One Fainting Robin

I wrote this almost a year ago in my amazing and addictive writing class.  So addictive, in fact, that while my husband took the kids to dance class in our only car, I was committed enough to walk 4 miles to class.  Or so the story was going to go.  I have this tendency to pre-write the future — to think about how I will tell the story of what I anticipate is going to happen.  It’s not always pretty.  I’m a worrier.  A champion worrier.  But this story was going to be a good one.  Knowing we always start class with the prompt “right now I am…,” I was writing the story in my head as I walked.  About my commitment to writing, and my husband’s support of it, of me, what with taking the kids to dance class every Monday night.  Only the latter worked out quite as I had planned.  Here goes:

Right now, I am thinking about how I was going to write about walking four miles to get here, how my pants would no doubt already be two sizes too big from the sheer exertion.  I had it all planned out, what I was going to write.  About how I crossed the bridge over the river, sweaty, yet determined, and just how the beautiful late afternoon light looked over the water.  But then a mile in, a friend pulled over and asked if he could give me a ride, and I hesitated for the sake of my planned out story, but then I said yes.  I’m a meddler, I’ve decided and I should be punished for meddling in my future thoughts.

I can remember as a kid, reading about people who studied animals in the wild, ethologists.  It sounded so appealing, so perfect for this animal-loving kid I was, but then I read about them not being allowed to meddle.  No interfering, even to save one of their beloved animals, their subjects.  And so I gave up that dream because I recognized in myself, even then, my inability to leave well enough alone.

And so, as I drove through the neighborhood today and saw a flash of white in the mouth of the orange tabby who crossed my path, I sighed and stopped my car.  I chased the tabby into someone’s front yard, where he dropped his prize, a little lizard.  Alternately, we pounced, cat and I, trying to capture our elusive prey.  Finally, I won and cradled the bleeding lizard in my hand as I drove home, where I cared for him and rejoiced in his feistiness when he bit me repeatedly.

I released the little lizard on the way here, after the wildlife rehabilitator, the one who would later care for my baby robin, said biting was a good sign.  I released him in the park, away from the cats, but not too far into the park, not where I’d seen an owl sitting in the treetops on several afternoons.  Not where I saw the owl again today, standing in a creek.  And I sighed because that’s not normal either, an owl standing in a creek in the late afternoon, so I scrambled down the embankment and up he flew, that owl, to a branch above me because he didn’t need my meddling and my self-righteous sigh.  He needed me to leave well enough alone.