The Black Birds
By
Berry Michel
When I was a child every year during autumn a flock of black birds would take a rest stop in the yard of the home I grew up in. Every fall like clockwork the black birds would invade and spread out through our front and back yards to take a break from the long flight south. Often as a kid I felt suffocated and trapped. My mother was overprotective, so I wasn’t allowed to go outside and play like the other neighborhood kids. I was also sickly with frequent bouts of tonsilitis and bronchitis. I was the kid that never had perfect school attendance. In fact, in second grade I missed so many days there was talk of keeping me back a year. Fortunately for me, I was able to keep up with my schoolwork at home and I was allowed to proceed to third grade with my peers.
Being a homebody kid made me long for escapes from my reality. I dove into books and my imagination to make the time go by. I even read the whole encyclopedia and the bible to pass the time. I think my love of reading things about people, places, and things which I know nothing about was sparked during this period.
In addition, to reading there was TV. I probably watched entirely too much TV growing up. I would start off with cartoons in the morning before school like Thundercats and G.I. Joe, and then after school there were more cartoons until the sitcoms like Good Times, What’s Happening, and Three’s Company came on. My mom used to call the TV the stupid box, but that didn’t bother me. These shows were about life and took me places I could never go in the real world.
So, between reading and TV and, oh yeah, actually doing that burden called homework, my day was filled. But every year when the black birds came, I would take a much-needed break. I could watch this army of little birds for hours as they marched around and pecked at our lawn. There were hundreds of them each individually doing its on thing yet still in sink with the larger flock. I never understood why they would pick our house to rest. It was nothing special about this old three-bedroom home that was built in the 1960’s. It was a place I so desperately wanted to escape. These birds could fly and go anywhere they wanted. Yet they chose this place.
I wanted to believe that the black birds came every year just for me to provide me entertainment and an escape from my normal home body life. However, the truth is probably closer to nature guiding them through their travels south. They just needed a place to land that was safe before continuing their flight. When I got older, I came to realize that we humans are selfish people, myself included. We often take things, whether nature or man-made, and distort them to fit our world view. That flock of black birds reminds me that maybe we should just find the joy in nature, the joy in truth, and the joy of living in that moment. Maybe it’s not about us after all and just a flock of black birds that need a place to rest before continuing their journey.
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