Will was drinking Milk and eating Munchkins at D&D in Braintree this AM with momma. He looks like a grown up to me in this picture..
Dina and I packed up our car, said our goodbyes to Will, and went to the cape for the weekend on Friday night. My parents watched Will all weekend and he did all sorts of exciting things: he went to the beach, he rode on a carousel, and he had a ton of fun with Nana Daryl and Papa Ed.
Dina and I stayed at Carl & Bridget's cape house and did our best to do absolutely nothing. I bought coffee and two newspapers each morning, Dina poured through a book and started a second, we went out for casual meals and simply tried to do as little as possible. It was sorely needed and helped to take a little of the anxiety/exhaustion/stress off of us in anticipation of what will be next for Will.
On Saturday morning after breakfast Dina ran over to the Mashpee Commons to look around at some of the shops and I was blissfully relieved of accompanying her on this shopping excursion. I grabbed one of my newspapers, headed out to the deck with a coffee, and basked in the unadulterated joy of the moment. It was a beautiful day, the kind of day when Mother Nature is confused if she wants it to still be summer, of if fall is finally arriving. This is the time of year that I live for, those few precious short weeks where the heat and humidity of summer are saying goodbye, the snow and cold are yet to come and you have to think about where you favorite sweatshirt has been stored for the past six months.
I was so content and relaxed that what happened next startled me more than it probably should have. I heard a very loud "thud" followed by a 'plop' about three feet away from where I was sitting. A bird had flown full speed into the massive windows on the side of the house that are located above the slider, the impact obviously killing the small bird. I looked down and as the rudimentary brain sent out its last signals to 'fly' the poor thing only managed to twitch a few times before ending its movement.
I sat there with this bird between myself and the only entrance back into the house and said to myself "I really didn't need this". The tranquility and peacefulness I was feeling, the feeling that I was floating down a calm river, leaving my problems and stresses behind was suddenly ruined by this dead bird at my feet. I selfishly felt 'cheated' again as if that same malevolent force that has spent the past few years ambushing us at every turn decided to make it's presence know by dropping this at my feet as if to say "did you really think sitting here was going to solve your problems". I'm obviously over dramatizing the situation but it seemed in lock step with everything else in our lives as of late.
So I made my way inside, passing on a few words to the bird as I passed along the lines of 'sorry your flight path intersected with the dark cloud floating over my head' as I made me way to the garage for a shovel. I made me way back through the house from the attached garage with all intentions of scooping up the bird and launching him back into the woods he came from. As I entered the living room and looked out onto the porch to size up the best angle of approach I was stunned to see that the bird was sitting up.
He was stunned, breathing heavy, and barely moving, but he was up in a sitting position and I could not believe it. As I stood there with my mouth slightly ajar, a foolish sense of guilt crept upon me since the bird was eyeing me as if to say "What is it you plan on doing with that shovel?" I quickly put it aside and sprang into action. I went and grabbed a bottle of water and made my way back onto the porch, this time on a rescue mission. I put the cap next to the bird and filled it with water for him to drink and then went back into the house to look for something to eat. The only thing I could come up with was a bag of popcorn that was oddly enought named "Pirates Booty". I thought, what bird doesn't love popcorn, grabbed a few pieces, and headed back to the birds 'bedside'.
If someone took a picture it would have been pretty pathetic, a giant lumbering man placing popcorn next to a bird no bigger than my fist, right next to his own little trough of water. After keeping my eye on him for a while as I finished the paper I wished him luck and headed back inside to take a shower. It occurred to me that when we pulled up on Friday that a fox was in the front yard but I thought it would be okay to leave him alone. After getting dressed I walked back outside and he was gone! My first thought was that a fox or a hawk had scooped him and his popcorn up but then I looked and the little guy had managed to somehow make it about six feet over to the deck railing where he was perched. Progress!
I continued to watch him throughout the day until he was gone. I went to the edge of the railing to make sure he had not fallen and was glad to learn that he had finally regained his senses, got his bearings, and made it back into the air and hopefully back to his friends.
I found myself strangely captivated by the whole experience and really rooting for this bird to make it. Partly because I wasn't too thrilled with scooping up his corpse and firing it out into the woods, but the real reason was because I felt a kinship with his experience as a result of our own current situation. I was saying that if this tough little bird can make it, there is no reason not to have any hope for our own seemingly 'hopeless' situation.
I know it seems incredibly corny, extremely far fetched, and wholly unimaginable, but given the fact that this entire episode took place where it did, when it did, when no one else was there to see it or share the experience with me, it allowed me to make it into something it was not. The rooting I did for this bird was, I think, more tied to a way to re-energize my own hope and optimism and it worked. More than any other reason, I'm glad that we went down there for the weekend so that I could reaffirm my own gut feelings that things will be ok.
A bird taught me that is still ok to have hope.
