Welcome to Open the Door.
This week’s story takes us to a place I think of as Fiddler Crab Patch.
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Transcript
Have you ever seen a wave of fiddler crabs?
Well, come to think of it, have you ever seen a fiddler crab?
They’re smallish crabs, but they have a huge claw on one side, so it makes them look like they’re holding a fiddle.
My first recollection of fiddler crabs was when I was somewhere around three or four years old and my mom and I were looking at a huge patch of fiddler crabs.
We were down in the swampy tidal area near a town called Beaufort, North Carolina.
Now, my daddy was in the Marine Corps, and at that point in time, when he was transferred to Cherry Point, they didn’t have enough housing for everybody. So families moved to various small towns close enough for the military personnel to drive back and forth.
We ended up in the wonderful old, ancient town of Beaufort, North Carolina.
Now, the reason Mom and I were looking at this wave, this huge patch of fiddler crabs flowing in and out, up and down the shoreline, was because my mama loved to fish.
It didn’t matter where Daddy was stationed. Mama always found the closest pond or lake, sometimes a river, and now the ocean.
She found those places of water so she could go fishing. Mind you, she wasn’t fishing just for the joy of fishing. She loved to eat fish.
So this morning that I remember, Mom and I were laughing at these odd-looking critters that were moving as a patch while the waves gently pushed up on the shoreline. They would move away as the wave came in, and they would move back as the wave went out.
And my mama said to me, “You know, we can be a wave too.” My mind started trying to figure out what she meant. How could we be a wave too?
Then she said, “Walk quietly.” Now, that was an odd thing for my mother to say because my mama was deaf. For her to talk about being quiet caught my attention, didn’t it?
So she looked at me, took my hand, and we walked gently toward that patch of fiddler crabs.
And as we got closer, they backed up. I can remember Mom looking down at me and kind of using her head to say, “Let’s back up.” So we backed up. And as we backed up, that wave of fiddler crabs came right toward us. Mama smiled. Then we walked forward, and that wave of fiddler crabs moved away from us.
Then Mama said two words that have stayed with me the rest of my life. All the way from that toddler standing beside her mama to the seventy-nine-year-old elder sitting here remembering it.
The two words my mama said were: personal distance.
Personal distance.
We had stopped, and the wave of fiddler crabs had stopped too. Almost as if they were listening to what Mama had to say.
She said, “Personal. You are a person, so we’re talking about you. Or we’re talking about another human. Or perhaps we’re talking about squirrels, foxes, birds, or even fiddler crabs.”
“So that’s the personal part. Now, the distance part.”
“Distance means how far you and I step as we walk toward the fiddler crabs. Distance means how close you let a loved one come to you. It’s not unusual for the distance between loved ones to be a child in a lap, or a loved one sitting hip to hip with you. Or fiddler crabs, who all know each other, almost touching each other in that patch.”
“So”, said my mother, “personal distance. That’s how close or how far you feel comfortable with whatever other fiddler crab, whatever other human, whatever other bird, or whatever other cat is coming toward you.”
I thought hard about that.
Mom said, “So let’s practice some personal distance.”
She took my hand and said, “Quietly now.”
And we stepped toward the crabs. They didn’t move. Another two steps. They still didn’t move. The fourth step, and the whole mass of fiddler crabs backed up a tiny bit. Another step toward them, and they walked back another step or two.
Then Mom put enough pressure on my hand to make me want to go backwards. And as we stepped backwards, the whole wave of fiddler crabs came toward us that same distance.
So for a moment or two, we stepped forward gently. We stepped back gently. The wave of fiddler crabs backed up gently and came forward gently.
Thinking about it now, thinking about it from the perspective of both the world of a toddler and the world of an adult, I’m wondering, here as the mockingbirds chatter madly, what would happen if we could get each person to understand personal distance, respect personal distance, and use that distance to communicate with each other?
You know, at the dinner table, we always practice personal distance because the chairs keep us apart by a certain distance. When we’re sitting in a church pew, there’s always some comfortable distance between me and the parishioner beside me. Even when we’re standing in line waiting to get into a movie theater, everyone stays a comfortable distance apart. Sometimes we chatter. Sometimes we don’t talk at all.
But we keep that personal distance.
So I’m asking myself now, maybe we should teach personal distance and not just assume everyone knows what personal distance is.
And then, of course, there are critters that invade personal distance just on purpose.
Like Grayced the cat, who has decided that this human has sat way too still for way too long. So he intruded on my personal distance and sat down, looking up at me as if to say:
“Okay. If you’re going to sit still, at least give me a good scritch.”
Personal distance.
I could probably talk longer, but I don’t think the cat is going to allow it.
Thank you for coming through this open door with me.
Thank you, and have a very blessed day.
