The Never Normal

Jonah is well.  There is the usual stress for him associated with the end of school, the break in his routine and its resulting aggression or crying jag.

When there is a day off from school Boo is used to visiting with his daddy, but his daddy can’t come and get him every day and poor Boo can’t understand that – or perhaps he simply refuses to understand it.  I can’t wait to see him on Saturday.  Last Saturday I had less time to see him because I attended a parents’ group meeting on the Anderson campus.

Jonah has had a few aggressions since my last post.  My mind has blessedly shifted from a place of “watch the pendulum, hope it doesn’t keep too fast a tempo, wish it would silence itself into coda”  into a calmer spot of radical acceptance, where Jonah is Jonah and we all help him nurture, grow, and get through periods of stress, fear, or anger.  Especially his beloved daddy; long live Jonah’s amazing daddy.

Jonah and daddy = love

This morning I walked outside to check my tomatoes (which will be miraculous plants if they are even close to “knee-high by the Fourth of July”).

I squinted at what looked like a piece of wood stuck in the fence…half on one side, half on the other.  I moved closer and saw it was a bird – a young bluejay, sitting as if too big to get out of its spot and fly away.  From about a foot away, I looked at the bird and the bird regarded me calmly.  I reached out to ever-so-gently touch its feathers, thinking maybe it had been stunned scared by Almanzo-my-cat, but Manzo was inside.

Then I crouched down so we were eye-to-eye and I stared deep into the bird’s  sparkling, black, liquid eye, feeling like Ricky Fitts filming the “beautiful dead bird” in the movie American Beauty…remembering him, for a moment, and how he felt about death, and that paper bag he danced with — how he said:

That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember…I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.

I snapped out of this and went into Wildlife Rescue Mode.

How do I help this bird?  It has to be injured; otherwise it would have flown away quickly the moment it saw me.  Confused and trying to remember everything I’ve ever learned about nursing a bird back to health (which is one chapter in a Laura Ingalls Wilder book where they find some baby birds and try to save them, failing one by one until they all died).

I went into the house and got a shoebox.  I put a soft dish cloth in it, then took another dishcloth and went back out to lift the precious little bird gently from its perch, lay it in the soft box, and examine it carefully.  When I came back, not one minute later, the little bird had flown away.

And circling above me was a larger blue jay, soaring from branch to wire to chimney.  Though they are chirpy and scolding birds, this one made not a sound.  It was as if he were saying hello, and maybe thank you, as well.  I double-checked around the fence to be sure the little one hadn’t fallen.

It was simply gone.

And so I clutched my box and soft cloths and went inside again, sweet tears coming into my eyes.

This day I was able to visit closely with a small bluejay, who was not afraid of me in the least, and have a conversation with his father (?)

A miracle to begin a beautiful day.

“And when I awoke I was alone
This bird had flown…
So I lit a fire
Isn’t it good?”

~ Norwegian Wood by the Beatles

I am so blessed.