Life Unexpected

Sometimes life hands you things you never thought would happen and sometimes life hands you things you don’t want to happen. Maybe those unexpected, unwanted things were never really supposed to happen but then in a slight turn of the wrist or blink of the eye, things change and it just happens.  

The other day I came home to yard full of feathers, the little downy ones beneath the outer layer. Adam greeted me with a bag in hand as he picked up the remaining parts of our little birdy friend.

“Must have been a dove eating on the ground,” he said. We had sprinkled seed there earlier in the week and our new Christmas gifted feeder, still candy cane striped from it's holiday wrapping, seems to be a trap rather than a feeder as the neighborhood cats have taken over our little makeshift sanctuary in the back yard.

Most of the feathers still remain, after a storm, after the rain, after the wind, a path drawn across the backyard forever marking the war zone. The bird maybe would have never died had I not put up a bird trap in my back yard. The little bird’s death would never have been mine to bear, an albatross of someone else perhaps. But these are things I may never know, but I may also never see a feather the same way again.

Now, days after the storm, I watched three little doves sit on the telephone wire above the feeder.

“You know, doves mate for life, don’t they.” I said in passing to Adam. He nodded his head “Yeah”. Lola peered up at the birds on the wire and 2 flitted away leaving one lonesome little dove behind.

Wanderlust/Sleeping in Your Car Part 2: A Narrative

As a kid, my family of five would pack into our Aerostar Van like sardines. Myself usually caged in the way back, a seat in between the dog and I so we would both sit calmly, though still sticky in the summer humidity on our way to the Outer Banks.

Once we arrived we would cram ourselves into my Granny’s  summer home on wheels. A little one bedroom trailer, in a time before she upgraded to a doublewide with custom pop-outs, which comfortably slept all six of us well spread out in our own areas and beds. But that was a different time. During the Aerostar era, Mom and I often found ourselves putting the seats down in the van, sliding the back windows open for air and hoping for a cool night. This was way before global warming and the mosquito epidemic. Way before my mother’s little snores at night kept me awake. Way before I grew so tall that my feet hung off the seat. Way before we sold it to a construction crew in Raleigh. Way before any of that.

I would fall asleep to the sound of people on vacation, my grandma’s retiree neighbors in the trailer next door one drink too many, the ocean far off in the distance, an occasional dog bark. And late in the night after I’d fallen asleep I’d wake to a firecracker popping somewhere in the distance. It didn’t matter if It was 4^th of July, or  even July at all, but only that it was summer and that I was young and that I was going to wake up the next day, lather myself in sunscreen and take to the beach. 

Enjoy these relics from my childhood (and please excuse the quality, photos from another time)

Granny's Trailer