untethered
Hiedi M. Bauer
I am not my name, he says.
Fair enough. It’s just a label my mother gave me, and a misspelled one at that. It’s a label born as much from
pain as from joy. On the one hand, my birth came after one miscarriage, twelve hours of labor, and eight
plus one hundred stitches. On the other, here is a little girl, angry forceps stripe corrugating her forehead,
who will look and act and sing just like Shirley Temple. She must be named Hiedi. It is a label that promises
disappointment.
I never did learn to sing well. When I tried to enter a talent show in the first grade, my daddy asked me from
his chair, daddies always have a Chair, what I would showcase. I’ll sing, I chirped. He listened patiently to
my rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, expression hidden behind his beard, as I belted it out for all I was
worth. Sweetie, he said when I was done. I’m going to show you some magic tricks. So sure. I am not my
name.
I am not my body, he says.
Fair enough. I should probably even be grateful. There was that time when mother blister
and father blister fell in love and made one behemoth of a baby blister. When I lanced the thing, killing baby I suppose and
soaked my feet in the icy waters of a forest creek, sending all the ooze downstream and hopefully not into
someone’s drinking water, I was sea and sea was me. And I did consider that I had become one with the
forest a few summers back when that Vancouver boy threw a smoke bomb that eventually would turn the
Columbia River Gorge, glacier-carved treasure of waterfalls and old growth Douglass Fir, into an inferno that
blew smoke into Portland until finally its air quality rivaled that of Beijing. I had peed in those woods. Now,
I was breathing their smoke. I was tree and tree was me. I can accept that I’m not my body.
Who the hell am I then? But of course he didn’t answer. I was really shouting at my dusty dashboard. The
audiobook played on. The commute unfurled. The dashboard gathered more dust.
The importance, he said, was opening your heart so you, the essential you, could let go. Thoughts,
experiences, emotions, they will all come at you as fast and constantly as the trees that pass you by on the
side of the highway. Let them pass through just as benignly.
Fair enough. It’s just a label my mother gave me, and a misspelled one at that. It’s a label born as much from
pain as from joy. On the one hand, my birth came after one miscarriage, twelve hours of labor, and eight
plus one hundred stitches. On the other, here is a little girl, angry forceps stripe corrugating her forehead,
who will look and act and sing just like Shirley Temple. She must be named Hiedi. It is a label that promises
disappointment.
I never did learn to sing well. When I tried to enter a talent show in the first grade, my daddy asked me from
his chair, daddies always have a Chair, what I would showcase. I’ll sing, I chirped. He listened patiently to
my rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, expression hidden behind his beard, as I belted it out for all I was
worth. Sweetie, he said when I was done. I’m going to show you some magic tricks. So sure. I am not my
name.
I am not my body, he says.
Fair enough. I should probably even be grateful. There was that time when mother blister
and father blister fell in love and made one behemoth of a baby blister. When I lanced the thing, killing baby I suppose and
soaked my feet in the icy waters of a forest creek, sending all the ooze downstream and hopefully not into
someone’s drinking water, I was sea and sea was me. And I did consider that I had become one with the
forest a few summers back when that Vancouver boy threw a smoke bomb that eventually would turn the
Columbia River Gorge, glacier-carved treasure of waterfalls and old growth Douglass Fir, into an inferno that
blew smoke into Portland until finally its air quality rivaled that of Beijing. I had peed in those woods. Now,
I was breathing their smoke. I was tree and tree was me. I can accept that I’m not my body.
Who the hell am I then? But of course he didn’t answer. I was really shouting at my dusty dashboard. The
audiobook played on. The commute unfurled. The dashboard gathered more dust.
The importance, he said, was opening your heart so you, the essential you, could let go. Thoughts,
experiences, emotions, they will all come at you as fast and constantly as the trees that pass you by on the
side of the highway. Let them pass through just as benignly.
I looked at those trees at the side of that highway. It was October, and the maples were just starting to get
their russet on. Alders, the weeds of the tree family according to daddy, who worked for a pulp and paper
company until he retired, shimmered dusty gold under that strangely strong autumn sun. I didn’t want to let
those trees go.
The eye demands a horizon, the transcendentalists would say. When the eye is on the horizon, social
scientists say, the brain releases endorphins that can equate to a runner’s high. So yes, if one just looks long
and far enough, one never needs to take up running. I can let running go.
I looked to the east, to the distance, to the trees and the fields and eventually the mountains, and I felt
something expand outside of my chest, beyond my Honda, reaching with my gaze all the way to that
endpoint. I clung to that feeling.
I wanted to turn my all-wheel drive from the interstate, drive to the rising sun, to the mountains, to climb
and jounce over physical ruts, and breathe in those trees. I wanted to sit, back to bark, watch an angry
chipmunk drown out the sound of geese wings. I wanted to hike until my sweat made me one with the
forest again, and sit in the dirt to eat a well earned lunch of crusty bread and European cheese, August sun
warming my knees and patient stone cooling my back simultaneously. I clung to a dying summer.
The car kept up its northward crawl, nose pointed toward the office as surely as any fate. Force of habit,
force of paycheck, force of responsibility kept the path inexorable. I let the crisp, dry, leaf scented air that
feels richest when inhaled from the center of nowhere go.
I, whomever I am, made space for the next thing passing through.
their russet on. Alders, the weeds of the tree family according to daddy, who worked for a pulp and paper
company until he retired, shimmered dusty gold under that strangely strong autumn sun. I didn’t want to let
those trees go.
The eye demands a horizon, the transcendentalists would say. When the eye is on the horizon, social
scientists say, the brain releases endorphins that can equate to a runner’s high. So yes, if one just looks long
and far enough, one never needs to take up running. I can let running go.
I looked to the east, to the distance, to the trees and the fields and eventually the mountains, and I felt
something expand outside of my chest, beyond my Honda, reaching with my gaze all the way to that
endpoint. I clung to that feeling.
I wanted to turn my all-wheel drive from the interstate, drive to the rising sun, to the mountains, to climb
and jounce over physical ruts, and breathe in those trees. I wanted to sit, back to bark, watch an angry
chipmunk drown out the sound of geese wings. I wanted to hike until my sweat made me one with the
forest again, and sit in the dirt to eat a well earned lunch of crusty bread and European cheese, August sun
warming my knees and patient stone cooling my back simultaneously. I clung to a dying summer.
The car kept up its northward crawl, nose pointed toward the office as surely as any fate. Force of habit,
force of paycheck, force of responsibility kept the path inexorable. I let the crisp, dry, leaf scented air that
feels richest when inhaled from the center of nowhere go.
I, whomever I am, made space for the next thing passing through.