amy jordan's cat paintings rock!I left work just after six, and meandered through empty streets with vague thoughts of a stroll in the park before darkness fell.
Turning a corner, a bird sat waiting. A small brown lady blackbird, perched on a low wall. It caught my eye, so I said hello.
It hopped along the wall just ahead of me. Then it flew to a bush outside the next property. It waited for me to catch up, looked me square in the eye, then flew to the next tree.
As I walked, the blackbird swooped and fluttered ahead, a short distance each time, pausing while I drew level, then flying off again.
This, I thought, is just like Narnia (except colder). From bush to wall to guttering, that bird was definitely trying to lead me somewhere.
So I followed. It was not the first time a bird had brought me a message. I thought back to the time when my mum was dying.
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I'd flown back to England at my sister's request: "She's really in a bad way this time." It was the second mercy dash I'd made that year. I'd come back to find nothing had changed - all the suggestions I'd made to my dad on how to make Mum's life easier had been ignored. There was still no home help, still no medical intervention. No ramp installed for a wheelchair, no commode - even though she could barely walk -, no bed brought downstairs. Worse, no alteration to meal routines to accommodate the fact she could barely chew or swallow. It was just meat and two veg, the same as it always was, and screams of abuse when she failed to eat it. Screams of abuse when she didn't make it to the toilet on time, too. No concessions had been made at all for her frailty. My father, the coward and the bully, the stupid, selfish man, simply refused to accept she was ill.
My mother, the eternal victim, thought it was her due, and suffered in silence while my father and I battled around her. I raged with my father from the moment I arrived to try and get him to release his iron grip on her life, but he would not budge an inch. As her spouse, he was her legal guardian and without his permission I could not involve social services in her care. He resented my "interfering". "I'm not having those people in my house," he would spit. Sometimes I wondered if I was one of "those people" too. My mother was too cowed by him to ask for any help. "It's not worth it, he gets so angry." She'd given up years ago. She so badly needed help. I fought and fought.
I went for a walk one night, to escape the house of misery. My feet paced automatically along streets I'd roamed as a child, as familiar to me then as they'd ever been though it had been seventeen years since I'd moved away. In a broad tree-lined alley dissecting a house from a church hall, I heard a rustle in the dusty bushes close to my feet. I stopped, and peered down to see what had made the noise.
It was a dove. A small white dove. Just sitting there. I stared at it. It stared at me.
I edged closer, to see how near I could get before it took fright and escaped. It drew back. I inched nearer still, and put my hand out towards it. In a sudden whirl of feathers it tried to fly away. But it couldn't. It flapped a few feet off the ground, then fell back to the floor, its chest heaving.
Its wings weren't broken. There wasn't any blood. What was wrong with this little bird that it couldn't fly away?
I knelt in the dirt and for a while we watched each other silently. The bird is clearly damaged, I thought, and I can't leave it here for a fox or a cat to get. I have to help it. I have to take it home and phone the RSPCA.
Sorry, I informed the dove telepathically, I know you're afraid but I am going to have to pick you up and pop you into my jacket so we can get you some help.
I reached out again. Again it tried to get away. We repeated the manoeuvre a few times. It occurred to me if I did manage to catch it I could damage it even more. I carried on anyway. Eventually the dove scuttled under a bush, out of reach. I sat on my haunches, and thought very hard.
A few minutes later, I got up, stretched my creaking legs, thanked the bird for the lesson, wished it all the luck in the world, and carried on walking.
It was painful walking away, but I had just figured out you can't help things that don't want to be helped.
Some things are just out of your hands. You can't fix everything. You just have to do what you can, and let the rest go.
The next day I told mum I could no longer fight her battles for her. I told her I would back her all the way but if she wanted things to change she would have to pick up the phone and call social services herself.
She did, and I have never admired her more.
Shame it was too little too late.
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Anyway, that was not my only bird experience; my friend Noeline once called me a goose.
The blackbird hopped and fluttered along the road until it reached a blue-painted building. There, it hid in a bush out front, and refused to play the 'leading Weasel down the road' game anymore.
I glanced up to see what the building was.
It was a diagnostic medical laboratory. Hmmm.
Cats talk to me too, but usually only to say things like 'Worship me for I am beautiful', or 'Where is my food?'
diploma: u r doin it rite
