Commentary: Sam

On any given morning when my wife, Ruth, called out the back door, “Good morning, Sam,” there was a resounding, “HONK!” that echoed across the back yard. If I called “Good morning, Sam,” out the same door, there was always stone silence across the back yard.

Sam was a Chinese goose. Big bird; mean, too. Great “watchdog.”

Sam was a widower; Samantha died years before, probably exhausted from laying dozens and dozens of eggs for the skunks to eat.

Ruth bonded with Sam years before. Sam was her bird.

Sam and I “unbonded” the day he escaped his pen and I stepped all over him, trying to bundle up his thrashing wings. If the neighbors saw Sam and me they probably decided I was making a giant feather pillow. Anyhow, I remember I finally resorted to grabbing Sam by the neck, and unceremoniously, web-feet-over-beak, firing him home over the fence. I think our bond snapped somewhere mid-air.

Sam and I weren’t particularly “close” after that.

Sam’s mission from that day was to even the score with me. I’d be on my knees, pulling weeds in the garden and suddenly I’d hear swishing through the grass. I’d look up and here would come Sam, feet flying, head straight down, charging in my direction. As soon as our eyes met, Sam would come to a halt, neck up, head looking around the yard as if to say, “I wasn’t doing anything.”

Sam didn’t understand his pen. It was about as classy as a foul pen could be, a fourteen-poster with a slanted fence cap. There was plenty of food and water.

Sam didn’t understand that outside a fence a lot of critters around our place would love a feast of goose a la feathers. Out of love for Sam, Ruth sweat-built that fence. So, she was the most exasperated with Sam’s wanderlust that occasionally compelled him to “fly the coup,” so to speak.

One snowy day Ruth returned home to find Sam missing. A search along goose prints in the snow all around the neighborhood found Sam at a farm about a quarter mile away. The trip home could have been a painting, best described as, “country wife drags goose by neck with goose feet sliding through snow while school bus children laugh and wave.”

Sam’s trajectory into the pen was similar to the flight plan I had filed sometime before.

You know, God’s had to return me to my pen lots of times. I keep thinking I know better than the loving God who prepared a way of living for me, outside of which there are many critters that could eat me, feathers and all. God’s corrective actions can be humiliating, make you want to charge at something, pinch something with your beak.

But that’s a good God, isn’t it?

Glad we could get together.