Posts tagged leapoffaith

On the morning of my 42nd birthday, my dogs wake me up at half past six. They wake me up with barking - desperate, anticipatory barking. These are not the canine sounds warning of a trespasser, or to signify a need to relieve themselves. No. This particular bark I’ve come to recognize as the woeful ‘cry of the hunter.’ So I get up to let them out - because my husband is away, because the kids are still sleeping and I wish for them to remain sleeping. Because I am forty-two this morning and I had planned on waking up early anyway. So I could lay in bed thinking about life, and thinking about death, and remembering goodbyes, and feeling feelings. 

Backstory. There’s a squirrel in our backyard that gets eternally trapped under the treehouse my dad built for the boys. I don’t suppose it’s the same fucking squirrel out there daily - because how dumb and sad and Sisyphean - but this is the squirrel my dogs want to eviscerate on some mornings. 

This squirrel usually runs up our massive tree, gets a third of the way up and lo and behold, finds there’s an obstacle - the bottom of the treehouse, which winds around the entire circumference. Aside from jumping off and frantically running toward another massive tree - there’s nowhere for this squirrel to go. And so my dogs - rabid in their desire to catch her - run circles as she runs circles and eventually somebody gives up, or makes a miraculous getaway. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, and on the morning of my 42nd birthday, while waiting for my coffee to brew, it seems I would bear witness to this slightly amusing - yet terribly distressing - scenario yet again.

Side note. We also have a bird’s nest in our backyard. It’s already been occupied by an avian family earlier in the summer - a mom and her five kiddos (that’s for you, Christine.)  We took pictures when they hatched. My husband tended to the babies with a watchful eye, setting up thick blankets on the patio table right underneath the nest (which was built behind a light fixture on a beam) lest one of the baby birds had tried to fly and failed, so they’d have something soft to land on. Because that is my husband, in an nutshell. My son had christened the babies (Bob, Sasha, Keith, I forget the rest) and we all kind of got emotionally invested in their journey, and one morning, just like that, they were gone. And we were sad and happy at the same time that they had literally flown the coop.

Recently, the nest became occupied again. Another bird mother and two hatchlings, this time. Maybe more. I forget. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what these birds are. What type. My husband was very…proud?…that another matriarch had chosen “our” nest. These babies were more outgoing, as I would see them crane their necks all the way from my kitchen window. They seemed eager, and assured. The previous babies just formed a kind of unified sleepy lump and rarely showed their beaky little faces.

Anyway, back to my story.

I get out of bed at six thirty five, and the dogs are on my heels - the smaller and younger one, the one on Prozac, positively dying to get outside. She’s whining and barking and jumping around, and the bigger dog is panting like she’s just run a marathon. They want out. I scan the yard to make sure it’s a squirrel they have spotted and not some innocent baby bunny, and at their signal, I open the doors and release hell, as it were. 

And on this morning - for whatever reason - I follow them.

They run like CRAZY, straight toward the swing set, but I don’t see a squirrel or any other suburban woodland creature. It’s completely muggy this morning, like Vegas or Florida muggy. My phone is in my hand - and I don’t know how it got there or why I would take it downstairs, but these are the times we’re living in, I suppose, when the phone is just always in our hands, like an appendage. I notice the bird nest and I amble over. I’ll take a picture of these guys, I think. Show my husband, so he can see I too, am an animal lover.

What happens next, happens fast.

I walk over to the bird nest. I get up close. I see two birds in there, round white belies and looking very fully formed. For a second, I can’t tell if it’s two moms. These birds don’t look like the skinny necked babies that were there just days ago - but here’s a tidbit - baby birds grow fast. Like super fast. I zoom in and take a picture. And I swear one of the birds is looking straight at the camera, straight at me, perhaps into my soul. I don’t want to say a connection has been made, but for a second, I see myself age, seven, landing in America. I fast forward through years of struggle, through escapades, loves lost. I am here now, standing in the lovely backyard behind a lovely home, living a beautiful life, and I am forty-two years old and how the fuck did I manage to get here? All of this, me and the baby bird locking eyes, in about a ten seconds. 

And as soon as I put my phone down, she takes off. I startle. She flies above my head. Only she doesn’t get far. She falls to the ground, and just like that, the smallest dog, the dog on Prozac is there, on her, so close that I know my dog is about to eat a baby bird who had felt the universe calling out to her, who had just felt the courage to leave home - this bird will be eaten in front of me, on my forty second birthday.

“Mabel! NO! Mabel, NO!” 

I yell, loudly. It’s a desperate plea, a serious command - and oh miracle of miracles just as Mabel’s snout makes contact with feathers - Mabel retreats. Both dogs follow me back into the house, as the bird tries to take off again. She  manages a few hops into the hedges behind our cabana, and then she disappears.

I tell the doggies they’re such good girls - for not starting my morning off with a literal bloody murder - and the I go back outside. I look for the bird. Her sister is still in the nest. But she is gone. Part of me worries she’s trapped inside bushes and that at some point today, one of my dogs will get her. But I look behind the bushes. I look everywhere. And I don’t see anything. 

So I choose to believe that this bird, who wanted to show me what a leap of faith looks like, knew herself well enough to know she’d be just fine. That she was ready to fly.

I sit here now, kids still sleeping, and think about my life, and all the moments in it when I leapt, and fell, and yet somehow, survived.

How do birds know that they know how to fly? I have no idea. I won’t even fucking google it. I will keep the memory of this morning in tact, as it is -  mysterious, unsettling, and kind of beautiful.