Eulogy

     Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten         
                                                 by God.
                                              (Luke 12:6)

The baby bird needed help. 

I spotted it from a good distance, back when my eyes boasted 20/20 vision,  as I was on my way back from an afternoon spent at the pool with my friends.  

Rolling up to the fluffy gray ball on my banana seat bike,  I quickly surveyed the situation.  He was sitting in the middle of one of the neighborhood streets, no mama bird to be found.  His dull yellow beak was open in a little V, and he was breathing rapidly, his downy little feathers moving up and down so fast that they seemed to be in constant motion.

I didn't sit for long but gingerly pushed down the kickstand so as not to startle the quivering creature who was now just a few feet in front of me, and then I deftly - and silently - climbed over the seat and off the bike.  My heart was racing at this point as I was contemplating my next move.  I had a difficult decision to make, and yet my 11-year old brain knew of only one thing to do. 

Scooping him up and setting him in my pool bag in one swift movement, I knew only one thing: I had to quickly get this bird home before he died.  It was then I heard the chirping from somewhere above me, although when I looked up, I saw nothing.  Instead of riding on the street, I made a quick left and departed the road for the well worn dirt path made by all the other bikes heading to and from the pool.  Coasting down the hill while clutching the pool bag with one hand, I heard the chirps becoming louder and more frantic.  It never dawned on me that the ruckus had anything to do with my precious cargo.  I was in the zone.  I was going to save this bird.  Rounding the curve once the hill flattened out, I pedaled like a girl with her hair on fire.

My mother met me at the porch door after she heard me calling out for her from two houses over.  With a furrowed brow, she peered into the bag I held up to her through the screen.  "Can we save it? I found it in front of the Thomas's house, on the road."  My mother, who has always had a soft spot for animals, ushered me inside with a warning that baby birds are rarely abandoned by their mothers, even when it looked like they were.  "Usually the mother is somewhere close by, watching, making sure her baby is safe."  Pulling a cardboard box out of the storage closet, she instructed me to line it with a towel and set the bird in it.  After adding a small dish of water to the box, I sat on the porch floor to watch the traumatized baby, holding vigil and saying prayers until nightfall.

The next morning found me racing to the box in the hopes that a miracle had occurred - that the tiny thing had drunk some water, at least.  My mother found me a few minutes later as I knelt, crying, by the cardboard coffin.  She listened as I recounted how I'd tried to save this orphan from certain death, then she showed me where to bury it in the yard. 

The next day she told me about the way of birds when they are learning to fly.

Blind

There are times when taking a break from writing is all I want to do, like when memories are forced to conjure up disquieting images the way King Saul pled with the Witch of Endor to summon the spirit of Samuel, dusty and irritated, from the grave.  

King Saul would go on to pay a price for this.

Images give birth to thoughts and then thoughts to the words which, once expressed, we claim a sort of parental responsibility for, whether we are prepared for this or not.

Denial became something akin to a ground-fault circuit interruptor when my thoughts threatened to shock my system. Fearing for the tow-headed boy's life,  fearing for his reputation (it was also fear for my own, if truth be told), I spoke over him words - marching orders, really - that coaxed darkness up from the ground that threatened to swallow him whole - that threatened to send him to his death.


You need to keep this to yourself.  

Don't tell anyone else you're gay.

We can't let your grandfather find out - it'll kill him.


Fear had had its say, and in those dusty, irritated, grave-words, shame was born.

This son of mine - this one who was always so eager to please, so agreeable and cooperative - looked down at the floor, unblinking, and kept his eyes there for a long time.  What he saw, I couldn't know.

What I did know, though, was that I couldn't see a damned thing.