1985

Rain beat down in torrents, slanted acutely by the fierce north Texas winds. The stubborn battering of our window panes and bombarding of our hip roof by the springtime storm had played like a band out of rhythm with itself throughout the night and into late afternoon of this March day in 1985. Relentlessly, the storm pounded on as though it did not understand its own evanescence. The season birthed the upheaval; but seasons do not last.

Past the place of tears in me, a dark well of grief was making its clandestine appearance. My father's pedophilia was a thought still unspeakable - ineffable. Yet my heart had the knowledge my mouth could not speak. Loss, undefined and treacherous, seeped into the murky waters, mixing with my mourning. My father was still living, yet he had died to me. My life, like a series of photographs, came, sometimes invited, sometimes not, into my conscious thoughts, every day redefining my childhood, reshaping my current existence. I lost the good memories of my father. When those pictures floated through my mind, album-like, they were besmirched with darkness and were ruined. I could no longer see them clearly. Stripped from me was the image of my "daddy." Though this season of my life would slowly move into another, the damage left in the wake of the storm was irreparable. "Daddy" was forever lost.

Perched in a tree outside the bay window in my dining room that stormy day was a mother sparrow. The young sycamore tree to which she clung had only just sprouted its first spring foliage. Scattered beneath the trunk of this bird's refuge lay leaves brutalized and beaten by the battering wind and rain. The carefully constructed nest of the little mother bird hung precariously unguarded, her safety and security ripped away by the howling wind and driving rain. Mesmerized by her courage, I watched her little body stiffen against the onslaught in her determination to cover her children and bring them through the storm safely. More than once, the wind nearly lifted her from her perch; the deluge of droplets pelletted her body mercilessly. Yet she sat. Persevered. Pushed by purpose not to abandon her babies, she did not take flight to find safety for herself, but heeded the call to a higher cause.

Throughout the long afternoon, I watched her. I, too, was performing my duties, pushed by purpose. I, too, felt deluged by my circumstances, barely hanging on to my life. The storm Daddy had created had come on so suddenly, with so little warning, and had flooded our lives with unthinkable detritus. I found myself unable to sort it; to jettison the flotsam and keep the gold. Day and night there was no escaping the unrelenting realization that my life - all of it - had been reconstructed; and, the new facsimile was vastly inferior to the old. I wanted to fly away to some safe place where the events of the past few weeks were only the nightmare they seemed.

The battle of the sparrow, soaked and shivering, became my battle as the day wore on. She had to make it! If she did not despair of living, though pummeled by the season's ominous outpouring, then, perhaps neither would I. I loved her, the little bird. I did not want her to die. As night fell, the storm eased. Before I went to bed, I flipped on the back porch light to check on her. Perched atop her family, the little mother seemed to relish the still air and parting clouds that revealed a few twinkling stars, assuring us that there was hope of sunshine on the morrow.