John and the Bird

I haven't written much about the kids lately that didn't involve bragging, but they're always in my thoughts, in terms of how they're dealing with my diagnosis. Every now and then, something comes up that brings the issue to the surface.

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Last Tuesday, John finished dinner and went outside to play in the backyard. Isabel and Catherine joined him. I stayed inside to do a little work (probably writing a blog post). Catherine came in after a while, asking me to come outside quickly.

A bird had apparently hit the large wooden fence that the neighbors behind us had put up a few months ago. It was obviously hurt, but we weren't sure how, or how much. It was trying to hide in the ivy at the base of the fence, squeeling, and trying to fly.


John, of course, was a wreck. He's our animal lover, our naturalist, our Saint Francis. He wanted to do something, anything, to help this bird. Isabel went inside to consult Google for advice. It looked to me like maybe the bird had a hurt leg, maybe a hurt wing, maybe both, but whatever was wrong, it couldn't take off. I thought maybe it was caught up in the ivy, so I tried to move it away from there, but it kept hopping back to its hiding spot. In the meantime, Isabel had found out that sometimes birds who fly into things like windows are stunned, and need a few minutes to clear their heads before they can fly off. We decided we'd give that a chance. He was covered by the ivy, which seemed to hide him a little, so the neighbor's cat wouldn't be able to get to him. We also thought that having the three of us standing over him was probably really stressing him out. We went inside and watched from the window to make sure the cat stayed away.


After about 10 minutes, we checked again, and nothing had changed. Still hurt and hiding. Our neighbors came home, and we asked them for advice. They suggested we call the animal hospital for advice.


Seems like a lot of work for a bird, doesn't it?


You don't know John....


The animal hospital gave us the name of a bird rehabilitation specialist in New Haven. We called her, and she told us to bring the bird to her right away. She assured us that she'd do what she could to help the bird and make him comfortable. Her husband gave us directions, and we got a shoe box to put the bird in. John sat in the back seat, comforting the bird, telling him it was going to be OK, while I drove us 20 minutes to an unfamiliar neighborhood in New Haven, looking for this woman's address, following the insane directions that he husband gave us. The bird flapped around in the box every few minutes. After about 15 minutes, it seemed to quiet down.


We finally found the address. We weren't sure if we were searching for was some kind of industrial-looking animal rehab center, or a house, or what. It turned out to be a house, a beautiful old Victorian in a neighborhood of similar old houses. A kid was sitting out front, peering over the hedges. Before we could say anything, he told us, "He's in the back." We went around to the back of the house, and three more kids were fixing their bikes. "He's in the van," one of them told us, and then he shouted "Adam!" A man came out from behind the van a minute later. He opened the box and looked at the bird, which gave a little peep. He told us to wait, and brought the bird inside. A few minutes later, his wife, Jen, came out and introduced herself. Then she said, "I'll do everything I can, but I'll be honest, it doesn't look good." I asked if we could call and get an update the next day, and she said we could. The she gave us some Starburtst candies. As John and I walked back to the car, Jen called to us, "Thank you for caring."


We got back in the car. John was pretty silent for a few minutes, and then he said, "We should have gotten here sooner. Then she could have saved it." I told him she might still save the bird, and even if she couldn't, John had done everything he could for it -- far more than most people would have.


And then it started.


"This is the worst year ever!" he said.


Through tears, he gushed out everything bad that's happened in the last six months. It really has been a rough year. My cancer diagnosis. A wonderful priest we know died fairly suddenly a couple of months ago. His piano teacher is moving away to take another job. His choir teacher is moving to Florida to get married. "And now this had to happen to the bird!"

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John's such a complex kid. He does love animals, and connects to them very deeply, and that's a big reason he was upset. But the bird also represented so many other changes that have taken place since January. And one thing John does not like is change. And this has been a whole lot of change for him in a short period.

Much more so than his brother and sister, John also has a heightened sense of his own mortality, a by-product of his food allergies. He also has Benign Rolandic Epillepsy, which, as the name says, is a benign, non-life threatening, and he should outgrow in a few years. But when he does have a seizure, he's sure he's dying. In fact, when he has a stomach ache, or a sunburn, or a bout of asthma, he says the same thing: "Let me guess -- I'm dying, right?"


I don't know if I can take John as a barometer for the other two, our canary in a cancerous coal mine, letting us know that, if he's upset, the others must be upset as well. Catherine still seems too young to really understand what it all means. Peter is so intense about everything that it's hard to tell when he's affected by the cancer situation, or how, though Peter also has Jon Lester to give him hope. Peter connects to the Red Sox the way John connects to nature.


So that's what nice about John -- he's willing to talk and let us know how he's feeling.


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John's always been kind of in tune with the natural world. Even when he was a baby, he would be comforted just by being carried outside to the deck, so he could look around. He has a strong sense of the rhythm of nature. Things die. Other things are born. Predators hunt and their prey give up their lives.


Given how he feels about the natural order of the world (especially about predators and prey), I asked why this bird getting hurt and dying was so different from, say, a wolf taking down a sick caribou. He said it was the fence. Something made by people caused the bird harm.


I don't think John is a radical environmentalist who hates people and the things that people make. He loves music, for instance, and that's made by people. I think it's more that this bird getting hurt was just unnatural. Wolves do kill caribou, but they target the sick and injured, thinning out the herd. Good people dying, young people getting sick -- those things aren't natural.


It's hard knowing how to explain things to kids, especially when I can't explain them to myself. Most kids just can't accept "It happened because that's just the way things happen sometimes." I think John can accept that kind of fatalism, that stuff just happens sometimes, as long as it fits into his view of the world. I guess most adults have a hard time with that answer, too, but we're better at faking it and moving on.

What's really interesting about it all is that it shows me just how different John and I view the world. As much as he understands the natural rhythm of the world, and how inevitable change is, he also wants some things to just stay frozen and unchanged, like a diorama in a museum. I'm the opposite. I don't want things to stay still. I get up early wondering what the new day will bring. Watching and waiting is hard for me. And the hardest thing for me about having cancer is thinking about how it cuts off options, limits opportunities for change. I may write about that some day. I'm still kind of working it all out for myself.

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We called Jen the bird rehabitator the next day and left a message. I assume she has a day job and wasn't home. We left another message that night.

She never did call back with news about the injured bird. John stopped asking. He's good about moving on, accepting change, at least on the surface, but I know he's probably still thinking about that bird.