J. Sam Williams - Mourning Doves

Mourning Doves

In my home there is a large window behind a blue couch. Just outside the window, underneath the white painted gutter, hang three baskets, resting on chains, hooked on nails, and filled with fuschias. The fuschias are strong, they withstand the California sun, and are desperate daily for water lest they wilt. A symbol of the gentle kindness of my wife's ancestry. Her mother's father bred them throughout his life: Heidi's beauty, Holly's beauty, Rosella’s Bella: his other children, as he said. Out of the baskets crawl the branches, breaching their limits to extend to sunlight where pink and white flowers pop into existence overnight.

We are not the only ones to enjoy these flowers. Hummingbird's, both Anna's and Allan's, do, sometimes piercing near the bud to drink and drink. The squirrels love them too, though that is mainly because they hide peanuts given by our neighbors in the dirt under the flowers. And the morning doves adore them. Like tourists craning their necks up, the doves eat beneath our feeder and look at the flowers, lost in thought - at least I pretend - as they coo.

On one Spring morning, we found a couple gathering materials and nesting in the basket to the far right. When they'd gone I took a broom to gently lift the spiders in the area, and place them elsewhere. Within hours - it seemed - there were eggs, a perfect mirror outside the home, to inside the home. My wife would watch the birds nestle together for a brief moment before they’d switch duties from warming eggs to finding food, all while my wife refused to eat the eggs I'd made for our food in solidarity with the birds.

The world slowed for us with the upcoming challenges, and the birds became our great teachers. The morning doves didn't stress, contemplating their upcoming offspring and all the great damage they'd inflict accidentally. No, they went about their business because their business was coming about them. There was nothing to stop it; no reason to fear. They would lay, and warm, and protect and then swap, leave, fly and eat. Onward and upward, as my mom always said.

While their business rushed ever closer, ours stopped. Now my wife would sit with her knees to her chest, her tears to her chin. I would sit with her with an arm around her, or a hand in hers, watching as a dove sat in our basket, the mirror broken, but not for long.

We were never sure what disturbed the male to make him flee the flower-filled nest, but over one night the basket was filled and then it was not. And in the morning a fresh wave of loss, as we witnessed the female return to find her partner gone. She landed on the basket and her head moved about bobbing this way and that as she searched for her eggs in such a small spot. For a quarter of an hour she looked in the same square foot before she spotted a squirrel on the fence and with no sense of danger flew like a hawk, talons outstretched to welcome its prey to a quick demise.

Our friends have morning doves too. Their nest undisturbed. Three clutches of eggs produced and hatched, as they welcome their own son. What have we done wrong to lose while they continue on? The birds, the babes, the bright happy couple. But they all go about their business, because the business must come. The world never slows, but our lives can't quite move on. Back to work, to school, where I sludge down the halls, where I field the same questions, and where I can't quite smile. Back to home to our empty room, where hope pokes its head, but never stays. Echos of some ghost of future children's laughter bounce around the house, the car, the office.

Out, out, out we must go. Somewhere far away, somewhere safe, somewhere so different I can't feel my child's call. We scour the globe for a place to feel nothing - or a place to feel something - a place to be private so we can decide to feel or not, to be and to breathe. My wife tells me of a place she wants to visit near Mt. Fuji, She tells me there's a shrine where you find Anzan-sugi, the ceder of safe birth - she knows we don't believe, but there's a force drawing her there, and so I agree.

But there’s something to do first, so we leave our hotel and walk for miles in silence, hand in hand as usual, and come to properly say goodbye at a shrine to those lost children, in a different sort of neverland. We clutch two eggs in our heart now, and bid them adieu. Perhaps this will help, I hope, but I stand in one spot, drowning in the sounds of laughter I won't get the chance to ever hear, least of all forget.

And so the winding path leads us to the tree, the tall tree where couples like us stand and pray. They touch the bark, they lay their hands, they leave as they may. A couple stayed nearly as long as us. They formed their hands together, their elbows at 90 degrees. Her purple pants shimmered. His shoes stomped on leaves. He stood stoic and as immovable as the cedar. She breathed in sharply and held her breath for an inhuman time. On her exhale came tears, silent but fast. And my wife reached out her hand and together they grasped. Then coins were thrown and the couple left. We never said a thing, but a spirit moved within me and I touched the tree, not knowing if this was believing, or simply just me.

As we walked we saw doves, preening each other. Twas winter, so no chance of a nest, but still I looked for a babe in the tree branch, hoping I was next.

It was easier at home, some good did come, but as spring approached we watched for the doves and their young. Out they'd come to the feeder, their cooing a constant comfort. They laid in the basket on hot days. But they'd always leave our house empty, a faint echo on the walls, and they'd nest somewhere else as if heeding some call.

And now they've become a harbinger, a direction set by god. To stay will mean everything. And though my wife has long left the window, I sit and wait to see if they'll stay. I manically edit a haiku that's never quite ready to be read, as writing always gestates before it pops out in my head.

Rest still Doves and be,

A simple request by me

But the doves always…

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J. Sam Williams is an English Teacher in the Bay Area, where he works with marginalized teens. He's been published in Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, and has been a finalist for a Button Eye Review Novel Excerpt Prize. He is a founder and host of the Fandom Shmandom Podcast.