The Mourning Dove is not a creature I ever thought about before our first homeschool unit last September. There are several pairs that call our neighborhood home, and a few of them even wintered here instead of flying south. Our feeder was a welcome buffet.
Their call is a haunting song of love.
I was captured by the beauty of the European starling in our lessons. Aggressive, invasive in North America, and so aware of its own striking appearance.
I do not need to hide, I am emperor of the skies.
They exude confidence, wrapped in shimmering tones.
The European Robin is much smaller than its cousin from North American. This little guy is fragile and lively.
Curiosity becomes a common trait in generation that live around people, but experience little danger.
It’s the little things that decide weakness or strength. It’s the unguarded places that erosion starts. Mountains are raised by pressure and flattened with quakes, while water and ice brake walls.
Humans crack under pressure, our pieces scattered.
I am learning not to fear the brake so much. Because I have seen the art in mending.
The laws of science are the laws of God. He is the Author of their workings. He wrote the plans and mixed the elements.
He poured His spirit in to my chemistry. Now watch me change.
Strong hands trace the grains down the length of lumber.
“She’s beautiful.” “It’ll do then?” “Perfectly.”
Muscular hands grasp the beam, pulling it down from the delivery truck.
“Care to help?”
Then comes the cuts, sharp and sure. Sand glued to paper tears into the beam’s edges. First, they rip tiny shards free. Then the stubs left are ground and smoothed away.
“I will make you shine.”
Lifted into place atop two strong pillars. The work of placing the balusters starts. The measuring, the chiselled crevices. Each paper-thin layer shaved away until wooden sculptures slid true into their homes. Glued then fastened with a single piercing nail.
“You may live longer then I do.”
He stains its grains to match the steps he stands on, each brush stroke rhythmic, a perfect dance of a man’s hand. Then he seals the deep cherry-red with varnish to make wood shimmer in the light.
“Indeed, that’ll do.”
He brings his bride home. Her manicured nails slide along the new banisters curves as eyes roved over the entryway, the steps, the home he has made for her.
“It’s perfect!”
One day his bride carries a babe up those steps to bed. Laid against mother’s shoulder, the child revels in the gentle pat of those manicured fingers.
Splatter.
The babe spits up, drenching mother and railing with sour droplets.
“GEORGE!”
The reprimand is startling and the babe wails, but only for a moment. A mother’s shock and disgust replaced in a heartbeat with love.
As that babe lays sleeping, manufactured nails scrubs cherry-red wood clean.
“Gregory, I think I took the finish of the banister.”
Soon baby feet grow and race through the house. His favourite car finds the perfect track down the ripples his father etched in that beam years ago.
“It made it!”
He whoops and hollers, driving the second car down the length of the banister by hand, unaware of the scratches he leaves in his wake.
Cars turn to girls and hushed voices as one night two shadows slink upstairs away from adult eyes.
“Avoid the next step,” he whispers.
As his partner attempts to skip the step in high heals a light switches on. A shriek fuelled by adrenaline and surprise pierces ear drums. A heal snaps from its shoe and a girl grabs at balusters to keep from sliding down the stairs length.
Another snap tells them all that more than a high heal is broken.
“GEORGE!” “I’ll fix it, Dad!”
The ups and downs, the rides and sounds. The staircase resounds with echoes as life speeds by. A banister once shiny loses its lustre, as age robs its craftsman of the strength and mobility needed to restore it.
The empty nest comes.
Sounds of bustle from the kitchen carry through the hall and up the steps.
“Gregory,” she calls. “Dinner is ready.”
He hears her and rolls his newspaper tightly in one hand. Yes, he still reads it every day.
First, he shuffles to his slippers, then to the steps. The banister cool smoothness greats him with a familiar hello as he rests his hand atop it, ready to start the decent, one slow step at a time. But wait.
“Oh!”
He presses fingers to his left breast. His arm lets out a throb that starts from shoulder and shoots through fingers.
“Margret.”
His call is feeble and frustrated. The deep breath he grasps for sends a second shock down his arm. Then his feet crumble. The cherry-red banister is all that holds him from plummeting down those steps.
“Margret!”
This time the call caries and she comes running.
“Gregory, you’re white as a ghost!” “Dear, I might be one soon. Phone.”
All he hears is the shuffle of his wife’s sandals. All he sees is the cherry-red steps. But he feels the banister, he never let go of it. Its coolness has warmed under his touch. His grip shakes.
“I guess re-sanding you will have to wait another year, my dear.”
He speaks despite the darkness creeping into his side vision. A blink clears it for a moment, and he notices the broken baluster has slipped beyond its brothers and needs to be knocked back into place.
“I must tell Gorge on his next visit. He never fixed that thing right.”
“Gregory, they are on there way. Gregory!”
He lets go of the banister and now all he feels is his wife’s manicured nails digging into his arm as she tugs his shoulder. Can she pull him back to this reality? The cherry-red staircase holds them both.
Sometimes I imagine I can feel it’s edges like a feather soft thing, just out of reach.
But is it really out of reach? Is hope something to be grasped?
No.
Hope is experienced, not held. Hope is found but not possessed.
It lives in places where logic alone dares not live.
Perspective changes things. It doesn’t change truth, but can give us a wider view of what is true.
Toes can never me mountains, but they can show is a likened beauty, and defy the shoes they are so often crammed into, and hold up the weight of our lives, like the deepest roots of the earth.
As does every shoulder bent in strain, stooped in pain, and prostrate in prayer.
I remember my Father’s back and legs, clad in gray overalls, being the only thing visible as he leaned into the open maw of his truck’s hood. If we came to close with our loud games, he would shoosh us. He was listening.
He knew the sound of a healthy engine. He could tell what was off… The sound wasn’t right.
In all the noise of the universe, I wonder if our planet sound off as it spins. Can God hear the clank of my heart and tell just what isn’t quite right?
I imagine he listens closely to our world.
A world made to work, move, revolve, expand, collide, and create in the middle of deceptive chaos.
The constant churning of ideas, peoples, matter, all looks like a blended mess from the middle. But what does it look like as we take a step back and view the whole? Is there a rhyme or a reason?
The marks of our history litter this world. Even the rusted rim of a wheel has a story to tell us. It’s a piece of the puzzle, the hand of God is laying out. Only he knows their planned order.
If the world sounds off, maybe it’s just because He isn’t finished yet.
I am happy to announce the publication of my first short story. Our Forest on an Artist’s Conk has been accepted and published in Hencroft Hub‘s first Issue. The theme of ISSUE ONE is FUNGUS. I took inspiration from the large tree mushrooms my sister harvested from the forest around her home, to use in my artwork. This short story is my first acceptance from a themed publication. It was a lot of fun to work around their theme and stretch my writing experience. Thank you to the Editor’s for giving my story a home.
I used to sit in the field making wishes on dandelion fluff.
I once rolled through the tall grasses, collecting the white seeds on my clothes and dark curls. Helping them spread as I ran back to the house, arms outstretched.
“I can fly!” I would cry, and daydream of Peter Pan and Tinkebell.
It was my life’s spring.
Now I watch my own children wading through puddles. The freshness on their cheeks and sweaters always flavored with a hint of damp growth when coming home from an evenings play.
But I still dream of fairy wings and mermaid foam.
My sisters and I used to rub our cheeks yellow with dandelion buds, and weave tiny field daises in to wreathes for our head.
Now I watch my own girls pick wildflowers and supervise as all kinds of pretend soups are mixed in sandbox buckets with sticks that are just as much magic wands as they are spoons.
The right now is there spring.
The scent of fresh tree blossoms might hold different meanings for me then they once did. But it doesn’t matter what age you are, if you listen closely with your heart they will share wisdom with you.
