Robin Redbreast

The past month slid by me in a storm of grief and activity, broken by intervals of emotional voids. Moments of complete blankness, when the calm and denial of losing a loved one sets in... and it enables you to pick up their ashes in a small black box without shedding a tear.

Of course, I knew the tears would come eventually. I waited for it as I was driving down the road, and waiting at stoplights. I anticipated it while I stood in line at the grocery store with a bag of lettuce and a block of cheese. I opened my eyes in the quiet of night and expected a sting of tears down each cheek. But as it turned out, it took days before it struck. Long days of feeling nothing inside but an echo of duties and tasks that needed tending to, while having no set path to follow.

The moment came when I walked down the hall and saw my answering machine blinking. Nearly a dozen phonecalls had flooded in, all demanding my attention in one form or another. The callers had no idea that collectively they had shared in shoving me off the precarious edge I had been perched on. All I could do was sit and shiver in my chair, staring at the blank computer screen for the remainder of the hour until my husband got home. The tears came trailing after.

The weekend brought sunlight and exposed earth from the long winter. I avoided phonecalls, and instead followed the sunlight out onto the desert plateau that frames the river to the east. I let the sadness accompany me, so that perhaps I could diffuse it under the blue sky and receding snow.

This morning the blue skies had gone, and rain drizzled off the eaves of the roof. I drank coffee, nibbled toast, and felt myself drawing inward. I wandered around the house, unable to stay focused on any one task... until I found myself staring out the windows towards the north. I looked out across the slope of an apple orchard, where the limbs were already growing pink from the run of sap towards early Spring warmth. A black dog was roaming between the rows, and suddenly a flurry of birds shot up from the area he intruded. They winged their way past the window... and I saw a flash of ruddy red. The robins were here!

I smiled, and wandered to another window where I saw them land in the neighboring pear trees. Their chirps and chatter filtered through the closed doors and windows, and signaled the coming of warm days...flowers... fat worms being tugged up out of wet dirt. No matter what had happened in the past month, the robins were on time. For whatever reason, this made me very happy.

I pulled on my black sweater, tugged on my shoes, and asked my dog if he wanted to go for a ride. I followed him as he trotted out to the Jeep, laughing at the fact that we might as well be heading into the wild Outback... instead of driving to the local grocer for angel hair pasta and the evening paper.

All the way there I thought of the robins making nests out of twigs and dog hair, readying themselves for sunny days. And I figured it was a good path to follow.