The Red Bird's Witness

Resilience. The red bird perched on the gate’s dusty rain gauge like a sentinel standing guard – over us? Over the house? More likely, over its own fragile life spent in this challenging part of the country. Only the strong and stubborn survive here – mesquites and cactus, huisache and coyotes, longhorns and feral hogs. And this red bird. Even here the winter has been chillier than its little feathers would find comfortable, and if springtime is a welcomed enlivenment for me, it almost certainly is for the red bird. And as the rain gauge betrays, even now it is dry. It has yet been too dry for Troy to risk much of the planting, and so the fields stretch wide and long and ready, but empty. If that is disappointing, it is hardly surprising. Year after year farming is a challenge here. Two years ago it was drought. Last year it was floods. Virtually every year is a tedious question mark of “ifs”, “if only,” “barely” and “we’ll see.” But nonetheless every year the equipment rolls over the waiting land to sow and beckon the seeds. And every year the red bird reappears to sing. Resilience.

We drove into town yesterday for some errands – more Mexican Food, of course, and to look around. On the way back we stopped at the cemetery to look over the family plots; to say “hello”, if you will, and “we remember.” There in the center were my grandparents who were both born within miles of here, were buried here, and lived all of their life in-between here. I recalled out loud some stories I’m sure Lori had heard before. I smiled a melancholy smile. And then we noted the markers on either side of theirs: on the left, a son who had lived but two short years; on the right a daughter who had lived less than two days. How deep must such grief be? Lori noticed the compounding grief – that the two deaths occurred a short month apart. Two breathtaking griefs in the span of the moon. And yet a couple of years later, they were willing to risk it again, for three later sons ultimately grew into manhood – the third of which became my father. I, the youngest of the youngest who was born after the first two had died. I, perhaps, the most grateful of all for the resilience that moved my grandparents forward.

And now it is the morning after a long night of sleep, and as an old friend used to phrase it, “those same genes are running rampant in my body.” I am feeling resilient, too. Who knows what the day might hold?