Frances makes a friend

Today at a fourth of July party, Frances held a roly-poly (aka a pill bug) in her hand for a long time. She lounged in the pool, grazed the food table, changed out of her bathing suit and climbed all over my friend’s lap, all with the little bug in her grasp. Every once in a while I’d ask her: “Frances, Do you still have the roly-poly?” and she would open her fist and show us. I forgot about him in the bustle of packing up the towels and potluck dish as we were leaving, but in the car she said, “Mom! I am telling the roly-poly that it’s going to be a long time in the car!”

Fresh

A crow flew overhead as I rounded the corner on my bike, zipped past the XL SUV that was stopped there, looked in at the inhabitants who looked at me like I was crazy and thought to myself, "You don't know what you're missing!"

Something Amazing

A few weeks ago Grace was in my studio, asking if she could have one of my feathers. I said yes and she picked up the parrot feather which is slightly green. I told her she would have to choose a different one. "That's the only parrot feather I have and it was a gift from your father." She was immediately fixated on it and none of the other feathers would do. She was disappointed with her second choice of an iridescent turkey feather. I told her that if she really wanted a parrot feather all she had to do was ask. “Ask who?” she wanted to know. “The parrots, or the sky, or the sun or the moon! “ I said. “Whoever you want to ask!” So she did. I think she asked them all.

The other day we had a conversation I had been dreading. It was after we read a story in which an older brother tells his younger sibling that their parents are the real Santa Claus. I saw Grace’s face drop and I asked her if she wanted to talk about Santa Claus. “I just want to know the truth” she said and I could see she was holding back a lot of feelings. I took a deep breath and said something like this:

Yes it's true that we put the presents under the tree and fill the stockings up. But the great thing about Santa Claus has nothing to with whether he is real or not. He represents a child’s ability to believe in things like a fat man who squeezes down your chimney and lives forever and manages to travel around the world in one night behind flying deer delivering presents to every single child. Or a rabbit who does the same sort of thing. Or a fairy who knows every time you lose a tooth. It’s all about magic, and in a lot of ways, kids are closer to magic than adults are. But magic does exist. I experience it all the time. It’s more subtle than a bunch of presents under a tree. It’s like trusting a feeling you have that things happen just at the right time because someone’s looking out for you.

She accepted my explanation and added that it was fun to watch her little sister believe anything Grace told her and we laughed. She admitted she felt disappointed but said she was also relieved to know the truth, because her suspicions about it had been bugging her for a while.

Yesterday she found two pretty gray feathers on our front lawn. She was delighted when I told her they belonged to a mourning dove. “I love mourning doves!” she squealed. And then she said, “I am glad they gave me a feather. I really wanted a parrot feather but I am happy with my mourning dove feathers anyway.”

Today we went to an outdoor concert in the park and she came running up to me with a huge smile on her face and a beautiful green feather in her fingers. Much more colorful than mine, it has several different shades of green in it. “You were right Mama! All I had to do was ask!”

Tonight when I put her to bed she said, “I am so glad I found that feather and that you weren’t lying to me.” “About what?” “About magic. It really does exist.”

The day that was today

I can’t say that it started out well, but it was one of those ordinary days that turned out to be perfect. I was woken up by my younger daughter, Frances, at the usual 6:30 am, crawling into my side of the bed without any intention of letting me doze off again. “I’m hungry” was her usual insistent plea and most mornings I am happy to get up but having gone to sleep less than five hours earlier I was in no mood to budge. I lay there, hoping she would go way or that my stirring husband would have pity on me. A moment later I was pouring milk over a bowl of cereal, trying to keep my eyes semi-closed as I plotted to lie down on the couch and get back to an unconscious state while she ate her cereal. I have had this plan before but it has never panned out like it did this time. Over the next two hours I was only half awake to the goings on in the house while I (miracle #2) lay there virtually undisturbed. I heard things as if I were dreaming them and paid no attention: Frances dropping something that made a loud crash; the cats wreaking havoc knocking things over; Grace getting up and eating breakfast after kissing me good morning. The next thing I knew Dave was asking if I’d like to go back to bed and I was gratefully slipping into the bedroom without my disappearance being noticed. Miracle #3.

I know this doesn’t sound like a bad start and it wasn’t, but when Mom sleeps in until 10:30, the day has a way of getting off on the wrong foot. Frances came in to get me up again and this time she was out of patience. “I have been playing alone for hours!” she lamented and I couldn’t argue with her. The regular routine was off and that would mean probable tantrums from her, I thought to myself, as she whined about wanting to watch a movie, throwing herself on the floor and making a big show of her grief over the word No. I tried to cajole her while holding firm to No and getting my underwear on. After some negative thinking about how I’d screwed up the whole day by sleeping late, I realized all was not lost, since there we were heading out the door with a picnic basket.

We drove the mile and a half to Eaton Canyon where there is still a little water to play in. The short hike from the car was hot and both girls were almost starting to complain until they saw the stream and started skipping to the glistening pools ahead. The water felt cool in rubber shoes and we walked carefully downstream, our feet upsetting multitudes of tadpoles with every step. I held Frances’ hand as she negotiated slippery stones but after a few minutes she was confident on her own. We sat down on warm dry rocks in a little shade and ate sandwiches.

Eventually we worked our way back up to where we the stream was trickling along in a wide open area without any plants poking in. There were other kids playing too and parents sitting idly by as if we were all at the playground. We watched our kids fascination with catching tadpoles grow and their clothes get increasingly soggy and had trouble caring about what else might have been planned for the afternoon. I let go of my ambitions of running an errand or cleaning up the mess we’d left at home as I sat there with the sun beating down on my skin and the cool water on my feet keeping me in just the right balance between hot and cold, dry and wet. There was a family of acorn woodpeckers in the oaks around us so I was happily waiting to get good looks at them with my binoculars. Eventually I did and even sketched the birds a few times in my notebook.

We stayed in that spot for what turned out to be hours but felt more like minutes. Grace got really good at catching the tadpoles and would hold them in her hands for a moment or two before letting them go back in the water. She was also busy making sure all the other kids set theirs free. Frances gave up holding her dress out of the water and then took it off and before I knew it she was sitting in the little pool half naked.

The smell of hot sage and eucalyptus was blowing by on a nice breeze that was just cool enough to keep us there. We made friends, had meaningful conversations, learned a few things about tadpoles and how to catch them, learned how to pan for gold and saw with our own eyes tiny flakes of it in the stream. Apparently people used to pan for gold during the great depression to make ends meet. For us, it was a nice metaphor for the day.

Cremation

The birds were talking to me today but not showing much of themselves. I was woken by the sound of a love mourning dove (sic) around 5:45 am. As the girls and I went out into the backyard to play in the afternoon, a mockingbird flew out from behind and landed on the wire in front of us. Then as we worked in the garden, a scrub jay landed very close, on the cement wall not three feet from where we stood. He flew over us and onto the fence at the back of the garden and Grace asked him for a feather. Later I heard a bird I didn’t recognize as the girls and I took a walk down the block. It was a short call, very uniform, and very high. Another bird was also calling at the same time and I guessed it was a woodpecker.

Later on, after dinner I went out to water the garden and heard the tell tale squawks of parrots, but they were behind trees and I could not see them. I finally made out five birds flying in the distance, but by then they were so far away I could only identify them as parrots from their quick flapping. As I left the garden at dusk, I was pushed to light a fire and burn the wing of the chicken that I had thought was a hawk’s which was now just a pile of feathers that I was still hanging onto. I had been thinking of burning them for a while but felt I needed a plan. In that moment it seemed simple. Make a little fire with dead leaves on the cement outside my studio and throw the feathers into the fire. As I began to set it up, two scrub jays were calling, again out of view, very urgently back and forth in the large oak just opposite my studio. I spoke to the birds: “Here I light a fire and offer myself to the birds. I ask permission to cremate the wings and feathers that have been presented to me. I offer myself with gratitude for my gifts as a midwife into death for many small creatures. I acknowledge that these deaths may have been painful and in this cremation I set that pain free, that it may be turned into positive energy for a new purpose.” As I lit the fire and as it took off and momentarily became a large flame I gave thanks to the fire and acknowledged it’s powerful ability to transform physical matter into smoke, ash and ember.

The fire kept wanting to go out so I paid a lot of attention to it and gave thanks to the wind for helping give more energy to the fire and I put a lot of energy into keeping it going long enough for all the feathers to burn. I felt good about my comfort with fire, to know how it burns and how to keep it going, but I also had to work at it because fire can be hard to control. There is no way of knowing what will happen. But I trust that everything will. Eventually, the fire will burn out.

And it did and I carefully gathered up the ashes and bits of bone that were left on the cement and carried them to my beloved compost pile. I spoke a few words as I placed the ashes on the pile, asking mother earth to take them back as I folded them into the dark dirt. Then I took the hose and washed off the remaining ash from the cement which now had a little yellowish mark where the fire had been. I thanked the water for it’s cleansing of the spot that was now a sacred spot for me.

Absent Minded

I fed the raven, I think. Could have been some other water starved creature that found my orange, rolled it with it’s foot or beak, pecked at it or clawed at it until it opened and delivered its watery cache. But I believe it was a raven, so sure were the blows that tore it in half. So complete was the excavation of the contents. I could see it, wings tucked neatly, concentrating all the force of its powerful neck muscles and large beak on opening and then pulling out the orange that stood out like a beacon amid the sage and tan colored everything.

In the desert there is nothing and everything. In the desert all is calm and all is wild. In the desert there are sounds and silence. In the desert I am alone and with company. It feeds me huge mounds of words, like plates topped with spaghetti falling off in long stringy sentences and meaty truths. It provides, through meager offerings of sand and gravel and thorny brush, big surprises in the form of bright red flowers atop spiny-armed cacti or the soft brushy leaves of the ageless trees and the tiny nest searched for in its branches. In the desert, expectations are naught and the attack of the unexpected is common. It sets you up to sit back and then grabs you with its blue skies painted with pink or white or yellow jet trails. One looks for the uncommon bird and find the common bird is looking, offering something you never knew you wanted.

Colliding with a Wing

When I found the hawk’s wing, it looked like it had been washed down the stream we were following. It was not a full wing, but the feathers were large and all brown so I reasoned it had belonged to a red-shouldered hawk. It was gorgeous but grubby. Sand was worked into the feathers which were stuck together and matted in places. I didn’t care. I immediately felt it was a gift, like the other bird treasures I have stowed in my studio. It was partly because I had almost stepped on it that I felt it was mine. An awesome token of affection from the sky.

Still, I felt a little hesitant picking it up in front of my hiking buddy. It was far from perfect, but passing it up was impossible. I cradled it under my left arm, ever-conscious of how fragile it was as we continued down the stream. At one point we lost the trail and found ourselves at the top of a twenty foot waterfall. We had to turn around and decided to scramble up some rocks to scout the trail we’d lost. As I clung to a rock with one arm I did contemplate ditching the wing, but I was already very attached to it. While I tried to think of a solution my friend reached out and I carefully handed it to her so she could wrap it up in the shirt she had tied around her waist.

At home I dropped it in a plastic bag promising to wash it later, only slightly concerned about the flesh that was still clinging to the bones. A friend suggested drying it out, so I laid it on an old tee shirt and buried it in salt. It stayed that way for days, looking more beautiful than ever, covered in white crystals with just the tips of its long brown feathers sticking out. I saw six hawks yesterday, one after the other, circling over the road as I drove home from the desert. I wonder what that means? I said to my friend in the car, but it wasn’t until I got home that I realized it was time to wash the wing.

Maybe I left it in the water too long, or maybe it was just not meant to be, but my precious wing fell to pieces in the bath. As I pulled it out bit by bit, I realized what had happened. The water had dissolved what little glue the dried flesh was providing and the wing had become just a mass of feathers and a naked bone. Oh well, I thought to myself. It’s a nice mass and will give me lots to draw from. As I fished them out of the water, I gently rubbed off the brown remnants and the dirt and admired all the different shapes and subtle patterns each feather displayed. All were the same deep reddish brown but some had faint stripes that looked like brown shadows and some had a bold streak of black going lengthwise.

Then something strange happened. I felt a kind of a zing in my left finger that shot up my arm when I touched one of the feathers and I immediately dropped it as if I’d gotten a shock. It gave me a creepy feeling so I quickly said out loud: If you are a positive energy I am happy to receive you, but if you are negative you are not welcome here. Please respect my wishes and I will respect yours. I could still feel a tingling in my left fingers which is where I have felt some tingling for other reasons for a while now. It was as if it hooked into the communication system between my body and my soul and I welcomed it with only a slight wariness. When I asked what it was I immediately felt the trauma and the pain of this bird’s attack. So I said gently, as I might to a child, “It’s alright. All over now.” As I continued to work with the wing, trying to save as many feathers as I could, I continued to get these little jolts or stings and each time I would repeat, “It’s okay. All done.” But it was a strange feeling. Not to be talking to a wing. But because I realized how sad I was feeling, watching it all fall apart.