When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
(Jimi Hendrix 1942-1970)
R had been drafted and was in Newport News, Virginia, training to be an Army helicopter mechanic in August 1969. We were 19 years old. He and a few of his army buddies considered going to Woodstock for the weekend.
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On Saturday of this Memorial Day weekend, I was talking with a friend on my cell phone while looking out my windows toward Scudder Pond. I noticed a small flock of birds in one of the rapidly increasing number of alder saplings that are growing up amidst the cattails in Scudder Pond. I'm glad the flock lingered for a while because gradually I realized that they weren't the usual birds I see from my window. While listening to my friend, I found my binoculars and was rewarded with an intimate view of Cedar waxwings. Soon after that, they all flew away. I haven't seen them since. I know that R would have loved seeing them. So many times in the years before and after he died, I have seen something that I know he would love to see. It's been years since I've seen a Cedar waxwing from my porch, much less a flock.
Is it a coincidence that the flock appeared on the first day of Memorial Day weekend? I don't think so.
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Sending love to Everyone today. Fragment of a letter from R while he was in Vietnam in 1970:
5 comments:
This telling of your story always moves me.
A loving remembrance of your love. How sweet the Cedar Waxwings came and made their presence known on the first day of Memorial Day Weekend.
I dated a boy the summer before he was drafted. He survived his first tour and came to my house to see me. He was going to volunteer to go back to kill more 'gooks'. It was alarming really. I never saw him again. I have no idea if he survived. I was friendly with another older boy who my parents didn't approve of me hanging around because his family was what they considered 'trash' until one day my younger brother was tooling around in his little skiff in Galveston bay by the bulkheads in front of their house when the motor fell off and sunk in the water. Tommy saw it happen, dove in, retrieved the motor, and then took it apart, cleaned it up so that it ran again. It changed my parents opinion of Tommy but not his family. Tommy got drafted, not being in school, and I never saw him again after that summer. I've often thought about him and I hope he survived but I imagine he would have been one of those people who would put himself in danger to save others.
We have bohemian waxwings that arrive here every February to eat all the berries left in the trees over winter. I love it when they arrive, it reminds that spring will come, eventually.
I think your Cedar Waxwings were special visitors that day.
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