As we first met my daughter-in-law, we were challenged. .. My daughter-in-law is a bright and vivid woman, educated, stylish, smart, very smart. I am sure that several of us simply stared at her for the first two years after her introduction to the pack. Some time after that, and there is no defining moment, she became pack. And now, she is with us and is us. I don’t even know how I knew that the shift occurred, but suddenly one day, she was among us differently. I know that she did not try, as in trying – to be a member of the pack, it is simply part of her.
I have seen others, try very hard to be a member of the pack. They may even travel with us for several years. But they are not members of the pack and in the end our paths must separate and the pack moves on.
Still others, come to us and they are a member of the pack on the day that they come to us. What makes them our pack – immediately? I do not know, but they are there and they will stay.
And what is the pack? My son and I read a genre of writing that includes magic and great voyages and mysterious mages and among those books, which include thousands and thousands of pages in the telling of the story, there came to us a story. This story included a telepathic connection between a man and his wolf. They experienced each other, and so the story is about the two of them and how their disparate bodies could think as one. Often the man had to balance human thinking against the thought process of the wolf community. When the wolf committed great acts of loyalty and self sacrifice for another, and the man would question his motivation, the wolf always responded simply “we are pack”. When the man had to give deeply of himself to others in loyalty and brave deeds, the man would question himself for this, the wolf would respond simply to the man to help him understand his need to serve others with “we are pack”. In this magical mystical place a pack is…
Always there for each other in any need. Hears distress from each other, no matter how many miles separate them. Bears a love for the pack, sometimes maddening, sometimes daunting, but always a love for the pack. The pack is never to be abandoned, can be lost, even for a time, but never abandoned. The pack stands strong, no matter that one may be weak. A weakness is to be held up, not beat down. And there are no secrets from the pack, respect for privacy, but no secrets.
And I, who am the leader of the pack, do not know how one gets in or another can never get in. It just is. And the pack moves on.
