One day I was driving home from work, and up in the sky I saw two red-tailed hawks wheeling overhead. They were dipping and gliding, their wings lazily spread to catch the warm winds that rise from the earth. The sky was a crystal clear backdrop, amazing spring-sky blue. The trees and blackberry bushes were wearing vibrant green foliage, and there was nothing but a small field that these hawks were flying over.
I was suddenly thirteen, on a bus for the first time and watching the world go by out the window. The autumn sky was full of wisps of cirrus clouds, and there on one of the tall telephone poles, a hawk perched. I sat up and took notice. Hawks are beautiful, noble creatures that have always fascinated me as a girl. I wanted to be a falconer, for as long as I could remember wanting to do anything. Every day as the bus drove by, I would watch the hawks – a mated pair – wheel across the sky, riding thermals as they lazily enjoyed their gift of wings. I remember watching them raise a family together. Each year as I went to school, I would see two to four hawks, all perched, or flying, or hovering as they hunted an unsuspecting mouse. I remember thinking that they watched over me. They were there every year until after I moved. I felt a sense of loss driving out to my parent’s old place and passing the field where the hawks lived. They were there no longer.
Seeing the red-tailed hawks that morning after work released memories that were buried away like an old favorite toy put away in a cedar chest. Suddenly, I was no longer in my car, but up in the sky, wheeling and gliding and feeling the wind through my wings. The only words that passed through mind formed in the thought, “I’d rather be riding thermals with them.”
It isn’t a beginning, it isn’t an end. How appropriate for life.
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