“Your Makings are very beautiful, darling – but Bandy has a point. Do you really need all these vines for your objects? I like the grass ones better. I don’t get caught in them.”
“The whole idea is to get caught in them.”
“Is that why you’re weaving my tail hair into the vines? I’m supposed to get caught in it?”
“A little bit of you. Yes.”
“What, pray tell, does my body hair have to do with your Making?”
“Your hair makes it more authentic. Like I said, the Making can’t be all me; it has to be a little bit me and a little bit something that’s not-me. That’s what gives it meaning.”
“What does this one mean?”
“I don’t know. I have to find out by making it.”
“It means I need more space,” Clutch says.
“What are you finding out from this one?” Bandit asks.
“I’m not sure. Something about a balance of the materials of the Making. If there’s balance in the composure of the materials, there’s probably a balance in the environment where the materials came from. What do you think?”
“I think that I find out about a balance by tiptoeing along one of those thick wires that hums under your feet.”
“You would! I find out about balance by fashioning Makings. It’s less scary.”
“But it’s more … authen – whatever you call it?”
“New word, Clutch. Auth-en-tic. It means being your whole true self.”
“I am my whole true self.”
“No, you’re not. Parts of you are out there in the River and the Forest. Or in the Sky with your Great Raccoon Ancestor. Or in Dad – wherever he is. You’re scattered all over the place.”
“I shall venture forth and find my missing pieces.”
“It’s not enough just to find them. You have to coax them to cohere in just the right way. I know what – I’ll create a Making for your quest. It might guide you.”
“What am I supposed to do? Wear it around my neck? I’ll trip over the stupid thing.”
“You just have to think of it.” Touchwit sounds hurt.
“I don’t think you should call Touchwit’s Makings ‘stupid’,” Slypaws says.
“At least, it gives her something to do with her hands. They are always fidgeting,” Clutch says.
“Think that she’s adding something to the world,” Slypaws says.
“She’s adding clutter to the world.”
“Clutch, until you find yourself, all your bits and pieces are going to be cluttering up the world. Your name is synonymous with clutter.”
“Touchwit has a glitch in her hand-eye coordination. She has a virus.”
“Maybe she’s got the mumbles.”
Time for Slypaws to intervene. This is getting personal.
“Clutch, love. You too, Bandit. Your sister might be bringing something entirely new to your eyes. Something that wasn’t there before. Isn’t that it, Touch?”
“That’s right. But it isn’t clutter like Clutch thinks. It isn’t useful or useless. It just is.”
No one spoke further. They were content to leave the issue there. However, a larger issue was finding its voice in Touchwit’s makings. The world was very big and the chimney was getting smaller by the hour. It could no longer accommodate the three cubs and their energies.
10
I didn’t hear my colleagues behind the wall for some time. They came and went discreetly at odd hours like boarders. Outside my study window, moss began to grow on the limbs of the Manitoba Maple because of the rain. My neighbour’s Forsythia held its yellow blossoms under grey skies and the robins sang for a sun that rarely shined. About mid-May, the weather changed and in the first full day of sunlight the mosquitoes and flies hatched, warblers appeared out of nowhere, the ferns unfolded, and the crabapple tree exploded into crimson blossoms like a firework. Soon the blackbirds would be plucking mayflies off the lilac blossoms. Then Spring would be here in its fullness, not begrudgingly but triumphantly. But what were the Raccoons up to?
I guessed they were exploring their world and discovering the nourishment that is available to them in the wild: tadpoles, clams, crayfish, minnows, water spiders, pinheads, rock perch, sunfish, chub, and every other creature called up from the riverbed. In the trees, robins’ eggs and spiders. On the river bank, frogs and turtles and snails.
But just when I began to feel they had left the chimney to start a new life on their own, there was the familiar chittering at ear level behind my wall. I reached for the stethoscope:
“Well, we’re certainly not going to go there again!”
The voice of a stressed mother, relieved that her family was safe at home.
“What shall we do if we can’t use the community latrine?” That was Clutch, tentatively asserting his status as elder brother through a question. It seemed that Clutch possessed all the qualities of leadership as an intellectual notion, without the desire to engage in a single one of them. His whole existence was a question mark.
“We’ll start our own latrine,” Mother Slypaws announced. “Any ideas?”
