33—FRROOONK

On the fourth day of the rest of my life, I looked out my living room window—over the bird—and surveyed the sunny low-tide morning. Scores of clammers were digging away on the beach at the foot of my hill. Heron was breakfasting in a tide pool just feet from the shoreline and unperturbed by the crowd around him. Yes, here was the chance I’d been waiting for—my first up-close-and-personal meeting with The Great Blue Guru. 

“kwik kwik,” simpered the bird as he stood, looking helpless and forlorn, in the middle of the tar roof. Refusing to make eye contact with the little con, I went into the back room where I dressed hurriedly. Grabbing my binoculars, I said goodbye to the cats and flung my arms at the bird screeching on the roof. Then grabbing my binoculars, I headed toward the door, eager to begin my instruction on stillness as the most important part of motion. 

As I closed the door, I glimpsed the bird now craning his neck to see through the side-room window. “Give it up, buddy,” I muttered in his direction, then dashed through the narrow hallway, out the back door, between the cars in the car port, around the corner of the apartment, and down the narrow sidewalk between my building and the motel. 

My Second Floor Apartment (With the Three Windows to the Left: Side Room, Living Room, and Kitchen)

At the top of the steps between the roofs jutting out over the ground floors of both buildings, I paused to remove my binoculars from their small leather pouch. A flap and screech from the left startled the hell out of me—and there I was face to face with the bird.

He glanced into the bedroom window then back at me. “Kwawk!” he said, appearing astonished at the magic I’d performed in getting myself from there to here. Then his eyes fell upon the the small black pouch in my hand. “Binoculars,” I said lifting the pouch in his direction, “Sorry, Old Sport.” And to prove the futility of his continued pursuit of the free lunch, I unzipped the pouch and reached inside to pull out the compact Bushnells. 

“KWAAAK,” screeched the bird with the unmodulated thrill of a Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes winner. 

In response, a screeching mob of gulls descended from nowhere onto both roofs, all eyes on my hand now frozen in the small black-leather case. Terrified that I was going to be stampeded and pecked to death from both sides, I raced down the steps and descended the path to the beach with the crazed birds swarming above me. Only after I took cover in a thicket of willows did the frenzied flock disperse. Remaining under cover, I hung the binoculars around my neck and stuffed the case into my vest pocket. Then ever so cautiously, I slipped through the willows and over some boulders onto the beach where I made my way down the beach through the clammers in the direction of Heron.

As I approached his tide pool, the great bird looked up. How cool was this. Clearly, my guru sensed I was coming. I felt the mystical connection intensifying between us. Sensing my intention to learn, the master was ready to teach. Everything in my life, all the accomplishments, all the grief and loss, had prepared me for this moment of enlightenment. “The readiness is all...” I was thinking when the big grey umbrella wings went up and out, lifting the giant bird out of the tide pool. Airborne, he emitted a ratchety FRROOOONK and punctuated his irritation with a wide white splatter of heron poop before coming to rest at the top of a beach pine.

Up and down the beach, clammers looked up from their dimpled sand and necking clams so that I slunk away, mortified at having been so publicly dissed by my most esteemed and revered guide.

Back in my apartment, I was happy to be greeted enthusiastically by my cats who followed me into the back room where I sat down on the floor and swallowed hard to hold back the tears that welled up so unexpectedly. What was I doing in this ridiculous place, away from the desert and everyone who cared about me. I had no identity here, no purpose. How could I even think of writing a meaningful book about education in American when I didn’t even know enough to find my own way in the world . . .

Thonk. 

The cats and I looked in unison toward the front of the apartment. 

This was it. The final showdown. I wasn’t going to be held hostage by any white trash of the bird world and went stalking out to the big window where the bird was peering in. 

He stepped back and stood, one pink foot lapped over the other. “kwik kwik,” he said, looking so small and defenseless that I sat down on the floor, my back against Chuck’s big sprawling white sofa, and burst into tears. The cats came and sat on either side of me.

When the tears finally cleared, the bird was gone. 

I held the cats close and promised, “Everything will be better when our furniture arrives.”