After-Holiday: Hawks, Rebirth, and Stumbling into Advent with Expectancy

The first hawk I saw was sitting on a fence.

I looked up to check my surroundings, and there was a second hawk, sitting almost directly in front of me, its white breast beaming in the sun.

I think writing this piece explains why I was sick for three days after visiting the girls about four days after Thanksgiving, when we shared a short day of delicious food and company. Somehow it all happened so fast, then everyone was off to work and here came Christmas in the flood of photographs online. I suddenly couldn’t move. I felt some deep underground stream, like an undertow of memories that called and called me back.

“I’m dying,” said some strange unknown part of myself I had to find, as I watched, astonished, that the hawks didn’t fly away as I approached them, as I cooed myself closer and saw, neither they nor any city dweller could break the hold we had on each other.

I had gone to take care of two daughters, working long

Black Friday hours and into the weekend of Advent,

the one working her way through her senior year in college,

on top of her hourly post at the fabric store, the other a seasonal

retail job in hopes of landing another good position in a firm,

her field after all … and me in my Subaru on the first day

of snow in our mountains, with a pot of hot, homemade

chicken noodle soup, some bread and pastries from our

favorite local bakery, and enough time on my hands that

I could spend the night if the day got late, if time got away,

as it always has a way of—well, as it often does. So I packed

a small bag and stacked pillow and quilt in the front seat

of my car, knowing their guest supplies are limited and

I’d be perched on a cozy couch for my bed that

night, if nature should arrange itself in such way that

I would stay. I did (or it did), as if you couldn’t tell. And

what I want to say is, it was the most natural thing to

slide corduroys over my flannel pants, slip a cotton shirt

under the sweater I had slept in (a cold wind howled

so relentlessly against the front-room window that

I would have frozen hard from the sound itself, if not the chill on

my side of the glass, if I weren’t wrapped in thick layers,

the tinkle of front-porch pottery chimes being played in that wind

so comically making me the butt of their musical joke),

and get outside, just get out in the weather of the day,

in the city.

And thank God we are women of yarn. I had brought

several scarves, cowls, crocheted items that sit in a heap

on my bedroom chair, with me often giving them a glance

or downright stare: why did I make you, all of you, when

lately I don’t venture into such cold climes that you

require? And of the laugh that this would prompt, at

me talking to my own handiwork my daughters have

taught me—urged and financed me to make, almost

as if knowing a pandemic were on the way and I’d be

looking to crochet anything longer than a broomstraw.

(Which I’ve done. Haven’t you?) What do you do when

the call comes in the early morning hours, on the day

of snow in our mountains, hooray!—Mom?—can

you … ? and of course I can, no matter what that sentence

gets completed with. I will. I can. I did. And here, you are–

listening to all that happened, when I donned most of

the fiber-artistry I brought and sought a chance meeting

of mystery on the main road just two roads over from

their own little lane, where a house perched on a knob

overlooking the southern Appalachians, a rusty, still-used railroad

track, and vestiges of warehouses from a bygone industrial

boomtime in this valley, has become again, a home.

The house dates from the twenties. 1928, I think? She told

me, but I can’t seem to remember. It was twenty something,

just as they are twenty somethings, and here we are, all

of us in the year 20-something. Do we even know, and

does it matter how this story, this poem, this unraveling of

my life, goes? Not really. How does your story go when you

are awakened in the night on a couch that sits on some

strange piece of land that your daughters now call home,

maybe a baby was born here years ago, you don’t know–

and, but, you simply know, there are hawks out there somewhere

in the cacophony of crows and morning cars honking their

way to work. Somehow, you know, to keep going against

the wind of your unreality, that insanity of the internet maybe?

And let it all begin again, to be, the breath of love that blows

against the glass of earth’s maternity. Advent. Birth of beauty,

birth of love. Let it be this beauty that now enraptures my soul

to breathe again this breath of love to you.

+ Suzanne