Wingbeats

Unrelated picture of the sky.

I kissed Isaac awake the other morning. Little kisses all over his face. He was warm and sleepy, his face scrunched up. He woke up stretching. I moved away from a furnace blast of morning breath. I held his hand as we walked down the stairs.

The way our house is built means that we are presented with a view of mountains and sky, first thing, every day. It is always different, depending on the clouds, the light, the colors. It is such a gift, as though God holds it out in two hands. Here. You did nothing to create this. It is just here, in all its glory, here it is. It makes me cry. It makes me shrink back because what I am finding is that I am not good at receiving abundance. I’m good at scrapping along in the muck.

That morning, the sky was pink with flecks of gold. Mist draped itself over the mountains. I held my little boy’s hand. I thought about how many times I have woken a child up by kissing his or her face. How much morning breath I have wrinkled my nose over. How many times I have made breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Snacks. And they are growing, growing. I did nothing to create this. I get to be a part of it, though. Blessed, blessed me.

Money right now is tighter than it has ever been. It’s natural. The needs are expanding along with arms and legs and educations. I have a growing list of the things we will do when, when, when. Car and motorbikes fall apart. Things break. Teeth grow into places they shouldn’t. Clothes wear out. I pick food from the garden and sigh with relief when dinner is on the table again. I hunt for coins. We hustle. I write, and Chinua and I plan, and we figure it out. We squeak by in the space of a breath.

And then there is the contrast. The free view. The fruit falling from trees. The kisses.

Yesterday I bought vegetables in the market, and as I drove my motorbike along the road home, there was a miracle of wingbeats, light, and motion. A flock of egrets flew in front of me, following the road like I did, dipping down to my level and then back up again. They joined the road where it came from the military base, leaving just before I turned off. I kept waiting for them to fly away, but they stayed there, right in front of me, leading me, for about two kilometers. Large white birds, a vision of freedom.

At the bay between Eureka and Arcata, in Northern California, there are tall trees where dozens of egrets roost. When Chinua and I were first married, we loved those birds because they reminded us of here. Of fields in India, Nepal, or here in Thailand. We drove by in a community car, our newborn in the car seat, gazing out the window at trees full of white birds. Remembering, longing.

When we arrived in Goa, and everything was strange and wet, and I was pregnant and uncomfortable, the egrets were there to meet me.

So on this road, the birds felt like more. They felt like the breath of heaven. A note. A gift. A nod. They flew and flew. Eventually, right before my turn, they found a tree to roost in. I drove my old rattly bike home, past the eucalyptus trees, through the teak tree corridor, past the temple, and into my driveway. Kids spilled out of the house, asking questions, waiting for me to answer them. I took in the view. Nothing I have created. All I have been given.

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