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Iggy & The Big Feels

There was once a tiny little lizard named "Ignatius", but he preferred to be called "Iggy". As regal or scholarly as "Ignatius" sounds, the "pet name" Iggy made him feel wanted, as if someone actually cared for him. As far back as he could remember, Iggy felt alone and disconnected from this world.

Like many lizards, Iggy was abandoned as a child. I suppose it could have been worse. Lizards do not always make good parents. They either eat their children, or they lay their eggs and run away. The latter is what happened to Iggy.

Fortunately, a watersnake by the name of "Naga" found the egg that contained Iggy. Rather than eat it herself, she decided to raise him as her own. While a snake is not a lizard, Naga tried to do her best with what she knew.

Iggy was a precocious child, always wanting to understand how things worked, and if he could not find a suitable explanation, he would try to invent one of his own. These explanations always varied in their accuracy. One thing that he could not quite understand was the functioning of his own body. In this case, inventing any sort of explanation would not help to mitigate the pain that he actually felt. He still felt it no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise.

Sometimes when Iggy would encounter a situation that seemed to make him sad or angry, his body would react with such intensity that it would scare him. If it was sadness, he would become cold, clammy, and tired. All he wanted to do was curl up under a rock and be left alone. If it was anger, then he might as well have been a salamander on fire. His body would flush with heat, and even though all of his muscles would tighten, he felt as if he wanted to run around and scream.

In order to perk him up, Naga would slither underneath the rock that Iggy would be hiding. As he laid flaccidly upon her back, she would bounce him up and down within the curves of her undulating body, trying to shake some life into him. It never worked. "Please leave me alone Naga," Iggy would sigh. With a frown, she would flop him back down onto the ground and slither away until he came around of his own accord. She would go into a state of hiding herself and it would always take him awhile to find her again.

Her approach to his fits of anger were different. To try to calm him down, Naga would coil around him and impatiently hiss, "These feelingsss are much too big for a child!" Since she was so much larger than him and covered in plate-like scales, he would be trapped within her coils no matter how much his soft body flailed and thrashed about inside of them. Eventually, he would tire out and Naga would unwind. When she tried to talk to him however, Iggy would just ignore her in his pent up frustration.

Either way, their strong responses to each other were undermining their ability to clearly communicate.

One day, when they were both feeling calm, Iggy plucked up the courage to ask Naga a personal question. And Naga did something courageous in return, something that every parent should feel humble enough to do. She said, "I don't know." But she did not stop there. She wanted to expand the limits of her own understanding and continued, "Let's find out together." Well, not in so many words. Their conversation actually went something like this:

"Naga, I don't know what any of my feelings mean. How do I manage them? They just seem overwhelming!"

"I don't know dear. I'm cold-blooded too. Why don't we go visit Grandma Minnie and ask her?"

Grandma Minnie, or more properly "Minerva", was the Great Horned Owl that raised Naga. Normally, this type of owl would eat a watersnake if ever given the chance, but Minerva overcame her own nature by becoming a mother to one completely different from herself. Thus, the kindness that Naga showed Iggy by choosing to raise him as her own was learned first-hand. The adoptee eventually became an adopter, giving everyone a family and a home in the process.

Naga and Iggy lived near a small pond. Their home was modest. To an outsider, it probably just looked like a puddle of mud. Meanwhile, Grandma Minnie lived within a nearby grove of olive trees. It was a little more elegant than a mud puddle, but still rustic and quaint.

Iggy rode upon Naga's back as she slithered into the grove towards the olive tree in which Grandma Minnie lived. When they finally found it, Naga wrapped around its trunk and spiraled upward along it until they reached a hollow within it near the top of the tree.

"Oh, you came to visit me!," Grandma Minnie happily hooted. When Iggy and Naga settled into the hollow, Grandma Minnie started to gently stroke Naga's head with her wing. Naga closed her eyes in comfort and softly hissed, her forked tongue dancing around in front of her mouth as she did so.

As Iggy watched this, he couldn't help but think of how Naga was like a big child. She may have been an adult, but she still needed the affection of a parent. At the same time, Iggy had an internal longing that Naga would comfort him in the same way. He was also fine with the fact that she had scales instead of feathers.

He was about to express this longing out loud, but the words disappeared as soon as a memory of the last time that Naga coiled around him during a fit of anger came to mind. "She doesn't care," his inner voice whispered in response. "Why should she? I'm not her own. Maybe I'm unlovable?," the voice continued. His brow tightened in a knot and his eyes began to water.

Iggy was so lost in thought that he did not realize that Grandma Minnie was actually perched in front of him, a look of concern upon her face at once both serious and serene. "What's the matter child?," she cooed soothingly.

Iggy couldn't help it. His tears started to flow in earnest. He finally felt safe enough to let his guard down and he spontaneously blurted out, "Naga doesn't love me!"

Naga heard this and was taken aback. Her mouth bent into a frown and her eyes began to water in turn. She thought back to all of the times that she tried to cheer Iggy up and he seemed to shun her. She would hide away and cry to herself, thinking that she was a terrible mother. Then, she thought of how she tried to discipline him when he was acting out. She cared about his moral development, but nothing seemed to help and Iggy became even more sullen.

However, Grandma Minnie did not react to either of them. She simply asked, "Have you spoken to each other about how you feel and about how you seem to impact one another?"

Both Naga and Iggy cast their gaze downward. "Ummmm...No," they sheepishly said in unison.

Grandma Minnie stated, "It is hard to be open when it seems as if there is no trust within a relationship. But the people who love you are willing to accommodate you in whatever ways that are reasonable, especially when you sincerely try to do the same for them." She then started to prepare a meal for them.

As they sat together and ate, they conversed about how their feelings and perceptions may not always come into alignment, and how both of these things influence their behaviors towards one another. Relationships can be tricky, including within the best of parent and child relationships. But it was a wonderful meal, inspiring hope for the future.

THE END ...or is it the beginning again?