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| Becky, Kelly, and Ruth (playing peek-a-boo) on her third birthday |
Sunrise is lonesome
these autumnal mornings. Birds now feed on what seed is left in neighboring fields,
the chorus of mating and fledgling songbirds gone from our treetops. Why don’t flocks
drop in our wildflower meadow for a feast?
And they’ve yet to notice the crabapples
hanging from branches above my perennial island. I hope to watch their wings
descend when they at last return for their windfall.
Robins, cardinals, and jays seldom visit
the backyard birdbath in September. Perhaps they’ve wearied of our cats,
Mittens and Cuddles, and losing their young to our predator’s paws.
Mitty and Cuds seem bored to tears, eat
and sleep the shorter days away to roam the longer nights like tigers in an
African savanna. My husband loses sleep over our prowlers—Mitty gone one way,
Cuddles the other.
The neighbors across the road love Mittens,
a frequent visitor who helps herself to their cats’ food. “Mittens has the most
beautiful blue eyes,” the mother of the house says about our Siamese-tortoise
shell mix.
Truly, I worry about losing another mouser
on our country road. Yet, Mel and I cannot deny our pets their independence and
friends as we couldn’t refuse our children appropriate freedoms.
When young people of our generation, we
sang songs like “Baby I Need Your Lovin’” with the Four Tops, and “I Heard It
through the Grapevine” with Marvin Gaye. Two of many innocent mating songs
Motown Record Company released in the Sixties, little did we know how fast they’d
fall from fashion in the music industry.
By the time our three fledglings left the
nest in the Eighties and Nineties, love songs like The Police’s “Every Breath
You Take” had submitted to music videos, Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” leading the pack.
Enough to make parents of three young women
nervous.
Nonetheless, in faith and trust we released
our firstborn to college in the fall of 1988 to gain an education and realize her dreams. She
returned ten months later addicted to various substances.
In 1996, while our second daughter studied
on a different college campus, and the third attended our local university, our
firstborn perished from a toxic reaction to alcohol and cocaine.
This long and silent season without
birdsong is reminiscent of the years following Becky’s death. For in fall 1997,
our middle daughter drove all her earthly belongings to San Francisco to pursue
her teaching career. Several years later, our third daughter said she “had to
leave this house of pain to thrive.”
One reason why I left my broken home as a
young woman.
Dear Reader, obviously, birds behave
according to their genome. They’ve no will to exercise. No eternal spirit to
nurture. No capacity for compassion. Yet, I am grateful God created them to
sing love songs during mating season.
Meanwhile, I anticipate another fall and
winter season, listen for the voice of my Comforter in the hour before sunrise.
For His love song is everlasting, tender, and trustworthy in this world of
pain.
