The bear

It was just a dream.

I was in what I understood to be a vacation rental, a mobile home in a nicer park in a wooded setting somewhere in the mountains. The décor was cozy, Western, if a little worn. Behind the couch, a large window let in the view of the park and the trees. Beside the couch, a low wall bracketed three steps down to a storm door; the trailer had no solid door.  We were all together in the living room; Yves and Zach watching a movie on the portable player while Xavier and I napped. It was early in the evening when I woke up. I wasn’t sure why I woke up or what urgent feeling compelled me to open my eyes immediately, but I knew something was wrong.

It was the bear on my head.  The bear was the something wrong. A young bear, not fully grown, pawing at my hair as I dozed sitting on the floor, half-leaning against the wall. It climbed onto my shoulders and rested on my head.  No sudden moves, I thought, wondering what I would do and how I would get the bear off my head and safely away. Xavier had woken before me, I saw through tufts of bear fur, and was working on his laptop on the couch, just a few feet away.  “Xavier,” I whispered. “Xavier, please, I need help.  Xavier, there’s a bear on my head.”

Xavier did not look up.  He was intent on his work, a furrow in his brow as he continued tapping rapidly into the keyboard.

Yves looked up from his movie, though, and his eyes got wide when he saw the bear. He approached. “Mommy?  Mommy, why is there a bear on your head?”

“I don’t know, sweetie.  No, don’t come over here.  You should take Zach and go outside.  … No, wait, don’t go outside; there are more bears outside. Can you take Zach and go into the bedroom and close the door while I take care of the bear, please?”

Yves did. He looked at Xavier, but didn’t try to distract him. He picked up the movie, and Zach happily followed him down the darkened hallway to a bedroom. I heard the door click shut, and was relieved.

“Xavier.  Xavier, help, please, help. There’s a bear. On my head.  A big bear. I don’t know what kind of bear it is, but it’s big, and it’s heavy, and it’s a BEAR.  Xavier. Xavier, Xavier, look up, PLEASE, look UP!” I implored, as loudly as I dared. The bear shifted, a paw planted in my eye socket. It was hard to remain upright with so little support and the weight of an entire bear on my shoulders, but I feared what the bear might do if I moved too much.

Xavier’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. “There’s no actual bear in the house. Bears can’t get in the house.”

“There IS a bear. It’s on top of me. I need help getting it out of the house. Please.”

Xavier sighed. “There is NO BEAR HERE.”

I was devastated. All he had to do was to look up and he’d see me with a bear on my head. One shoulder against the wall, the other lost under drooping bear skin, my one eye peeking out, and completely at the mercy of the bear.

Eventually I had to try to move; I couldn’t remain still any longer. I shifted. The bear pressed harder into my face as I gently moved to a more upright position.  The bear didn’t like it, and nipped at my back. I felt his claws dig into my sides, but I kept tipping more and more, slowly moving him off balance. He decided to get down. Once he was off me, I rose up onto my knees and pressed gently on his rump.  He moved!  I scooted closer and pushed gently again, trying to move him toward the door. He didn’t like moving, and I had to push hard, and occasionally he would swipe back at me in annoyance. I’d retreat, look at Xavier again, not quite believing that he was failing to notice me push a recalcitrant bear across the room just a few feet away from him, but not daring to continue to speak as long as I was making progress.

Finally, I convinced the bear to turn toward the little stairs by the door. Three steps down. Now I could see how the bear had gotten in: a storm had tossed a sizable branch right into the storm door, and knocked the lower plexiglass panel right out of the frame. It lay upright wedged between the door and the trailer itself, still blocking part of the opening it was supposed to cover. The tree branch stuck rudely through the passage.  “You got in here through that little opening, bear; you can go back out again,” I muttered.  The bear didn’t want to go, but now I was pushing outright, not caring whether it annoyed him; he was wedged against the door and couldn’t easily reach around to swipe at me anymore.  Finally, he decided to squeeze through the opening and leave the trailer. Success!  I was relieved.

Xavier finally looked up. “What’s the matter?” he asked blandly.

Shaking, I answered, “There was a BEAR ON MY HEAD. It came in when we were sleeping. I just got rid of it. We need to fix the door so no more bears can get in.”

“There are no bears around here. Too many houses,” he replied.

“There are. Look out the window. See? There are bears.  One… two … three bears, out there. That one closest to us is the one that was IN THE HOUSE a minute ago.”

He looked from the bear to the doorframe and back to the door again.  “No way that thing was actually in here. Maybe it got close, maybe it tried, but there’s no way it actually got into the house.”

I sighed. I tried to move the tree branch that protruded into the house through the opening in the door; I couldn’t budge it. I squeezed outside (mindful of the bears!) and tried pulling the branch back the other way; no luck. I just wasn’t strong enough.  “Xavier, I need some help, please. We need to fix the door to keep the animals – and the bugs! – out of the house, and I can’t move this branch.”

Eventually, I was able to convince him to get up and actually look at the damage. Surprised, he agreed that we did need to fix it right away (finally!) and he was able to quickly move the tree branch and help me fix the door. With the door firmly closed and secure, I checked on the boys (safe and happy with their movie) and then sat down on the couch and looked out the window. Maybe the bear hadn’t been in the house?  No, no, he had been sitting on my head, just a little while ago, right here. Xavier might be the picture of normalcy and courtesy and been a good help with the door, but there really had been a bear. In the house. On my head. Well, maybe that’s not really a big deal.  I mean, the bear didn’t do any harm, did it? Just a couple of scratches, some pressure, but mostly I was afraid of it. It didn’t actually hurt me. I didn’t even know what kind of bear it was. Probably just a little brown bear. Maybe it was just a cub, even, more afraid of me than I of him.

“You doing okay? You seem kind of upset.”

“Well, yeah, I’m upset! I had a bear on my head and I couldn’t get you to help me!”

“I’m sorry you’re upset about the bears around, but I never saw any bears in the house. The opening in the door really isn’t big enough to let anything bad in.”

“It was a bear, on my head. I asked you for help and you wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I was working pretty hard on that email!  I can’t tell if what you’re saying is important or not when you talk in that quiet regular voice. It didn’t sound all that important. Why would I look up for that?  I could hear what you’re saying just fine; it just didn’t make any sense, because a live bear wouldn’t be in the house. I thought you were talking about a stuffed bear for Zach, so I finished my email while I could. Who even knows when they’ll give us a five minute break again anyway? And it had to get done. It seemed like the best possible thing I could do at the time. I’m SORRY if you wanted me to actually look up at you in that thirty-second window rather than do the work I need to do for all of us in the time I had to do it!”

Was he right? I was never sure, when we got into these conversations. I start out hurt, angry, upset because I think something is very wrong, but before long, he has it turned into something else entirely. He has eighteen different reasons that I should not be upset at all, that he’s a good guy and a good guy does the best he can in every single situation, and something unique about this situation might have been unexpectedly different, but you can’t account for those things and he deserves every benefit of the doubt. And doubts I have in plenty. I wavered.

As I considered my response, I looked outside. It was dusk; the bears at the edge of the woods were still walking in and out of sight. “My” bear was still nearest the home we occupied. I watched him. Not so threatening, necessarily?  He HAD been inside. He HAD scared me. He’s a bear! He hurt my shoulders, my face, my sides, my back. And he had had the potential to hurt my children, to hurt all of us. He’s a bear.  … Well, he didn’t ACT aggressive. Probably just a little brown bear looking for his mother.

Then he turned, and suddenly looked much larger. And clear as could be, there was the shoulder hump. That was no brown bear. That was a grizzly. A chill went down my spine; that grizzly had been in my house with me, and my children, and my husband had dismissed my concern as nonsense – if he had even really heard it at all. There was NO excuse for that.

“THAT GRIZZLY BEAR WAS IN THE HOUSE!”

“There’s no way that those bears are grizzly bears, honey, you know that. They are probably just little brown or black bears wandering around looking for berries. It’s that time of year.”

I stood up and pointed out the window. “It IS a grizzly bear. LOOK RIGHT THERE. THAT is the bear that was in the house. ON MY HEAD. THAT GRIZZLY BEAR WAS ON MY HEAD AND YOU WOULD NOT LISTEN TO ME AND YOU WOULD NOT HELP ME!”

Xavier couldn’t decide whether to be frightened or angry. I very rarely raised my voice with him, especially over something as life-and-death as bears in the house. He stood up tall, puffed his shoulders, and took a step just a little bit too close to me – one of his signature plausible-deniability intimidation moves. I still wouldn’t swear that he knows he’s doing it, but it’s awfully effective. “You KNOW I wouldn’t DELIBERATELY ignore you if you were here with a bear on your head! I would never do that on PURPOSE,” he began.  This, too, is a familiar line.

“NO.  No. No. No. I told you, you ignored me, you did not listen, you decided it was something else that makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER so you wouldn’t have to pay attention, and you let me sit here with a GRIZZLY BEAR ON MY HEAD while I saw the boys to safety – thankfully Yves is old enough to listen and did a good job getting them both out of the way!! – and I had to get a GRIZZLY BEAR moved across the living room and down the steps and out the door by myself! A GRIZZLY BEAR WAS ON MY HEAD!”

“I thought you were talking about a stuffed animal! You know I would never-“

I backed away a few steps.  “THE GRIZZLY BEAR WAS ON MY HEAD! I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU WOULD IGNORE ME WHEN I TELL YOU THERE IS A GRIZZLY BEAR ON MY HEAD! YOU HAVE TO HELP SOMEONE WITH A BEAR ON THEIR HEAD! THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IGNORING SOMEONE WHO SAYS THEY HAVE A BEAR ON THEIR HEAD! NONE! EVER! EVER!”

“I can’t understand what you mean when you’re yelling like that; it doesn’t make any sense. I thought you were talking about a STUFFED ANIMAL. That’s not a big deal at all. Do you want to sit down and do something else now and maybe talk about it later?”

And still, I doubted. And I looked out the window, again. Grizzly bear was still hovering outside, not yet into the woods, just … standing there. And the anger did not let go. I was not wrong, I was not crazy, that was a real bear, and it HAD BEEN on my head. It really, really had. I did not imagine it, I did not make it up, and it really was a grizzly, and it really did hurt, and it really could have torn us all limb from limb, and I really managed to get rid of it myself. I’d had help with the door. I didn’t know what I’d have done to fix the door if I’d been alone, but the bear was real, horrible, and I never, ever, ever, ever wanted to repeat this experience.

“No. No. I am not talking about it later. I am never talking about it with you again. I am not talking about ANYTHING with you again. I never want to see you again. I’m done. I’m done. I’m done. Never, ever again.”

And then I woke up. I still felt the rush of adrenaline, the raw sense of rage, the shame of doubting that what I knew to be true was actually true, and of actually believing for a while that maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that even when that misbelief put my life and my children at deadly risk. I looked at Xavier, and knew that it’s not fair to be angry at someone over what they did in a dream – but every line in that dream was certainly ours. Everything said and done in that dream was true to character, eerily true. I know every line in the script by now, except for the last lines – I don’t make any final decisions, or say things with far-reaching consequences. In real life, I delay them until I’m “thinking more clearly” and can “weigh the facts”.  When something disturbing happens again, well, clearly I’m too disturbed at that point to make any other decisions then, either. I doubt myself. I’ve had very few actual grizzlies at a safe distance to eyeball for gauging truth against my feelings, and I’m easily convinced that things could not possibly be as bad as all THAT.  Surely there could not, in fact, have been an actual grizzly bear sitting on my head. And even if there had been, surely it isn’t unreasonable that I couldn’t get help for that; misunderstandings happen. And even then, a single horrible misunderstanding doesn’t have any more meaning than being a horrible misunderstanding. There are good things that I do get help with, after all, so clearly it is not so bad as I think.  Even this is a dream. A spooky dream, a dream ridiculously full of the symbolism so obvious it almost isn’t even symbolic anymore, but dreams – they aren’t real. Dreams are crazy, man. It’s really, really not that bad.

Except it was a grizzly bear on my head. A bear on my head. A bear, on     my      head.