A Thing With Wings

photo source

My sweet spirit partner, Alpana, loved birds. Not only did she keep birds as pets, she also castigated me harshly for my love of pate'. Frankly, on both points, we had to agree to disagree. Still, I mourned with her when her little lime green parrotlet, Ezabel, flew the coop. We imagined her going for brunch with $10 mimosas. Or maybe she was going to the Barney's Co-op annual sale. But really, Alpana was just very sad and a little angry at the loss. It felt particularly unjust that she should lose something she loved, when she was already on such a difficult path, one that involved lots of letting go, both bitter and resigned.

Ezabel flew away over 2 years ago, and Alpana flew away over one. I'm left here wishing I had wings, not knowing where I'd fly. Life is hard for me without Alpana. She was braver than I am. And if you think that's fantastical revisionist history, the kind where we make people out to be more noble than they actually were in life, then you haven't fully tried to imagine what a crusty and hardcore little character she could be. (Remember she was a lawyer. Read: tough.) Her bravery is a simple, irrefutable fact.

My recent efforts to become a runner are part of a campaign I'm trying out to become more grounded and centered. Maybe here, in my body, I can find some courage. I have a tendency to float space-headed into the ether so that I'm no longer paying attention to my body, to my feet on the earth, and, well, I confess, to most everything that's going on around me. It is the single biggest reason that I never see any celebrities when I'm walking the streets of New York. "Look!", my Andy will say, "You almost ran into Wolf Blitzer." Well. I hadn't noticed. (Sorry, Wolf.)

I've heard that when we meditate, our auras become huge and porous, and we have to be careful to pull them back in, like keeping our elbows near our sides when we run. Having a spirit with wings is fine, as long as we remember that, for now, it dwells in our body, that imperfect and strange and miraculous vessel. Exercise is a way to bring us back to being grounded in our bodies. I think I'm supposed to feel safer here, in my body with its one leg shorter than the other, but instead I feel ponderous. Still, I plonk along on those jogging trails in Central Park, and I think about having wings.

Coach says you have to tell all the muscles in your body to "get in the game" when you're running. "Hey, Abs! Pay attention! And, you, Gluteus Maximus, you heard me. Get a move on!" It works tremendously, and it brings me right back into the action, all those creaky bones and resistant tendons, that lopsided gait. I remember to say thank you for my body and for the newfound respect I'm showing it.

So, I plonk and flap and fret my way along, asking Alpana for advice and hope and guidance. I wonder what's next. I consider possibilities, I ponder action. I put one foot in front of the other because I don't have wings.

Yesterday, I went for a run in Central Park. Up the Bridal Path with it's soft sand and gentle hills. Safely parallel to the Lance Armstrong imitators on their bikes, the epic battle of Peloton versus Tourists. Past the grassy area where I recently saw a flock of snow white birds, then past the one where over the summer I sat reading the paper and a little boy named Raymond asked me to "watch" his lump of Silly Puddy while he rolled down the hill.

I stopped at the water fountain before stepping up onto the trail around the Reservoir. I barked a friendly order to my muscles: keep moving! I glanced at the shimmery water in the emerging Fall light, but mostly I kept my focus straight ahead. Centered, grounded, centered, grounded.

One quarter of the way around the reservoir, I saw the pecking and fluttering of a few birds on the side of the path. They were lovely common grey chickadees scratching around in the leaves and dirt. And in the middle of the bunch, this: a teal-breasted parakeet, with grey and white wings and a golden yellow crown, an improbable jewel in the middle of New York City.

As Anne Lamott might say, I ask you.

It's just like God and Alpana to be funny and cryptic and beautiful all at the same time. I stared and smiled then I kept going, around the pool, back down the Bridal Path. A little lighter, a littler more engaged, thinking to myself, "Stay centered and grounded, and you might become a thing with wings, following your own Spirit Path." (Thank you, Alp.)

And you?

What miracles - winged and otherwise - have occurred for you?