whale songs

click. whirrr. mooaaannnnn.

My grandmother - the one we called Granny- loved whales. She was obsessed, and it was great in that ʻgift-giving-made-easyʻ way cause we knew what to do. Her house was filled with whale figurines, whale paintings, whale bowls, whale paperweights, whale bookends, whale plates, whale cups and whaleʻs who sat on top of pens perched uncomfortably without any water to swim in.

Once my mom took her on a whale watching tour that found a large pod that were doing all the things; breeching, spouting, cavorting. Granny was so overcome by joy that she flung her 78 year old body into the deep blue, singing out to them in a hilarious 78 year old woman rendition of a whale song. My mother was sent into panic trying to spot her white haired mother flailing about in the churning water and then even more panic when she was spotted calmly swimming toward the giant creatures.

Thankfully they were able to fish her out pretty quickly and wrap her in some kind of boat canvas-becomes-a-blanket but all of the other whale watchers watched Granny instead; a mix of awe and trepidation - like - Whatʻs this ole gal gonna do next?*

Granny and I had a complicated relationship, I mean, I donʻt know it was complicated for her - she loved me, I was the first grand daughter that arrived with 13 more boys and girls streaming behind me in the wake of her lineage, great-grands would swim in later; she loved all of us and sent money to our college funds.

She scared me though, her anger, her snark, the way she ruled a room with her energy and made quiet demands on the airwaves. Sometimes they were not quiet. She held a high standard that few met, and I was always sure I was coming up short. But at least I knew what gift to give her at Christmas and her birthday; a whale something. This t-shirt was the best one I ever found. (Zoom in for the comedy gold!)

My favorite was ʻNow THATʻs a Big Ass Whaleʻ and you gotta love an 92 year old woman who wore a t-shirt that was so big it swam on her (pun intended) that had ʻYikes WTF? whaleʻ printed on it.

Soon

Sarah Rathke

and I will interview the oh-so-talented writer

Rebecca Barry

for

Medium Curious Pod

, and Iʻm super excited about it because I love Rebeccaʻs writing, her mind, and I especially love her for being the one to introduce me to the idea of talking to whales. She has many beautiful essayʻs about this on her stack, hereʻs one of my faves.

For those of you playing along; youʻll likely remember my recent discovery of the ability to telepathically chat to horses, dogs and sea turtles; so you wonʻt be surprised that last week I decided to see if I could chat to the whales hanging around the island I live on. I wasnʻt seeing them in that moment, but the hubs had spotted them earlier in the day, and I could feel the wake of magic from his joy in having seen them.

I took myself to the beach for an hour to get some sun and my nature fix. As I sat there, I reached across the bay to some possible whale territory and said (in my mind), “Ahem, hello! Ahoy! Any whales interested in a chat?”

And I heard the following:

Dearest Jane we are happy to be in communication with you today, and we are here with some news from the water.

Here in the water, everything is amplified. So, air is much more forgiving than the water. for example - we communicate telepathically, so we donʻt have private thoughts…we have community thoughts. Can you imagine that?

As a human you have a ton of private thoughts, but, do you realize they are not that private? Do you realize that your thoughts go out as waves into the air and impact matter? Impact other humans? Certainly when you say them out loud you impact other humans, but, even when you just think them.

So we are in a most honoring of way we are offering this news to you that you are not alone, that your thoughts are broadcast through the airwaves.

Here in the water, we remember to play.

That is one of our primary goals, our primary needs is to play. We see that you on land are not as successful at this, some of you do! But you, dear one, you Jane - you do not play as you should. We again say that lovingly and with honoring, but we can see that you do not play. And you work a lot! And even when you are not working, you are thinking about working. And so we want to say to you, how do you play?

And they went on….but I thought these two points were pretty interesting, and wanted to share verbatim what Iʻd heard. I love how they open each new thought with ʻhere in the waterʻ. The other two tidbit’s they offered were:

Try some eye gazing! They say they do it a lot, which is funny right? I feel like I wanna ask science about that…but this point that made me super confident that this wasnʻt my own mind bringing anything down, because I NEVER would have thought of that. They said, Notice how much it helps your whole system relax.

They also said Take it easy. You are strung so tight! How do you take it easy?

Harumph, these wisdom keepers are not wrong about that!

Lastly they added - what youʻll find is if you are playing, eye-gazing and taking it easy, your thoughts will be a lot better for others to experience.

Itʻs quite something isnʻt it? To have this conversation! And weʻll leave you, knowing that we never leave you…look for us! We are close. But never far away.

This all makes me want to cry. My grandmother must have known something to have had these creatures be her favorite, itʻs sad that I couldn’t get past her human-ness to experience, her depth, her wisdom, her courage during this life. I mean who jumps out of a boat to make out with whales? You gotta love her.

Thankfully I can still cultivate a relationship with Granny, and the Whales, and whoever else needs to tell me to play more. Granny would like me to play scrabble (Iʻm terrible) Whales donʻt care, as long as itʻs fun. I hear pickle ball is a riot.

Gin rummy, anyone?

Photo by Iswanto Arif on Unsplash