A trip home

Sometime in the late 50's. Me with the youngest of my 3 brothers.

The older you get, the more dream-like are the trips back home.

"Home" exists largely in memory; so much time has passed that it's a different place now.  Nevertheless I recently made the annual voyage back to the Midwest,  always bittersweet and a cause for deep reflection.

It's good to pay attention, to draw meaning from the things that pop out along a journey. The trip contained omens from the start.  

The flight from Portland was early, so I spent the night at a hotel just a mile from the airport. Sitting on a terrace in front of a pond, I was nearly alone with my fish and chips and cold beer. Suddenly from an overgrown area  at water's edge arose the clamor of a pack of coyotes: a group sing-along, complete with the deep howls of adults and the yips of pups. Astonishing, this loud family howl, a surprise urban performance just as I was about to head home to the countryside.

Hoof prints

A day later with my 92 year old mother we watched twin spotted fawns gamboling in the plowed field outside the kitchen window. They were on their own, made suddenly and violently motherless by the nearby highway.
 

The next day I stood on tiptoe, holding the camera over a nest on a gutter high above: two robin's eggs. But in 3 days' time, no mother appeared. The nest was abandoned. How many ways are there to lose a mother? Quickly and without warning for the fawns, slowly and intentionally for the robins.

 

I still have a mother, although I'm losing her cell-by-cell as she sinks into the forgetfulness of old age. We drove  to nearby Port Washington where she strolled into the busy-ness of the marina with its boats and bikers, walkers and sightseers. We had a lovely morning together, and I'm very grateful for it. In the afternoon we walked and talked some more, this time in the nearby woods.

That night I was awakened in the middle of the night by the calls of a great horned owl next to the house. Responding to the calls were the squawks of a youngster perched just outside my window. I listened to their back-and-forth conversation, and then fell back into a deep sleep. In the morning I wondered if it had been real.

But under the windshield wiper of the car was a token, left behind like a calling card. It was an owl feather, a vivid reminder that some conversations are more special than others.

A selfie of me and my mother. See the huge mosquito on my forehead? Wisconsin.

 My little trip home was framed with the bookends of animal conversations: first the coyotes, last the owls, and in between, the stark reality of loss.