Change Is Hard

Years ago, shortly after Dad was killed, I was in Alabama, sitting in a car talking to our attorney about developments in our case when a mockingbird flew down and sat on the passenger side rear view mirror, just outside my window.  It sat there for the longest time, just cocking its head and staring at me.  I ignored it for quite awhile, then told my attorney that if there was life after death then this bird was surely my mother!  Just the way it was looking at me, as if it were listening to my conversation and egging me on to make sure I did a good job getting justice for Dad.  A few months later a friend of mine painted a mockingbird on a rock for me.  The rock sits by my front door here at home, and I look at it every day and say a silent hello to my Mom.

This past week I was wandering around Auburn University’s campus, taking pictures of pretty flowers, trees and buildings.  I didn’t know for sure where the building was that Mom used to work in, but just before I headed back to the car I turned a corner and there it was.  I took a quick picture and as I was turning to leave a mockingbird flew down and sat on a post near the front door of the place where Mom worked for ten years.  I stopped to watch it for a moment.  It watched me back.  I figured it was probably Mom again, just saying hello.  So I said hello and we eyed each other for a bit.  Then I turned to walk away, smiling at the encounter.  A few feet further and I looked back over my shoulder.  The bird was gone, but I know the truth.

Earlier in the week  my brother and I were driving through Auburn looking for the new art museum.  We were a bit turned around when suddenly I noticed that we were driving right past some homes that Dad had owned as rentals.  I quickly turned my head to look and saw a man, standing on the front porch of one of them, back to us, hands in his pockets, baseball cap sitting on top of grey hair.  A short man, he looked just like Dad.  “Hey!” I said to my brother as the houses slipped out of sight.  “That looked just like Dad!”  He agreed, and we didn’t say anything more.  It was such a comforting thing to see Dad standing there; no more needed to be said.

I know that when you lose someone you love you look for signs that they’re alright.  And I know we’ve all been doing that now for five years.  The really cool thing is that these days when we see something that we can interpret as that positive sign we can smile rather than cry.  And find comfort instead of that familiar stab of pain.  Progress.

So I guess my mama’s a mocking bird and daddy’s standing out on the porch somewhere.  All’s right with the world.

Last night I made cookies.  A new recipe, something I noticed in a magazine the last time I was at the library, all ginger and dark chocolate.  Before I began  blending the butter and dark brown sugar I automatically reached for my “cookie spoon.”  Because I can’t make cookies without the special spoon that has been passed down to me from my mother, and her mother before.

It doesn’t always happen, but on this evening as I pulled the spoon out of the drawer I thought about my grandmother.   She made the best spice cookies I’ve ever eaten, out of the crumbs of other deserts, probably with this very spoon.  She was born in 1888 and lived to be 94 years old.  She had a hard but  good life, just like most people, and during her lifetime the world changed.  She lived through the depression, feeding her family from the farm, drove a wagon pulled by horses, and learned to drive a car as an adult out in the cornfield.  I’m not sure that she ever truly believed we sent men to the moon.

I guess her life wasn’t anything extraordinary, a woman raising her family through changing times.  It happens everywhere – it’s happening now.  But when I think of the things she witnessed and learned to accept as normal, from cars to telephones to planes I am in awe.  Anyway, the warmest memories I have are of all of us sitting around her big table in the old farmhouse, eating something wonderful that she cooked for us.  And sneaking her  cookies when we thought she wasn’t looking.

My cookies were great.  But not quite as good as the ones she made from leftover crumbs.  I hope she and my mother are pleased that I still use their spoon.  I think they are.