The Better Question

She heard the chirping before she saw the birds, baby robins in the nest she'd watched their industrious mother build, strand by twig by stalk with, Miranda was delighted to notice, a few strands of the blue yarn she'd scattered on the lawn for the birds and their nests...to make a house a home, she explained when Robert, her next door neighbor, asked if she was expecting the night fairies do weave all that mess into something.

She'd resisted correcting his word "mess" into "100% organic wool sheared from highland alpaca known for their calm disposition." 

"It's for the birds," she had said,  but he harrumphed off before she could explain that it was for their nests. The yarn, the alpaca yarn, was a bit of softness and beauty, not a mess.

His last words, shouted before he slammed his door, "Birds don't eat string!"

Poor man. She knew too well the signs of misery and dissatisfaction, been there herself when nothing was beautiful and everything a problem, designed to confuse her, trip her up, make her or something (there weren't any someones then) she cared about miserable.

She thought of knocking on his door, telling him what she'd learned by being quiet, by sitting--alone--and she, like Robert, was alone, but sitting alone at her front window and watching the world emerge before her very eyes brought her joy every day.

"You can do it at any hour," she'd say, "Morning, noon, or night. It's my time to be outside of myself and in the world without moving, to see the beauty we were born to."

She rehearsed the words in her head, silently, twice, imagined his harrumph, his perfected scowl, even his slamming the door. The more she thought about him in the little, perfectly groomed house, not a fallen twig on the sidewalk or a scratch on the smooth grey clapboard siding, the more she knew she had to do it.

She play acted the scene in her head: her timid approach, the too soft knock on the door, him flinging it open and shouting, "What?"or "We don't want any...or...."

But if she had a cherry pie in her hand, or even a plate of cookies, it might please him, might slow him down enough to see what she offered.

"But why bother?" she thought.

"Why not?" she said out loud, always the better question.

~

Two days later the perfectly washed plate appeared on her porch with a one word note: Thanx. 

Best he could do and good enough. Good enough is always enough.

Last Word

        "Do you believe in ghosts?"

"No."

"No?"

"Well, pretty much no."

"What about spirits?"

"Define spirits."

"A presence. A feeling. An inclination."

"Related to spiritual?"

"Well, Most likely, don't you agree?"

"Well, possibly etymologically related."

"For sure."

"So, if 'spiritual' is real--an adjective describing a genuine, as in real, feeling, then it follows that spirit must be real, and if spirit is real, spirit, a noun which can be made plural, then spirits are also real."

"Is that what you think?"

"Well, logically, it follows."

"Yes. So?"

"So, have you experienced the spiritual?"

"Define 'spiritual.'"

"'Of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting, the spirit.'"

"Not helpful, if you use a variation of the word to define it."

"What about 'of or related to sacred matters?'"

"Better. But then, define the singular 'spirit' for me please, Ms. Webster."

"'An animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms.'"

"Hmmm. You googled it, didn't you?"

"So what?"

"But what is it? A feeling? If it is just a feeling, then it's not real, not temporal. You can't touch it or see it, so it's not really there."

"Like sadness."

"Huh?"

"You can't touch sadness, so it's not real. Is that what you're saying?"

"Well, you can pass it on."

"Like catsup?"

She laughs. Nods. "Yes, not physically like passing the catsup, but if you ask me why I'm sad, then you might feel sad too."

"Not always."

"Well, I don't always pass the catsup, either, but it is probable that if you pass the catsup, I will receive it--just as it is possible to pass a feeling on by sharing it. I tell you my sad . . ."

"Or spiritual..."

"....story, and then we both feel sad."

"But, I know what it is to feel sad and you know what it is to feel sad. Happens all the time. Sadness is a common, everyday feeling. But spiritual is different, harder."

"Exactly! But that doesn't mean its not there."

He throws up his hands, ready to be done with the conversation, but determined to have the last word. "Why don't you always pass the catsup?"

Question of the Day

   "There's a bird out there," she said.

"Lot's of birds," he said without looking up. "The world is full of birds. Ants too."

"Ants! What do ants have to do with birds?"

He didn't answer immediately, couldn't, too deep in the paper, the news of the day that trumped (ha, ha) everything. "He's been fined $9000. For contempt, of course. His specialty."

"The bird?" She knew it wasn't the bird, knew what he meant, but she had given up reading the paper, even the comics which weren't really comic.

It was a big bird, crow-like, but not a crow, maybe a raven, standing....or sitting on the apple tree outside the window, waiting for the first buds and blossoms? or leaves at least? It was spring, and she too was waiting for warmth and flowers, apple blossoms and eventually those too small, but still delicious apples from the tree they'd planted when they bought the house 30 years ago--or was it 40? Before everything, before children, dogs, the scrawny cat who wandered in, when it was just the two of them, fresh and unwrinkled.

She smiled at the memory, touched her neck, smiled again at the way random thoughts took over so easily, and wondered, aloud, "Do birds have wrinkles?

He jerked up at that. She knew he loved her questions, her too-early-in-the-morning questions, even though he repeatedly denied it.

"Do birds have wrinkles?" she said again, "Under all those feathers?"

"No, never," he said, his early morning response always authoritative. "Think about it," his daily opening for her question of the day, think about it, then, always, his own question. "Have you ever cooked a chicken, a skin-on chicken?"

"Of course," she said.

"And what do you see? Dots or pricks where the feathers were pulled--blemishes, scars, but no wrinkles."

"You are so smart," she said, as she always did, and went back to watching the full-feathered, wrinkle-free crow. Or raven. Maybe it was a raven.