Rearrangement Is for the Birds

Like many children, I held the adorable (then) and naive (now) belief that I could change the world—if only I could run the show. This mindset was reinforced by grown-ups who treated me as a boy genius (one neighbor actually gave me a large blue and white "Genius!" button), and the constant drum of that oft-recited phrase, "You can be anything you want to be." While this wondrous world of infinite possibilities was at times tempered by my mother's depression-era thrift (when I joined the school band, she told me I could play any instrument I wanted, as long as it was a saxophone or clarinet, those being the ones my brothers had played and we therefore already possessed), I was frequently told that I was special and indulged to say the least, and I knew both the meaning and spelling of precocious, as well as many lengthier words that stretched beyond my age-appropriate vocabulary.

My belief in my transformative powers manifested both in the ambition to lead—running for class and club president and such—and a minor obsession with rearranging things to make them not only more pleasing but also (what I considered) more correct. Our home was orderly, but I felt compelled to impose order in other areas that, to me, cried out for betterment. These included airplane magazines, from which I would first carefully tear all the pages, then replace them in what I felt was a more logical and aesthetically appealing sequence.

In my childhood bedroom I had a set of colorful laminate shelves, cabinets, and drawers, popular in 1970s Chicago, called Schurniture (likely designed by a Mr. Schur), that hung from small metal rods inserted in wall brackets and was, as a result, completely rearrangable. Every so often, I would remove my books, clothing, and tchotchkes from our travels, lay them out on my fire-orange shag carpet, and change the Schurniture's configuration, making some shelves higher, some lower, or moving the blue cabinet to where the red one had been. I felt a great sense of accomplishment after these makeovers and took pride in the new look I had achieved.

At one particular restaurant we visited, The Willow Inn, the sugar packets had illustrations of American birds. Sipping my kiddie cocktail garnished with a Maraschino cherry, I would remove all the packets from their porcelain dish, spread them out on the white tablecloth, and place the birds in alphabetical order, being sure to group together any duplicates. I did not know what OCD was when I was six or seven, but these efforts, along with a host of nervous tics I exhibited—sniffing my hands, touching my thighs, and the worst of all, constant blinking—were, in retrospect, precursors of my mild version of the disorder. It blew up after my father died, when I believed, during the year following his death, that by stepping on cracks, picking up sticks, altering my route to or home from school, or repeating various other actions, I could bring him back. I never saw a therapist then, though I'm sure I shared these resurrective compulsions with my mother. I ended up curing myself by opening our front door on the one-year anniversary of losing my father, resolving that I had done everything I could and he would either be there or not. The rush of cold, February air that greeted me was liberating.

Throughout the decades of my life, I have, with each successive chapter (college, grad school, marriage, children, divorce, remarriage, second divorce, job changes, and moves), rearranged and realigned my life. With each successive shift, I come a little bit closer to having everything in its place—not (as this would be presumptuous) where I think it should be or even feel it should be, but where I believe it is meant to be. This surrendering—not easy for a control freak—to an arrangement that resonates internally but derives from something greater than the self—reminds me of Anne Lamott's famous quote on grace:

I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.

Today, as a lark (pun wholly intended), I bought, on eBay, a collection of those little sugar packets with the birds. (Remarkably, someone had saved them!) When they arrive, I will resist the urge, still there but tempered by the fuga of tempus, to arrange them alphabetically by name. Instead, I'll place them in a bowl on my desk, both as a memento of the once-obsessed boy and a reminder that human order is no match for God's divine plan. The call of the birds will echo my own: to trust the flight path of God's arrows—faith, hope, and above all, love.