Storytelling Open Mic Night

We will have an open mic night at our local coffeeshop this evening, where we will share stories. Mine is entitled Ancestral Spirits.

Before my mother died 4 days after Christmas in 2015, I asked Dad to look through the recipe box and give me some recipes written by the hands of my ancestors.  I framed them, and they hang on the wall of my kitchen to welcome the kitchen spirits for those times I attempt to cook anything. They gather, I’m sure, standing over my shoulders, shaking their heads, convinced by now that I’m a complete kitchen misfit.  

Throughout her life, Mom was a great everything, teaching my brother and me the ways of the outdoors on the coastal island of St. Simons.  We crabbed and fished off the pier, collected shells, and learned how to identify all kinds of birds.

Mom had some inner sensor that alerted her to bird presence, particularly hawks.  My brother Ken and I frequently send text alerts:  Mom was on a wire by Highway 362 checking to make sure I had my seatbelt on, warning me the cops are running radar up ahead.  

We believe in the presence of birds to convey messages. 

Ken and I were a little divided on where she’d be buried.  We walked through Christ Church Cemetery, my preference being in the old section, where she’d have casket neighbors who were friends.  My realtor brother was concerned with the oak roots and preferred the new section.  

“Fine, brat,” I told him.  “I picked the spot, you pick the plot.”  So he picked the new section.

I wrestled with it and lost sleep.  At breakfast, I confessed to my preacher Dad (who did her funeral) that I needed reassurance from Mom that she’d be okay up there by herself until more burials happened.  “I prayed for a sign – – some majestic bird, with a large wingspan, like an eagle.  Since there is no tree canopy up there yet, I want her send a bird to let me know Ken didn’t mess this all up.”  

We pulled into the cemetery for the graveside service, and parked up by the tent.  And when the car doors opened, we heard them before we ever saw them.

“What have you done?” My father looked at me accusingly, like I’d done some voodoo magic.  

We glanced up, and three buzzards circled overhead.  

My brother elbowed me and pointed to the skies, chuckling.  “Look!  She showed up!  And she brought her parents.”  

My ancestral spirits seem to enjoy their gatherings, always giving us signs and messages. 
Imagine our deep comfort when, just last week, one of my grown children was having surgery two states north of here.  As we left the hotel for the hospital that morning, there on a wire above my RAV 4 was a hawk.  Mom.  Gathering with us.  Waiting on us to say everything’s going to be okay.