Bird-Brained Ideas

More than once last night, when no one but the college drunks and the third-shifters were supposed to be up, I was awakened by a cardinal's frantic twitter.  There, in my bed, cool sheets holding me, I went all "mother" when I heard its staccato call, imagining a stealthy cat or hungry owl causing its fearful uttering.

It is disturbing to hear a voice out of context, calling out in the wrong time frame.

But then I considered that the cardinal might just be talking in its sleep. Which led me to wonder where all the neighborhood birds were right then, and what their sleeping arrangements looked like.  If I had super night-vision eyes, would I have seen their small forms dotting the trees, like pine cones?  Surely, there aren't enough nests for them all.  Surely, some stood stoic and silent,  iron grips on slender branches, willing themselves to sleep, despite the drag racers on O Street.

It is amazing how many things I rub shoulders with each day, and yet know so little about.  And most of those things have their roots in the natural world--the almonds I pop in my mouth yet cannot fathom growing, the cricket choir whose legs I've never seen singing, the chimney swifts that seem always to be flying.

Fortunately, this abundance of ignorance only seems to feed my sense of wonder.  In these google-saturated times when answers (right or wrong) are just two clicks away, I find comfort in the not knowing.  Instead of insisting on understanding, sometimes I am delighted to know that I don't really know all that much.  I am that cheap date who stares gape-jawed at the fistful of flowers whose names I cannot recall.

I am the neighbor, half asleep, imagining what it is that cardinals dream of.

Sunday Circulars

The circular nature of life--its arcing tendency to bend towards what we once knew--seems sharpened by this crisp, almost-fall morning.  At this early hour,  in this comfortable room in my house, I feel as if I am looking back on my life, remembering my parents as younger, more vibrant people; stunned that my own now-grown children were once diapered and stumbling; smiling as I can almost see the wilder, less-formed version of who I am today.

And I recall last week's visit with my mom and stepdad. The hesitance I felt as I pulled into the parking space, knowing that I would lie to them.  Or at least not come completely clean.  My circle--or at least some earlier segments of my circle--now merging with theirs, these lifelines absorbing and swapping stories with seeming indiscretion.

Suddenly, I am the parent.  And they are the people I want to protect.

Which is why I have not yet mentioned to them the July 25th death of my dear friend Mary Kay  nor do I intend to share with them the loss of another fine friend--Andrea--whose premature death last week broke my heart again.  These are not the stories to feed to aged souls, I tell myself.  These are not facts that can be absorbed through the dementia-laced fog of a beloved mother whose daily living is now framed by nurses' visits and three-times-a-day low-sodium menu selections.

There, in the parking lot in front of a building filled with people whose edges are fuzzying, then, I make my peace with my sins of omission.  And I know somehow, that--many years ago, when my own days were played out with young friends running through grass-filled fields--my parents made a similar peace with their decision not to tell me everything.

Such are the demands of living these concentric circles of our lives.

For My Friend, Andrea

Andrea Kabourek was a warrior.  An eyes-on-the-prize, cancer-be-damned warrior.  So what’s a middling, “uncle”-muttering person like me doing, talking about her? I’m here to tell you that, underneath all of those parachutes and running shoes, tucked behind the shark cage and bravado, Andrea Kabourek was just a really fine friend to people, myself included.

Granted, there were times when I questioned the ways in which Andrea expressed her friendship to me...usually, those times fell in October, when I host the annual East HIgh party, or December, on my birthday.  She was a horrible prankster in my life.  A wonderful, horrible prankster who once filled my house with hundreds of yearbook mugshots--some of which I am still finding 7 years later.  She rearranged my furniture, sent me strange notes on official letterhead, posted formative and summative assignments in my bathroom and bedroom. Andrea even made me wear a onesie to school on my 50th birthday. . .

There are not many people who can make me wear a onesie to school.  In fact, I’m pretty sure Andrea was the only one who could.

While Andrea always seemed to be in the center of things, she was not a team of one.  She had, it turns out, an incredible group of people holding her up and rooting her on--from her high-school and college coaches who nudged speed and strength out of her to her always-present family, who worked feverishly to keep her happily on this earth.  As stubborn and independent as she was, Andrea Kabourek needed her family and her friends, her coaches and her students just as much as we needed her, I think.

Andrea was not particularly religious, but I think she would have called East High her “thin” place--a Celtic term for those special places where this world and the next intertwine. She loved this school and its people fiercely.  And we loved her back.  

But it’s not a terribly brave or daring thing to have loved Andrea Kabourek.  Loving her is easy.

There is, it turns out, a much more difficult task for all of us today.  Today, the heartbreaking question becomes:  What do we do now?  How do we find our way without her?  

I am not a runner but I think Andrea the competitor would tell us that we get out of bed and put on our shoes and move through this day--each day-- with our eyes--and our hearts--wide open, grabbing fistfuls of this life and living it, heartache be damned.

Today, then, in this thin place that is East High, as my friend Ken said so well, we draw strength from each other, leaning in to this mystical thinness, a place where, as Andrea had shown us so many times before, anything is possible.

An Extra Dash of Seasoning

I love the turning over of seasons, especially the shovel's blade of fall cutting into hardened summer soil.  There is so much hope and relief and quiet excitement packed into the flipping of a calendar's page.  Even the thought of the first football Saturday quickens my heart, which says a lot, considering how many years it's been since I've attended a game.

Early September is packed with signs of change--the sun's arc slowly flattening, Casiopea nudging its way westward in the night sky, the crickets' steady evensong now more opus than undercurrent.  Even the neighbor's Linden tree has begun to pull out its fall wardrobe.

Yes, a person could view such things as sure signs of the gloom that awaits us three months from now--the flat, cold steel of winter--but I have no time for such pessimists.

Today, at least, I will fill up on monarchs and swallowtails, and praise the praying mantises and yellow-tinged leaves that punctuate my walks.  For now, I hum along to the crickets' choir, glad for the relentlessness of their leggy instruments, unconcerned about winter's silence that inevitably awaits me.