inevitable

A few nights ago I was sitting on the porch, fretting about the wasps, perhaps, when I saw what looked like a feather in the concave end of the rolled up matchstick bamboo curtain hanging on the front side of the porch. I went to pull the feather and it pulled back! It was a sparrow, sleeping. I let it be. The next day, it was gone, but was back again the next night. How sweet! Tonight, I was sitting on the porch, feeling sad, wishing the sparrow was there to make me feel that sweetness again.

I was feeling sad because today I killed a little bird, quite by accident; the image of it keeps playing in my mind. I went to M&J's to show them the drawings of the compost toilet for the new space we'll soon be building on their property, and also to celebrate what M called Father's and Uncle's Day. J was fixing a broken gas line when I got there. M and I shared a beer and J came in soon thereafter to join us. P was watching a movie and wasn't paying much attention to us at first, which was okay, but M encouraged her to show me the three frogs she'd won yesterday; I never did get a story about where or how she'd won them. She's usually more animated. Maybe it was the heat...

They weren't real frogs -- they were red stuffed animals with black spots, cute -- not that it would be such a surprise for P to have frogs. In fact, later on, she showed me two tadpoles in a glass of water she was watching grow. "We don't know yet if they're frogs or toads," she told me in her wise six-year-old way. They have lots of real animals around the Rogge Ranch: a pot-bellied pig named Tinkerbell, a rescued boxer named Bones, and a little blue parakeet named Wendy. "My little blue chicken," M calls him (most likely a him, according to the blue marking over his nose).

J was drawing pictures of the windows he's working on for a movie that will likely/hopefully find their way into the Rogge Studios where S and I will live in the not too distant future. Wendy was on the table, chattering away (his latest phrase: "Here, kitty, kitty!") He was flying from shoulder to shoulder, biting at the pen J was drawing with, being a (cute) nuisance. A short while later, I saw him riding on Tinkerbell's back, happy as he could be.

It was time for me to go; I had plans to go to A's for a dinner party with an eclectic group of people. J asked if I had fifteen minutes to go to the shop with him so he could show me some of the props, and I was happy to oblige. I was getting ready, putting my glass away, I walked across the kitchen toward the sink and stepped on what I thought was a squeak toy -- because it squeaked. I didn't think anything of it for a second, until I looked back and saw Bones licking a splayed out Wendy on the floor. M jumped up, "Bones, no!" And then it hit me. I had stepped on the bird.

M picked Wendy up, he flopped around a little bit and then died fairly quickly in her hands (which is the only "good" part of the story). Fuck! P wasn't right there at the time, but with all the commotion, she was over with us quickly. "What happened?" M didn't tell her I stepped on Wendy, she said Bones was in the way and Wendy got stepped on. I couldn't say anything. I cried. M&J both tried to tell me that it was inevitable. And maybe it was inevitable, but why did it have to be me?

J said Wendy has gotten out of the house four times, and he was surprised every time the bird came back. M said she was surprised Bones never snapped at Wendy. None of this made me feel better. M told P to hug me, she did, and she said, "I want to go outside." That's when she showed me the tadpoles.

They got a shoe box with colorful Disney characters on it, put in a piece of blue velvet and Wendy on top with some flowers from the yard, a toy butterfly; they took some pictures. I found the shovel by the house where J had been digging up the gas line and went to the graveyard near where the Rogge Studios will be, where Junior's body, and Mookie and Brutus' ashes are -- all boxers -- as well as the ducks that got killed by a raccoon and the dead squirrel they found in the duck pond. I dug into the hard ground and while we were having our little memorial service, P's playmate I and her parents arrived. I was relieved that P had something to occupy her for the rest of the day. But she wasn't nearly as upset and M and I (me) were.

I went to the dinner party, which was nice; I made a beet greens and kale quiche; there was green salad and basil tomatoes and a rice dish, two hens, et cetera, et cetera. I felt a little numb but continued through the meal okay. On the way home, I felt this weariness that I guess comes with mourning. It's the feeling I've had when I've been to a funeral, which I always associated with lots of crying. I cried a little, not a lot, over Wendy, mostly because I didn't want to completely fall apart in front of P, though it would have been easy to do. So I think now that that feeling isn't so much about wearing yourself out crying, but more just the heaviness of death.