Broken Bird

Since my last post, I have been ticking items off my To-Do list, in preparation for my departure to Michigan. I am feeling the pressure of time, a growing awareness that I will not get to everything. When my sister texts to ask if I could meet for lunch, I have a tiny meltdown. Then I move a couple of things around, erased a couple of items from my To-Do list, which, wisely, I had written in pencil.

I think I am doing okay. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can....

Then I get the call that every mother dreads. 13 has fallen and broken her arm. She says, I am like that baby bird that Murphy stepped on, a bird with a broken wing.

In an instant, all my plans go out of my head. But I notice something else: so does all my anxiety about leaving. My panicky feelings about leaving my kids goes away, because I decide right then that 13 will be coming along. 17 has already changed her mind. She had found a barn where she can help with trail rides in exchange for free riding time, and she has landed a summer job hostessing (mom plug: they said she had too beautiful of a smile to bus tables) at a restaurant in the little town near our place. Now, I decide, 13 will come along too. She will lie in the hammock and read I am Malala and The Glass Castle. She will go with me on hikes in the woods. She will spend the summer away from malls and television and concrete sidewalks.

That quickly, in my mind, the anxiety of getting ready for a summer alone becomes my joy at having the kids by my side on this journey. And it isn't an avoidance of doing my work.

Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, has an essay appropriately titled "Writing the Color Purple." In it, she shares her plans to write the novel that was growing inside of her. She would write while her daughter was in school, and in the afternoon, she would put the book aside and be a mom. Each morning, she would sit down. Nothing would come. The protagonist, Celie, remained silent. Then her daughter would come home, and Celie would begin to speak. Celie, whose children are taken away from her and sold to a childless couple, could only tell her story in the precence of a child. Or was it Walker who couldn't compartmentalize her life that way? Walker has also written about the challenges of being both a writer and a mother, saying that a writer should have one child, otherwise she will not be able continue her work.

I am already caring for seven children when I read these essays.

And yes, the writer in me is turning the 13's fall and her broken bone and my feelings into a story. My new book, at its core, is about how the growth of one species inevitably has an impact on another, often in unpredictable ways, how we do not have as much control over our lives as we believe we do. The balance is tricky, momentary, and leaves us wanting, grasping for the fleeting feeling we get when everything exists in harmony. I imagine that I will be spending the summer trying to find that sweet spot. It is not a thing I can catch and hold onto. It is constant motion, the way a hummingbird, its wings beating a hundred times a minute, looks more beautiful in real life than in a painting or picture, which attempts to hold onto its stillness. It is the movement of wings up and down, constantly changing, that captures our attention.

 

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