep things simple: take a walk.
I just put the ladder away in my shed, the ladder I had dragged out to climb to get my cat out of a tree. I leaned it against the wet wood of the shed, and was hit in the face with a spray of water from the flowers draped over the shed. I came back inside, dried my face, made my cappuccino and sat down to write about Camus, but ended up writing about Owen. My children are sleeping upstairs in their beds. My coffee is warm in my hand. The dogs are sprawled on the floor, keeping my bare feet warm, all three cats are sitting like works of art, looking out the window. And I think, this is my own “invincible summer.” If this moment is the best I ever get for the rest of my life, it will be enough.
