A Starling Brings a Message of Hope
We didn’t know we’d get a visitation, nor did we know how much it would matter, later on. It was the winter before a hidden, progressed disease withered my mother’s body, then took her. It was the winter before Dad, deep in grief, learned of his own aggressive illness. The bird came well before this, when a fire was burning brightly in the hearth. My husband and I sat reading on the sofa.
Time grew fluid as something flapped across the room, and my husband, Jonathan, and I watched as a dark creature alighted on the top edge of a lampshade next to the sofa.
Jonathan’s eyes reflected my own shock as we exchanged a look, his graying goatee suddenly making him appear animal-like next to the bird. He was seated next to the beige lampshade where the creature had landed, across the room from the fireplace. We sat for an uncertain moment, then he got up slowly, so as not to frighten it. The bird inched its way around the ring, to the back, where it could eye us.
We now stood in the middle of our living room, talking in quiet, intense tones about what to do next. The bird was not big enough to be a crow, but it was dark as soot. It sat still, perched on the lamp. I wondered if it was okay, though it didn’t look hurt.
My parents were birder-lovers and would know how they would handle this, though it was too late to call them.
“What are we going to do?” I asked, hoping he knew. It was six degrees outside. We couldn’t throw open the windows and just wait it out.
“I’ll get a towel,” Jonathan said, moving away from the bird toward the kitchen.
I followed him, unable to compute this. “What do you mean — you’re going to catch it?”
He nodded.
“You’ll scare it! What if you break it’s wing?”
“What do you think we should do?”
“Let’s open the door and see if it’ll go out,” I said. It would get cold, fast, but I didn’t want to terrify the bird by chasing it with a towel.
We tried that, opening the windows too, though it only flew into the kitchen, then the hall, then back to the living room lampshade. I finally blocked off all the inner doors by hanging sheets, and we tried it again.
Nope. Back to its original lampshade perch. I closed the door, feeling defeated. The rooms were now chilly.
“Get the door,” Jonathan said, feeling decisive. He was moving slowly toward the bird with the towel open wide. I saw there was no point in protesting. I quickly opened the door. He wrapped the towel around the bird, and took it outside and let it go.
How easily and seamlessly he hugged the bird to himself and set it free.
I closed the door, and we shut the windows. Stoking the fire, which was starting to burn down, I said, “I wonder what kind of bird that was?”
Jonathan replied, without pausing: “It was a phoenix.”
A few days later, I sent my parents a picture, and they agreed that it was probably a starling. But the idea that it was a phoenix stuck with me. Jonathan and I marveled at its survival — the opening to our hearth is only two and a half feet high. An our fire was burning bright that night.
That Spring, we installed a cap on the top of the chimney. The following autumn, my mother fell into unconsciousness, then passed, but not before whispering, “I wish I could be a bird.”
Some people believe that birds have a special connection to the Divine because they live between earth and sky. I don’t know how it all works, but I’m beginning to trust that a long, startled fall through darkness can lead to something unexpected. And that the quirkiest of experiences, when we pay close attention to them, can bring us hope.
