The Dove is Healed

I let the dove go.  If you remember, I saved a dove who had been attacked - most likely by the neighbor's cat - just after Easter.  A little research said the primary feathers would regrow in about 30 days.  They grew slower than that, and in the meantime, it started molting.  It was, supposedly, a spring/summer molt. So the healing seemed to take forever.  And I was worried about it's nutrition.  I took the cage out in the sunshine, thinking birds might make Vitamin D the way humans do. 

Yesterday I noted that the wings were finally even.  And though the tail looked scraggly, it was there.  So I decided to take it to the walled in garden, where I found it, assuming that if it couldn't fly, it would be safer in the walls, than floundering in the yard.  So in the early quiet of this morning, I put it on the ground and it took to the sky.  No hesitation.  It seemed my heart would burst with joy.  It was free!  I cried a little, not quite sure why I was sad, but there was a tinge of sadness.  I didn't want to keep it.  I didn't bond to it like a pet, although it did stay in my office with the cat, the dog, the cockatiel every day.

I think it was part of my story, the work we are doing here.

"The song of this mourning dove tells you to mourn what has passed, but awaken to the promise of the future. It is a bird of prophecy and can help you see what you can give birth to in your life."  (http://spiritlodge.yuku.com/topic/920#.UAcMAaBk6dE)

This inspired me to consider mourning or grieving.  Mostly I think of mourning after someone I love has died.  We mourn for about a year, I find.  We get through one cycle of the seasons without our beloved, then we move forward.  This is another experience of cycling and seeing from a new perspective.  I think we leave pain and we see joy.  Will I ever see the joy in our childhood?  Will our siblings who see joy, and who blinded selves to grief in order to survive ever see the pain?

And as we mourn, and distance ourselves from the pain, gather up all of our little lost parts, we are ready for something new.  I don't think I ever mourned lost childhood or lost selves until Al Anon.  I think I was so shell shocked, just trying to survive, to get through each day that it never entered my mind to feel sad, or to even feel.  So we are finally mourning the little girls we never had a chance to be...

And I think the mourning dove was ready to go to make room for an old friend.  I took my grandson for a walk in the 95 degree heat yesterday afternoon.  As we were making our way, oh so slowly - resting in the shade often - back up the hill, I was watching a turkey vulture ride the thermals.  I love to watch them, and always impressed when they are on the ground.  On the way up, I saw a feather on the ground...not lying on the ground, but planted like a flower.  I knew it was for me, and the baby and I decided I should pick it.  I brought it home, measured it, then used an on-line feather identification guide  - wing feather from a turkey vulture.  The feather in my hand had surfed through the sky.  I was one degree separated from the clouds.Of course, I looked for information.  Turkey vultures are gentle.  They never attack, they never kill.  They are outside of predator and prey - they only clean up after death.  They clean up bodies and dead fruit.  They are the only bird that can smell.  They can see thermals in the sky.  We revile them and call them dirty, but their scientific name is Cathartes aura, golden purifier.

I think about our family history, of our longer generational history, about our extended family's family history, and I see a battlefield littered with damaged Delanas.  Maybe what we are doing is coming back through and digesting the stories and making something new of them.  I'd like to think that were true.

So it was a bird day, then to calm my little companion, we watched a documentary about a sea turtle.  So I had a feathered turtle kind of day!

I hope all is well with you and yours.  Love to you all!!

Clare