Whose Goose Are You?

Why a goose?

courtesy of www.morguefile.com

You've surely heard the tale. The gift of a goose. A goose who gives gifts. That gift being gold. It's an uncertain, uncomfortable gift. (Surely for the goose!) It's wealth unearned, beyond expectation. It's a "dare I believe it's true?" sort of gift. The kind that makes life easier, leaves room for breath and a respite from worry. It seems indefinite, but the future is unsure. Will it continue to give? What should we do about it? Will we worry about tomorrow? Or shall we just be thankful for today? Why a goose?

Geese are vulnerable - those long, slender necks - but the vulnerability is deceptive. They are powerful. Geese are ridiculous and beautiful. They are strong, territorial, and fierce. They are loyal, smart, and they have a clear sense of direction. They can fly around the world, but have a sense of home. They are devoted to their partners, prolific, protective. They fall somewhere between the absurdity of ducks and the undeniable elegance of swans. They honk and waddle and, well, goose; but watch them swim, fly in formation - great black V's against the autumn sky - or tend to their young and it's an organic, fundamental, almost geometric beauty they possess.

What would you do with a goose that laid golden eggs? One a day for... how long? As long as they stuck around, I suppose. It's not up to you. What would you do with this goose? With these precious eggs? Where would you even begin to sort it out?

I have a flock of these geese. An entire flock. When I try to stop and count them, think I have a firm accounting, I remember one more and one more. Wealth unearned, beyond expectation. A "dare I even believe it's true?" sort of gift. I have this flock of magic geese, yet I am not special. These geese are all around us. All of us. Every day.

In her post Deb rattled something loose when she said "a goose is not a gumball machine." It is a living, breathing, loving-for-life being. My gold, therefore, from these geese is not the stuff of ingots and doubloons. It is far more valuable than that. Its price per ounce is immeasurable, ineffable. It does not rise and fall with the economic waves. My gold is untouchable, incorruptible, eternal. My geese come sometimes daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes every few weeks or so. My geese, my lovely gaggle of geese, come to me in person - muddy, messy, goosey life - and virtually - the light and pixels of dancing words in messages, posts, comments, pictures. I even have a few geese who no longer inhabit this earth, yet somehow have managed to leave me a cache of treasure to find when I need it.

This gold, these geese - they will not pay my bills (duck bills) they will not make me rich in any sort of common way. But they make me wealthy beyond measure in the things that really matter. These golden eggs get tossed my way, and yours, in tolerance, loyalty, love, kindness, trust, companionship, respect, in such abundance my arms overflow and I run out of places to put them. In the face of such great magnitude I would be ungrateful and miserly indeed not to share this wealth. Look around you, take in the glittering piles of gold that fill the corners of your life. You cannot miss it for looking, you cannot say it isn't there. For every rotten, stinking fart of a dud that gets sent your way, how many precious gold gifts outnumber it? Wealth unearned, beyond expectation.

Do we look for the gold from only the right geese? Are we disappointed because the ones we've hand-picked as valuable refuse to lay? Do we kick aside the piles of gold freely given us in order to chase a goose that has flown away? Do we look and say: Oh yes, you've given me this gift, but your waddle is silly and your beak is all wrong? Do we degrade our fiercely loyal, protective, practical and devoted geese by wishing they were swans? Do we forget to see them in their grandeur, in their element - that pumping, streamlined V on a steady course, that gliding grace across the face of the water - and see only the ridiculous honking and bobbing, goosing gait?

Geese are not particularly noble creatures on the surface. They are complicated and diverse. They are practical, hardworking, intense. There is beauty in their contradictions, their idiosyncratic selves. They are a feathered bundle of ridiculous and proud, of vicious and loving, of vulnerability and strength. They are you and me. The question is not "What would you do with a goose who laid golden eggs?" One would hope the natural reaction - the human and humane - would be to cherish it, protect it, appreciate it. The question becomes instead: "Whose goose are you? Where are you laying your golden eggs?"


Many, many thanks to Deb at Kicking Corners for sparking this line of inquiry with her delicious Fairy Tale Friday. Also to Tara at Faith In Ambiguity for lodging waterfowl so firmly in my brain this week with your misogynistic duck antics and for building a Battered Duck Shelter; and to Marie at The (Not Always) Lazy W for sharing the exploits of your Mia, the magical cuddling, hot-tubbing goose.