Happy Mother's Day, in a way.

I left the house just to go to the park, the pond, just to think, because there is this place where an artificial cement slope dips off of the path, and it forms a little hollow next to the pipe that channels the pond from one side of the path, underneath to the lower pool where once I sat, transfixed, in a nearly full moon some time after midnight, and watched a beaver circle, displaying and splashing in the blue light and black darkness. I just wanted to be alone, to think, because Mother’s Day is a sad day for me, when I remember the woman who gave birth to me, who used to be able to pick up any musical instrument, any instrument at all, and ‘bang out a tune on it,’ in my father’s words, in a matter of minutes, who used to be able to cook the most amazing cakes, whose calligraphy was a near perfect art, who rescued me from the mulberry tree where I stranded myself when I was a child, whose pale skin and deep affinity for this Earth I inherited, whose mind is now a twisted wreck, which I also inherited.

On the way down, I blocked my cell phone number and left her a ten-second voicemail, just to tell her I loved her. I don’t know why. No good can come of that, I told myself as I continued walking, but it doesn’t really matter. So I walked down to the pond, slipped down into my little hollow, and sat for a long time, thinking, hurting. And then I smelled the two dandelions growing out of a hole in the cement, but they were far sweeter than the ones in our yard when I was little, and the scent brought back no memories. So, after a time, I sprung up out of the dip, and continued walking, down by the shore of the pond.

And accidentally started up a Great Blue Heron, which is a kind of bird which many people desperately wish to see, and not many do. It flew across the pond, and I sprinted alongside on the bank, on the other side of a line of white pines, obviously not matching its speed at all, but quick enough to see it alight on the opposite shore, where it strutted around in the water, eventually standing still. I knelt on the muddy bank, next to this huge oak tree on the point, watching and talking softly to it, as is my wont when it comes to animals, and waited to see it snap a fish. In vain, as it turned out; I stayed there on the bank for a long time, and when I finally got up and walked a little to the cement block a few yards from the shore to sit down, I turned just in time to see it shaking its head, sending a spray flying.

Then my sister texted me to come home, since my dad would soon be there. I got up and headed out of the park, taking the higher path this time, the one that cuts directly between the white pines and the deciduous trees, farther up. I was maybe twenty feet from the edge of the woods when an Oriole flew up and over my path. That’s another bird people strive to see, and I kind of understand why, now. It was the most vibrant orange you could possibly imagine; the thing all but glowed against the wild rosebushes. So, so beautiful. I was happy enough, on my way out.

And then a bullet-headed hawk flew out of one of the pines on my left, shot straight across my path, not two yards from my face, and soared up into another pine tree, a little farther, to my right. I was exceedingly startled, and swore, not angrily, more admiringly and surprisedly. It was pretty amazing. Not a red-tailed hawk, I definitely checked out the tail as it flew up, and not fast enough or red-eyed enough to be a Cooper’s. I’ll have to look it up.

So that’s what I did on Mother’s Day. Soon, we’ll head off to see my grandparents, down by the shore, to wish my grandmother a happy day, and then to my dad’s girlfriend’s house, where her mother is coming over. I used to be all jealous, but that’s fading as I get older.