Bone of a Bird

One of the joys of being a grandmother is occasionally picking my grandson up from kindergarten.  One May afternoon I was needed for just such a task.  As he often does after school, my grandson wanted to play with his friends for a while.  How wonderful to be free to play after a day in school! I can still remember that feeling of freedom, from when I was a child.  And on this particular day, I was in no hurry.  I had nowhere that I had to be except right there with him.  We were free to do what we wanted. 

It was warm and sunny and spring-like and everyone was in a good mood in the school playground.  My grandson ran and climbed and jumped with his friends, then joined in a game of football with some of the parents.  Later, he took turns riding his friends’ bikes and then he ran some more.  As I watched the kids play, I imagined how good it must feel to ride a bike under the pine trees, steering around the trunks expertly, feeling the warm spring air on your face. But being the grandmother, I kept an eye on all the children, wandered around a bit, made a phone call and eventually sat on the bench beside the other grandparent in the yard, a silent Asian man of advanced age.  “Ah, it’s come to this then,” I mused.  “I’m the grandparent on the bench.”

The parents all seemed to be so young, too young really to have the responsibility of children.  I remembered being that young, feeling that light on my feet, full of energy yet weighed down by parental responsibility that never seemed to end.  The parents knew each other and shared local gossip and information as people in the same boat tend to do.  They did not speak to me or the grandfather.  We seemed to be invisible, like ghosts from another era.  The generation gap spread like a chasm between us.  I felt like someone watching from the outside. 

Every now and then my grandson would wave at me or throw me his jacket for safekeeping.  I watched two bright red cardinals fly between the grove of pine trees and the school building, calling loudly.  What a gift to see such bright colours.  They demanded my attention and I thought how lucky the children were to have these birds sharing that space in inner city Toronto.  I was also fascinated by the dynamics of the various families as children played together on the climbing frames, some lithe and carefree, others more ponderous and awkward.  Older siblings looked out for younger ones.  Parents called out warnings, encouragement, praise and occasional threats.

One by one the other children left with their parents until just one little girl remained.  My grandson played under the pine trees with her.  The play had changed from running and climbing to something more magical.  The two children moved together, knees slightly bent and arms crooked in front of them like paws. They trotted in a kind of stealthy fashion and I watched entranced, wondering what they were doing.  As if reading my mind, my grandson called out, “Grandma!  We’re being foxes!”  

Ahhh, foxes.  He knows that my daughter, his aunt’s favourite animal is a fox.  We’ve talked about foxes.  I have a painting that she did of a fox curled into the shape of a heart on my living room wall.  We have a straw fox that she puts on the Christmas tree every year called of course “the Christmas fox.”  He knew I would understand exactly what they were doing.  I just nodded in a wise grandmotherly sort of way and said,  “Ahhhh, foxes.”  

I could see that the little girl was not just pretending to be a fox.  She was a fox.  Every now and then she would stop and scoop imaginary food from the forest floor into her mouth.  My grandson, as if a fox kit learning from his mother, mimicked her.   I remembered reading a study on playground design that found that if there is a lot of asphalt and equipment, the most athletic kids lead the group but if there are trees and bushes then the most imaginative children emerge as leaders.  This playground had both and I had watched my grandson move seamlessly from one group to the other.

Suddenly he came over to the bench and announced in a loud, clear voice to me and two of the mothers standing nearby that he had found the “bone of a bird!”  He looked at the three of us expectantly.  Knowing from the tone of his voice that this was something important and being as free as a bird myself at that moment, I responded, “I’ll come and see it.” 

I followed him to the place under the trees where he pointed to the ground.  The pine trees created shade and my eyesight is not great so I bent over to look for what I imagined was the little white bone of a bird.  The only white thing I could see was a cigarette butt which I pointed out.   “No, not that Grandma ... This!”  I peered, then squinted at the poorly lit brown soil and squatted down.  Finally I could faintly see the outline of a dead little hatchling’s head and beak that was perfectly camouflaged on the dirt.  Then I made out the shape of the tiny body and feet. It had a few little chick feathers on it but looked just hatched and recently dead.  The children crouched down beside me and we looked at it carefully.  “I think it must have fallen out of its nest just after hatching,” I said.

The two mothers came over to see what we were looking at and commented in a motherly way how sad it was for the baby bird to die.  I said that we should bury it and I picked it up with two sticks thinking that close to the fence away from the general traffic of the playground would be a good place to dig.  But the little foxgirl had already selected a spot nearby and had scraped out a little hole.  “Is this a good place for it?” I asked.  “Yes,” she solemnly replied with the wisdom of an old fox in a young girl‘s body.  So I put the little bird in the hole and said, “Now it can go back to the earth.”  We scraped some dirt over the tiny body and she sprinkled it with dead pine needles.  The grave was perfectly camouflaged. 

We were for a moment in the timeless place between two worlds, between life and death, a grandmother and two little five-year-olds burying a day old baby bird in a school yard as two mothers looked on.  Very simple, very gentle, yet profound.  Birth and death snugged up against one another – a tiny little circle of life.  But no matter how tiny, we showed that life the respect it deserved and returned it to our common mother, the Earth.

The children trotted off to continue their fox adventures.  I laughed thinking that luckily they were still human enough to bury the bird and not see it as food.  I noticed the cardinals bouncing around in the trees in an agitated way just above where we found the baby bird.  The moms said that they had been sticking around there so we wondered if the bird was a baby cardinal.  I told them how the birds would probably just start again and lay more eggs because it was early in the season by way of comforting women full of mothering energy.

This all got me thinking about the stages of life.  Who but a sharp eyed five-year-old bent over being a fox would be able to spot the camouflaged body of a baby bird on the dirt?  While the boys were running and riding their bikes over the area the bird was invisible.  The moms were busy with other things.  Who but a grandmother patiently waiting while her grandson played in this tiny urban forest would bother to come over and see the “bone of a bird”?  Who better to show the children how to deal with death and to help the mothers expect more life, than a grandmother who had seen lots of both?

The two moms introduced themselves to me now that I was visible also.  It turned out that the foxgirl had two moms.  We talked about birds and kids for a while.  They had just become interested in bird watching and had a bird feeder.  They were eager to share their experiences and observations.  They had some questions that I could answer as well.  We suddenly had a common interest and spoke easily as if we were old friends. The clouds moved overhead, the foxes cavorted, the cardinals called and life went on – but none of us were quite the same.  We had gathered for a sacred moment, there under the pine trees in the playground and somehow that had changed us all.

It was children being foxes under the pine trees that found the “bones of a bird” and announced it.  It was a grandmother and mothers who responded.  Three generations gathered together in the transition space of life and death.  If you want to get to the bones of something, to the truth, a transition place is a good place to look for it.  Dawn, dusk, birth, death, change of season, transition times are also good places to find stories. The tiny bones of a bird held the story of the universe.  A life that had flickered for a few moments had drawn us together and helped us to remember that we are connected to that life, to each other, to ourselves, to the earth – an old story that many seem to have forgotten, a story that we are remembering.