Today is my first day of this new year. I am so glad.
The Navajo identify the Mountain Bluebird as a spirit in animal form, associated with the rising sun. The Bluebird Song is sung to remind tribe members to wake at dawn and rise to greet the sun:
Have you ever had that moment when a squirrel darts out into the street as you’re driving by but it’s not safe to swerve so you keep going and cringe and wait for the thump…but it never comes? That happened this morning as Carlos and I were driving to school (well, I was driving because his license has been suspended for being a TODDLER). The squirrel ran straight for my tire. I cringed. Then I peeped in the rear view mirror and didn’t see anything splattered behind me, so I figured the squirrel performed some kind of magic and ran between the tires.
Thinking about that squirrel, and a friend who lost her husband this week, and that time I lost my husband–it all made me think about how we dart between the tires all day long. There is so much risk in being alive, so many wheels flying past us as we’re just trying to get a few acorns back to the nest. We can’t stay in the nest with our babies or they and we would starve. We have to go hunting for acorns when the fall makes them plentiful. It’s risky, but it’s why we survive.
Perhaps I should switch to decaf because I really do a LOT of thinking before the sun is high in the sky.
Once we got to school, I opened the car door to lift Carlos out of his seat. His face lit up like we hadn’t seen each other in days. He squealed, “MOMMY!” and flung himself into my arms. I stood there between the minivans with my face buried in the dark curls under his ear and told him how I loved him more than anything else in the world. How I would do anything to keep him safe and happy and growing. He whispered, “Gotcha, baby,” and squeezed me between his tiny arms. That’s what I usually say every morning when I pick him up from his car seat. When he’s upset or startled or crying, I hold him tight and say, “Mommy’s got you. Mommy’s got you. You’re OK.” I guess he could feel that I needed that this morning.
It’s all just so much some days. Like walking across a tightrope and you can’t resist looking down.
On my walk into my office, I did look down. And there lay a soft gray feather on the sidewalk. I love feathers. The hollow shaft that makes it strong and light–the only reason a bird can fly with all that architecture and not be weighed down. The fluffy tuft of down for warmth because it’s cold when you get far away from the earth. The gentle curve, like the curve of the horizon where the earth ends and the sky begins.
It takes thousands of miraculous feathers to make an ordinary sparrow. Just like us, that tiny bird is a hodgepodge of miracles that all seem to work most of the time. Soft and warm, hollow and light, brave and gentle.
But here’s the lesson I got from that feather on the sidewalk: it was just one feather, one feather of a thousand that make up that bird. Loss is real and loss affects us. Loss may even slow us down or ground us for a while. But it’s just one feather. That bird flew on without it.
The squirrel made it back to the nest. Carlos made it to the story rug. Mommy made it to her desk. The sparrow continued to soar.
Peace to you today if you are feeling afraid. You can still fly, even as you lose feathers along the way.
By Charlesjsharp, via Wikimedia Commons
G cleaned our hummingbird feeder tonight and made fresh nectar for a tiny bird he has named “Buddy.” A few weeks ago, G was out on the deck in the still of the morning when a little hummingbird flitted in and out of petunias in the flower boxes. The two of them spent a peaceful few moments together. G delighted that the hummingbird showed no fear as it came closer and closer to him.
As bluebirds are special to me, hummingbirds are the bird that G shares with his Avo (the Portuguese word for grandfather). When Avo retired to his little house in Carmo de Minas, he made a project of feeding the hummingbirds. But one day, he forgot. That afternoon, he took his walk two blocks over to the town square to sit under the shade trees and rest. While he enjoyed the stillness, a little hummingbird flitted up to him. It hung there, flying circles in the air before Avo’s face. Avo laughed, hauled himself up off the bench and began his slow walk home to fill the feeder. The hummingbird buzzed beside him all the way.
G’s grandmother, Vovo, died a few weeks ago, right around when Buddy showed up on the deck. G and I are both rationalists, but when he told me about the hummingbird that wasn’t afraid of him, I said, “I think it was your grandfather, here to tell you that your grandmother isn’t suffering.” We, the rationalists, let that thought be, let it hold itself up against all logic, just like the hummingbird.
I cannot think of hummingbirds without remembering this tiny jewel of a poem by Raymond Carver:
Hummingbird
For Tess
Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird,”
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.
—Raymond Carver
When Raymond Carver wrote these lines to his beloved Tess Gallagher, he was dying slowly of an inoperable tumor. He knew there would be a day when she would need to be reminded of how much, just how much, he loved her. So he wrote the word “hummingbird.”
Peace to Avo and Vovo and all those who have flown before us.
This came from my British friend, Ann. It sure made me snort. Hit “Like” if you get it!
(pssst: This bird is called the Blue-Footed Boobie)
Bluebirds have had a special place in my life since March 5, 2005. That’s the day Richard and I got married under a white tent in our backyard, down by the river. During our vows, a little bluebird perched on the fence behind us and listened in. Our small band of family and friends saw him, but neither of us did because we were looking at each other. When we talked about it afterwards, most of us there marveled that we had never seen one before. And I still hadn’t.
The bluebird made another appearance at the reception, resting on the bare wisteria bush, while we were making toasts. Again, I missed him. We were laughing so hard in that moment because my 102 yr old grandfather downed three glasses of champagne before the first toast could get started! He couldn’t hear what was going on and just assumed my brother was standing at his elbow refilling his glass to be hospitable. Strange to think that Pop outlived Richard. He made it another year and Richard made it 11 more days.
The next day, we were back to the routine of transfusions and infusions and confusions. I still hadn’t seen a bluebird, but I believed in the magic of it. I knew that we had been visited by something truly special and rare.
I did see the bluebird a few months later. Richard’s parents had come down to do some paperwork on the estate. We were seated at the dining room table sorting through the piles of bills and payments. It’s like swimming through molasses, that kind of work during that kind of grief. I was feeling overwhelmed and far too young to be in that moment when I looked out the window at the very instant that the bluest flash I’d ever seen flitted past and landed on the dogwood tree. He was real! He was there! It was just the sign I had ached for.
The path of grief is not a straight line. You don’t start off in the deepest slough then climb up each step to get back to peaceful. Grief moves forward, but in a looping line. You’re going along, making progress then you hit a loop and your stomach lurches and everything is flipped upside down and you land right back where you were a few weeks or months ago. Eventually, the loops get smaller and spread farther apart, but they’re still there to…well, to throw you for a loop.
That’s how I found myself in despair one late summer day. I was hollow, made of smoke so thin that I might fly apart at any loud sound or sudden move. It had been months. I was back at work. I was going to the grocery store and to the movies. I was rattling around in our big house with my dogs and our cats. I was living and it hurt. I stepped outside one day, looked up at the sky and whispered, “I could really use a bluebird.”
The next evening, I let the dogs out on the deck and what do you know, there sat a blue bird. A bedraggled looking blue parakeet clutched the back of the patio chair. I blinked pretty hard, a couple of times. I walked back inside and watched it through the window. Still there. I locked the cats in the bedroom. When I approached the parakeet, it jumped right into my palm. I cupped
him gently between my hands and took him to the bathroom where he would be safe.
My dad is a veterinarian, so I called him for advice. “Do I need to put up signs around the neighborhood to see if someone is missing a parakeet?” He chuckled and said, “Nooooo. Somebody’s mama got tired of cleaning the cage and left the window open. Just go get you a cage and enjoy your new parakeet.” I asked him what he could tell me about parakeets and he said, “Does it have a colored strip over its beak? If it’s colored, that means it’s a male. Or a female. Hell, I don’t remember.”
I bought a little cage and he made himself at home in the bathroom. Every evening, I’d lock myself in there with him (with 3 cats scratching at the door) and let him fly around for a while. He liked being held and would perch on my shoulder so we could look in the mirror. He sang whenever the water ran or the toilet flushed. I could tell if people washed their hands because the little bird would sing longer!
The moral of this story: accept the gifts that come your way, even if they aren’t EXACTLY what you requested. I asked for a bluebird but I got a blue bird. I named my little friend Tuesday to remind myself that miracles happen even on the most ordinary day of the week.