sparrows

Tomorrow I head out to the Medicaid office with a sack full of documents to verify that my mother is, indeed, able and eligible to receive benefits. I dug through so many envelopes and hidey spots this evening that dust is permenantly in my face, though I did find her divorce papers from my father, so many years ago. I also found a small paper book, crookedly stapled, and childishly drawn. Apparently, my brother and I had high aspirations when we were young. He drew it, I wrote it.

I laughed delightedly when I pulled it from my mother's old briefcase, completely not remembering what ages we could have been when we slapped it together. When he came home from his birthday dinner with his friends, I showed it to him. And we had a brief moment together there in the kitchen, where we grinned at each other.

Earlier this evening as I was driving home, I saw what could only be described as a swarm of small birds. They rose from an empty field, hundreds of them, and circled into the dying summer sky. Sparrows, from the looks of them, or wrens. I've never seen so many birds in one place before and they startled me so much that I had to pull my car over to the side of the road, in front of that ghetto barbeque place that my co-workers always joke about going to, and got out to sit on the hood. They dove and wove intricate patterns, like a school of tiny fish undulating.

Sitting there for those two perfect minutes, watching these birds move in perfect unison, I felt almost as if my life had been restored to its previous state. Something tickled against my face and when I reached my hand up to brush it away, thinking it was a stray hair, I realized I was crying.