I remember as a child running around by myself in my grandmother’s back yard lost in my thoughts and in my surroundings. The backyard was deep on a slope with a crabapple tree and many other trees. In the far back corner she planted her garden and on the edge of her driveway she would grow her Sunday flowers. The side yard, sloping down into a pool of willows, is where all the wild cats would appear. My grandmother would feed every last one of them the leftovers from dinner. In the back along the edge was a very dark wooded area.
There were many things about my grandmother’s that scared me as a child. The “dark” wooded area was a place that seemed very evil to me. The tallest tree in the yard was mysterious, but I always found myself under the tree and at night when I was put to bed in the old rope bed in the spare bedroom (that conveniently had three beds, one for each one of us), I was always frightened by that tree I spent many hours underneath. Bushes along the back of the house would scratch up against the window as I would stare at shadows on the wall. The basement was cold with many rooms and hiding spaces, to this day I have never seen a house like it. But those rooms often scared the daylights out of me. There were only two things in that basement I thought were beautiful and that was the colorful lights in the class block bar and watching my grandmother put together her Sunday bouquet of flowers.
During the day I would run along the edges of the woods, but never brave enough to enter. Even going back to the garden at times was scary and I usually made sure my grandmother was with me. My grandfather was a scary old man who I always remember sitting in his chair or at his desk with his wooden bowl of snacks and his class of liquor. I don’t remember any words my grandfather spoke, just grumblings that he made. I often wonder how a loving beautifully giving man such as my father came from such a person.
Then I see my grandmother, this average looking woman who would bake things that were out of this world, who would talk to you with these curled up fingers, big knuckles, and long finger nails perfectly rounded, but filled with dirt from a day of gardening. She was not afraid to get dirty and yet Sunday morning she would go to her closet, pick out her Sunday’s best (which she had a lot of), open up her jewelry boxes and put on something fabulous. Her purse and shoes always matching her outfit she would make sure she had Kleenex and minty gum to make it through the day. Flowers, me and her off to church we went. She was the daylight in my darkness, something I would only come to realize after her passing.
Last year about this time I had mentioned to my husband John that I love the sound that the owl makes during the day (woo-oo-oo-oo). I told him that it always reminds me of my grandmother and sitting under that tree in her back yard. At times I thought the sound was scary and eerie and at other times I found it to be comforting and familiar. He laughed at me and said, “Julie that is not an owl, it is a mourning dove”. I argued with him and told him there was no way. I still didn’t believe him until this past fall when I took a biology class and we had to study birds in the area and the sounds they make. Sure enough my husband was right. The sound that had been so familiar in my life was that of a mourning dove.
What makes this just a little more interesting is that since the day we moved into our home every spring two mourning doves have sat perched upon our house. In the first years we would joke about having two doves on our house must signify the love we have between us. I will tell you now with each passing year we look forward to the spring and hearing the sound (woo-oo-oo-oo) of the mourning dove and we look forward to seeing two every year.
Even though as a child I felt alone, so different and unwanted, even though I would find out while my grandmother was still living that she too in the beginning didn’t want me (adoption not easily excepted back then), I know that in her remaining days on this earth she loved me! We were very close in her final years and it saddens me to admit, but I have not thought of her in many recent years, until today amongst the sound of the mourning dove.
That eerie but beautiful sound reminded me of a child lost in my thoughts, frightened of the unknown, and wondering who was watching over me. Wondering who would protect me, who would help me, who would love me? Today the sound of the mourning dove not only reminds me of my grandmother, but reminds me that God loves me so much that he gave is only begotten son, that whoever, whoever; you, me, my grandmother, my husband, my children, whoever, believes in him should not parish but have everlasting life. My grandmother is in that everlasting life sending me mourning doves to remind me I am not alone!
Luv luv,
Julie
