The Bird I Couldn't Save

I came out of the house yesterday morning to find an angry purple martin hopping toward my front steps. Purple martins, in my opinion, are an under-appreciated bird. He sat there with his purple and black sheen and his startling, piercing eye and I was taken aback as he hopped aggressively forward.

I immediately realized why he came at me, when there was a rustling from the bushes and a neighborhood cat leaped toward him.

"Hey, get outta here! Stop that! GIT GIT GIT!" I waved my son's bright blue windbreaker at the cat, scaring the bird nearly to death and my son into a fit of screaming tears. The cat paused and looked at me, unafraid, and hunched down a little, looking over the grass around him as if to show that this momentary interlude was entirely his idea.

My son, meanwhile was bawling, "Kitty... Kitty..." as if to demonstrate what a mean Mommy I am and what a terrible injustice I was committing on the cat. I explained to him that the cat was trying to eat the bird and that I didn't want him to do so.

J seemed to understand the problem and started helping by yelling, "Bad Kitty! Go! Go, Kitty!"

I got between the cat and the bird and herded the cat one way, herded the bird another way. The cat crossed the street and the bird hopped under my car. I bent down and looked at him and tried to explain, to no avail, that I was trying to help him. One eye stared at me from underneath the car. I had an Edgar Allen Poe moment, although as I'm writing this I'm not even really sure what that means.

My neighbor came out onto her porch and yelled across the street to ask if something was wrong. I told her what kind of craziness I was participating in and she talked about the neighbor cat for a while. By the time we finished the bird had disappeared to somewhere -- I didn't know where. The cat was also gone, skulking its way to another part of the neighborhood. I knew he would be back but I hoped it would be later, after the bird had found a place to hide.

I mentioned to my mother what had happened and how it had made J cry. She predicted that the bird was done for. "The cats always come back. He'll get the bird; they always do." I am not fond of fatalism but I accept that as part of my mother's character and try not to take it personally or try to persuade her into a new line of thinking. It's not my job to change her.

I got home that night and pulled into the driveway and glanced across the street to the big cedar tree and under the tree in the fading light was a glint of purple-black sheen, a feathery lump of dead bird that I presume is my purple martin who was, as my mother predicted, not keen enough to overcome the natural outcome of a fight between cat and bird. She was right.

It made me feel bad, but at the same time one small part of me was glad that -- at my age and with the occasional knocks I have had from life -- still I hold on to my optimism with a tight fist, still I fan a tiny flame of hope that every now and then some small fragile part of nature will win out over what is usually inevitable.

***

My grandmother is in the hospital and I sit by her bed and think about how small she looks. She's in a thin, cheerless hospital gown in an austere room with a big monitor hanging over her bed. The monitor flashes in red and green, numbers that I mostly don't understand. Some of them I do and those are what I stare at when I can't stand to stare at her anymore. I know what the numbers are supposed to be and I watch intently as they creep into ranges that are unacceptable.

I was amazed how much like a random old woman she looked, as if she was a stereotype of every woman who is nearly at the end of her life. She is 94 years of living that is collapsing in on itself like the universe, creating a black hole that will suck the rest of us into it for a time, only to spit us back out into some other galaxial relationship that is slightly different from the one before. Life goes on.

For a moment she looks nothing like my grandmother and I have to look around for a time and remember what it was I'm doing here.

My mind gently arches back, sliding into a memory of being 11 or 12 and having a rare glance into my grandmother's closet. She always had matching shoes and handbags, was always exceptionally put together. The Queen Mother. Vanity personified.

Hanging in the closet, her dresses were all inside out on the hangers and I asked her why. She said it was so the dust would settle on the inside and if anything every soiled the dress when you turned the dress right side out, nothing would ever show.

The blood pressure cuff starts to inflate but she sleeps through it, the grinding whirr and pinching cramp on her frail arm. Her skin looks strange, soft and paper thin and I want to touch it to see what it feels like, but I don't.

The doctor comes in and wakes her up to talk to her. He tells her they will be keeping her for a while so another doctor can look at her and make his diagnosis. The doctor rubs his hand across her hair, smoothing it back in a way that I remember my mother saying Grandma hates. He runs the back of his hand down her cheek in an intimate gesture that bothers me. I want to tell him to stop, that it's not his place to touch her like he knows her. He doesn't know her. I know her and I won't even touch her like that. I set my jaw and stay silent and decide to save my steely voice for a fight that matters.

Alone with her again I wait for another long time. I see my purple martin lying in a heap below the cedar tree and fan that tiny flame of hope.