Dreaming the World

late summer autumn

still on the nest 

one solitary osprey

A cool, cloudy day; a soaking rain forecast towards evening. We are hopeful.

Yesterday I drove past the osprey nest by the beach and, to my pleasure, there was a lone osprey standing in the nest. My fantasy was that the parents and other sibs had already flown south. Maybe this one was the last to hatch and was still testing its newly acquired skills before departing.

I wondered whether the individual was now lonely, thought about my own seasonal loneliness, and remembered that young osprey are often solitary. Later, I found myself wondering what it is like for a young osprey, journeying alone to fly south into the unknown. 

Some things need to be written about even though folks may be uncomfortable. I tend to feel lonely this time of year as my Polio anniversary comes around. I developed a catastrophic case of Polio seventy years ago this Labor Day weekend. Not surprisingly, I get flooded with memories as summer ends.

As is often true with trauma occurring at age seven, my body remembers much more than my mind; of course, that I was running a fever of 108F did not help me store memories.

Still, I have a few. Mostly, I remember pain and terror, then lying in bed after the virus had passed, lonely, barely able to move, wondering what my new life had in store for me. It was clear that the energetic, athletic me was gone and that the future was likely to be very challenging. The odd thing was that no one around me seemed to have noticed that my old life was over, that everything, including my body had changed.

I don’t know which was more frightening, my battered, twisted, emaciated body or the denial exhibited by all of the adults around me. I do know that the loneliness was crushing.

Back then I had no way to know that throughout my life I would be surrounded by denial, sadly, now more than ever. The thing about denial is one can’t do much about it, so seeing the obvious in a culture that systematically ignores the same is simply isolating and crazy making. Still, it is good to have some people in one’s life who also see the obvious. Since you are reading this, you probably already know that.

But back to the osprey. For the osprey everything is new. There they stand, looking out, from the relative security and comfort of the nest, into a world, both exciting and dangerous, which insists they very soon make their way into it. I wonder, given that all of us living beings share much experience, if the osprey senses they are about to embark on a grand adventure. I wonder whether they, too, are scared.

I wish them a safe and joyous journey.