The Robin. Today

We were sitting on the porch. The boys and I. It was sunny, we were eating some hash browns that I made in my greatly appreciated cast iron pan and we were chatting. About the awkward dancing that happened at school today on Valentine’s Day and about the guinea pigs. They were out on the lawn too, they usually are on sunny days.

The potatoes were golden yellow and the sun was a perfect match.

Then I saw it: the robin. It startled me to see it and it sent a warm tingle down my spine. I got awfully soft in the knees. I told the boys to take a look.

“Do you know what I think that robin’s doing there? Saying happy birthday.”

Just like that, you’d say? No, not just like that.

You see, when my mom passed away almost seven years ago, I had this robin come into my front yard every day. So frazzled soul that I was then, I decided that the robin was some extension of my mom. Crazy you say? So be it. It meant so much to see the robin there.

The robin meant the continuation of what was taken away from me so brutally and so suddenly. It was a bit of a buoy. I had the boys but who would put such a burden on beautiful little bubbling souls like theirs?

The robin was something I needed.

The robin came in the front yard of that house. And then in the back yard of the next house we lived in, it used to play on sunshine fiddles in this big leafy magnolia tree. Then when we moved again, it appeared again; back yard.

Then we moved here. Today was the first day I saw a robin. It came to wish me the happy birthday my mom would’ve wished me. Instead, the robin came.

A continuation of what was taken from me almost seven years ago brutally and suddenly. I am childish that way you see. I will never fully come to terms with it. But so what. I don’t have to.

I think the robin will keep showing up from time to time. Now the boys know about it too. Sasha is trying to pick an animal that will make him think of me after I am gone. It’s not morbid. It’s sweet and it’s his way of saying he understands.

Tony smiled when I told them how I’ve come to look at the robin that way. There was a question there too, that he sometimes asks but not today. Today he smiled, we all did, and the sun wrapped all three of us in warm golden light.

I took photos of the robin but I am not sure I need them. I actually don’t.

A happy birthday it is.