Aug 25 2006
The Hawk
The hawk turned and dove again, but Tommy couldn’t see him anymore. He lost the magnificent bird in the sun. He raised his pudgy seven-year-old hand to shade his eyes but it was no use. The bird of magic and light had disappeared.
“Aw comon you old bird, where are you?”
“Who are you talking to Tommy?” his pretty, redheaded mother asked.
Tommy climbed down from the flat-topped rock he was standing on and wiped his runny nose on his sleeve. “Nobody Mom. What’s for lunch?”
His mother laid out a blanket under the huge pine tree of which Tommy couldn’t even begin to see the top. “You know, chicken, potato salad…stuff.”
Tommy joined his mother on the blanket and peered at the lunch emerging from the old cooler sitting under the tree. He sat down and grabbed a chicken leg and took a bite. “How come we come here all the time?”
His mother smiled at him and ruffled his wavy hair affectionately. “You know, to get space. To look down on the world and see how small it really is. And to see that our problems aren’t so big after all.”
Tommy continued to work on the chicken leg. He thought over what his mother said and turned it around in his young mind. He knew the problem she was talking about, though they didn’t really talk about it, not out loud. He looked out and saw the hawk again soaring toward the sun and then suddenly dive. The mere action and total freedom displayed by the bird made him feel courageous. “Are we always going to be hiding Mom? I mean always?”
Tommy’s mother stopped mid-bite she was so taken aback by his candor. She looked at him with as much love as any mother can have for her child. “I don’t know, always is a long time.”
“It’s been a long time all ready, right? Since…well it’s been a long time, right?”
His mother nodded, remembering in all to vivid detail the last night they huddled together in a closet hiding from her husband and his father. Terrified he would find them and vent his violence upon them once again. She remembered the way her heart pounded in her chest while they sneaked out the back door, after her husband exhausted from his rampage lay asleep on the livingroom couch. The end of their old selves, their old lives and the beginning of their new lives.
“Yes, it’s been a long time. But it’s going to be longer I think.” She spooned some potato salad on a paper plate and poured him some soda in a paper cup.
Tommy took a big gulp of the soda and looked out over the horizon hoping to catch sight of the bird again. “Is Dad going to get better?”
His mother shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
Tommy was saddened by the affirmation of what he knew in his heart. “Do you think he’s looking for us?”
His mother smiled and shook her head. “No, I think we’re safe.”
Tommy smiled. He thought he had the bravest mother in the whole world. He thought she was braver than any father could ever be. She loved him and he loved her.
Suddenly he jumped up and began running back and forth, his arms outstretched, making cawing sounds. “Caw, caw, caw, I’m a bird Mom. I’m a big, beautiful bird and I can fly and I’m free and I don’t have no problems. Caw, caw, caw, caw!”
Suddenly, his mother looked up and caught sight of the magnificent creature her son now imitated. The hawk turned and dove again, but Tommy couldn’t see.
copyright 2006
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