The Baby Bird

         

         Mollie came home from the hospital. 

         It was a one in a thousand thing, the doctor said.  The baby boy seemed healthy and yet he failed to breathe.  They did everything they could.  Would she like to see him?

         And there he was, little Joshua.  He was beautiful -- too pale but beautiful.  This was the son they had loved and waited to hold.  The little boy was supposed to grow up and learn and become while they watched the miracle of him.  She and David held each other and wept, their mingled tears falling on the little face.

         All the way home she asked again and again, “Why?”  There was no answer.  She said “If God didn’t want us to have a child right now why did He make this baby live and grow all these months then take him away?”  There was no answer to that, either.

         She went into the bedroom.  David had taken away the little crib and the little dresser with Joshua’s clothes in it.  The empty spaces seemed to mock her. 

         The next day there was a little white casket and a bouquet of carnations, some white, and some dyed light blue for a baby boy.

David’s mother was there.  She hugged Mollie and then hugged David. 

Mollie was thinking women had been having babies since the beginning of time. She saw David’s tears and felt she had failed him. 

         Pastor Ned and his wife were there trying to be comforting.  Pastor Ned talked for a few minutes about how Joshua had already been received by his Heavenly Father and would be waiting for his parents as the years passed until it was their turn to be there and meet him.  Will he be a grown man then? She wondered.

         And then the little grave and the blue and white carnations placed on top of the white casket.  And then home to the house that seemed too empty to be called home.

         Mollie looked in the attic where David had put the little crib and dresser.  They were covered with sheets to keep off the dust.  Mollie wanted to believe that there would be a baby in that crib in another year, another baby wearing those clothes.  For now, the crib and dresser stood in the attic like ghosts covered with sheets. 

         There being nothing else to do, they went to bed.  David said “The doctor gave me the pills to help you sleep.”

         Mollie reasoned “Why not?”  There was no baby in her body who could be harmed by a sleeping pill.  Not any more. She would sleep tonight and then get up in the morning and start to face the reality.  Joshua was gone.  They were not a family yet.  Their dreams and hopes were gone.  Their firstborn son was dead.

         The days went by as days will, morning noon and night.  There was work to do, a house to keep, meals to cook and clean up.  The usual things you do, going to the store, going to church, seeing other women holding their babies.  Seeing little boys of various age and remembering that she would never see Joshua go to school or ride a bike or play ball -- the reminders were everywhere. 

         Pastor Ned told them the pain would grow less with time and they hoped he was right.  Spring came and with it the garden and new life growing.  David brought home a basket of pansy plants in bloom which had to be planted.  Working the soil with her hands and her trowel Mollie made a place for the flowers to live and grow.           She noticed something on the grass a little way away.  It was a baby bird, which looked as though it had fallen from the nest somewhere up in the tree. 

         There was a robin on the lowest branch.  Was this mother bird feeling all the same kind of pain that had been Mollie’s constant companion for three months?

         She picked up the dead baby bird and carried it to the flower bed and buried it with the roots of her pansy plants.  The robin seemed to be watching, and then she flew away. 



         A year passed, a summer an autumn and snow and ice and sleet and then another soft melting and greening and with the spring a baby girl for Mollie and David.  Mollie sat at the window looking out at the spring day and nursing her daughter.

         That was when she saw the robin again.  The robin had caught an insect and was flying home with it.  The two mothers were feeding their babies and happy again.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

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