Bird's Eye
Life is simple for a bird like me.
I fly, eat, drink and fly some more.
The rest of my time I spend watching the many tales life unfolds under everyone’s very eyes…
but only few ever look past their own small world.
And some that wish to, are unable to do so.
My current master fits into that last category.
He used to enjoy watching the many tales, but now old age and tiredness have caught up with him.
Yet his heart is still young, his eyes still have the sparkle of curiousness, and his ears are still eager for stories.
So I have become his eye on the world of tales hiding in plain sight.
A bird’s eye on the world of humankind.
The Rose | The Game
-
The Rose
They had first caught my eye when I was flying over the small town on my way home. And somehow, the simple sight of two young teenagers attracted me. So I sat down on a nearby lantern pole and tuned into the unfolding tale.
She was tall, with curly blond hair and ever-laughing grey eyes. He was about one inch taller, his hair a warm chocolate brown and his gentle blue eyes the colour of midsummer skies. His stance was shy and awkward as he handed her a fiery red rose. Her cheeks slowly turned the same colour.
“T… th… thank you…” She stammered, dumbstruck but obviously very pleased.
“Y... you’re welcome…” His nervousness seemed to have lessened slightly as she seemed to like his gift.
“It’s beautiful…” She whispered, her eyes peering up into his.
“You are beautiful…” It left his mouth before he could control it and his cheeks turned just as red as hers.
She smiled shyly at him.
He offered his arm and they walked away, first in awkward silence, but after a while chatting animatedly.
I stopped following them, though I had the feeling I would see them again soon.
-
One day, some weeks later, I flew by a house when I heard a familiar voice that came floating out of a window. I perched on the window sill.
It was the girl from before, and I even spotted the rose, now black and wilted but still preserved in a tiny vase on her desk.
The girl was talking excitedly into her cell phone. “Yes, we are officially a couple now! He asked me out on a date tomorrow… Yes, we kissed!... No I don’t think so, my parents seem to be taking this pretty well… Okay, I’ll see you in school tomorrow. Bye…”
She took a seat at her desk, opened one of her school books and started working. But not before she had sneaked another peak at the rose.
-
About a month later, I passed that house again. I decided to rest a bit on the same window sill I had previously already occupied.
Just in time to hear the doorbell ring.
I spotted the boy, nervously fidgeting in front of the door. Then said door opened wide and the girl fell into his embrace. They shared a tender kiss before the girl pulled him in.
Some time later, they arrived in her room. The boy looked very surprised yet pleased at the same time when he spotted the rose, wilted as it might be, in the very centre of her room.
“You’re always with me.” The girl smiled softly at him.
I left them to their happiness, heading home for dinner.
-
It would be 7 years before I would see the couple again.
She was no longer a girl now, but a beautiful bride smiling radiantly at her soon-to-be husband offering her the wedding bouquet.
7 fiery red roses.
“One for each year you have given me your love…” He whispered in her ear, suddenly looking again like the shy boy he used to be.
She softly replied: “Thank you for always being with me…”
Then, the best man herded them into the waiting car, and I lost track of them again.
-
A few months later however I saw the girl-now-woman again, only this time she was crying, and her husband was nowhere to be seen.
She was sitting in a bare back garden, clutching to her chest something I recognized as a black, wilted once fiery red rose.
“I want you to always be with me… Please come back to me safely…”
And then I saw the back yard door swing open forcefully, and her husband came running out, smartly dressed in an air force uniform, calling out ‘my love’ from the top of his voice.
He scooped his surprised wife in a loving embrace, and she dissolved in tears.
“You came back, you made it back…” She kept stammering.
He kissed her eyes dry and whispered: “Your love made me strong enough to find the way back…”
-
Several years later, I flew over their house again, and found the once bare garden now filled with roses in all colours, shapes and smells.
But one rose bush in the very centre of the garden was most eye-catching, as it sported the largest and most beautiful fiery red roses I had ever seen.
A small child sat next to it, marvelling at the softness of the bright flowers. Suddenly tiny fingers encountered a hidden thorn and the toddler started sobbing.
The woman I had first met as a teenage girl so many years before knelt down and took the crying child in her gentle embrace, whispering words of comfort that swiftly dispelled the distress.
Her husband appeared behind her and ruffled the child’s dark blond hair, eliciting a watery smile. “Daddy…”
“My little girl…” He smiled down fondly at the toddler, who stretched out her tiny arms in a plea. He gave her a hug, and pulled his wife into the embrace as well.
Together they went into the house.
And a lone, black, wilted rose sitting on the kitchen window sill smiled.
-
Love is like a rose.
Of splendid sight and smell when young, but with
thorns hidden beneath all that sparkling beauty.
And as time passes by, the
thorns smooth out but also the flower’s outward beauty perishes.
Yet inside,
the rose still retains a reflection of its former beauty, seen only by those
who still treasure it.
It then becomes a symbol, and its reflection is
eternal.
The Game
My eye was drawn to him when he started sobbing. I was sitting in the chestnut tree near the school’s playground, preening my feathers, when I heard the quiet sniffles coming from beneath the tree. Curious I fluttered a couple of branches lower and peered through the foliage. He was small for his age, skinny and scruffy looking, with dishevelled dark hair, rumpled oversized clothes and glasses about 5 sizes too big perched precariously on his nose.
“Hey, Four-Eyes!” A voice cried out from the playground, where a group of his peers were busy playing a ball game.
The boy under the tree looked up and jittery wiped his hands over his face to remove the tear tracks present there.
“Wanna play ball?” The other, a kid with neatly cut golden blond hair swiftly approached, dribbling a basketball alongside.
Unexpectedly, he threw the ball with great force at the bespectacled boy, who was too surprised to even raise his arms quickly enough to avert the hard object.
The inevitable collision was very painful, but even more embarrassing was the sound of the other boys’ gleeful laughs ringing tauntingly in his ears as he fled the playground.
-
Of course, Ms Tannen, his class teacher immediately noticed something was wrong with her favourite pupil. If the tell-tale bruise on his cheek and the skewed glasses told her of the physical hurt, the haunted look in those deep blue eyes spoke even louder of the emotional turmoil wrecking havoc in the gentle soul beyond. She had originally intended to speak to him before class started, but as he insisted he was fine and her other pupils were starting to get impatient, she reluctantly moved on to the arduous process of teaching 10 year olds about values and morals.
As I listened in from the classroom window sill, she attempted to hold their attention with the story of the tightrope walker, who performed his amazing acrobatics under loud encouragement of an enthusiastic public.
“Do you think I can do it?” He asked them time and time again, and the audience screamed
“YES!”, and he pulled of ever more daring stunts.
Then he asked: “You think I can still do it with one of you sitting in this wheelbarrow?” and the circus tent became quiet, so quiet the tightrope walker nearly lost his balance…
The boy with his bruised skin and ego, Ms Tannen had called him Thomas, seemed to be listening intently, his blue eyes, glittering suspiciously with unshed tears, impossibly big behind overly large glasses.
Ms Tannen finished her lecture by saying: “You see how important the encouragements of others can be to reach your own achievements. Now, I’d like to assign each of you a partner for a little project we’ll be working on this week.”
To both their horror, Thomas and his blond assailant were paired together, by a fluke of faith or clever scheming of a fourth grade teacher we may never know…
-
Ms Tannen’s classes proved to be highly entertaining that particular week, so I made sure to miss none of them. Whereas outside the classroom both boys refused to even look at each other, inside they were forced to work together, for they both were anxious to get good grades.
By the end of the week, they hadn’t quite finished the assignment, so the blond popular kid, who I found out to be named Bruce, reluctantly invited geeky Thomas over on Saturday to finish the work. Thomas went, even more reluctant and so nervous he stumbled on the doorstep and fell straight into Bruce’s mother, Ms Grant.
However, Ms. Grant turned out to be one of the sweetest women I have ever seen. She gave the terrified kid a healthy dose of cookies, and every time she passed him, she ruffled his hair affectionately, all the while muttering under her breath about foster families needing to look better after their charges. It was also her who proposed the boys go outside and ‘shoot some hoops’ after their assignment was finally - and beautifully too, I must admit - done. Bruce seemed ready to protest - loudly -, but his mother’s stern stare kept his tongue in check.
So they went outside, and this time Thomas did catch the ball, and - at Bruce’s impatient prompting - threw it at the basketball ring. And scored. And scored again. And again…
Without any visible effort Thomas could mostly put the ball through the hoop from about any position. To say Bruce was slack-jawed would have been a major understatement. But to say they had found a common ground to become fast friends from that day on, would not.
-
I lost track of Thomas and Bruce for several years, until on a beautiful spring afternoon I heard many people cheering on a teenager apparently called Thomas Grant. I settled comfortable on a sun-bathed pole overlooking the basketball field below.
After a while, I managed to track down ‘Thomas Grant’ between the basketball players. He was tall, with dishevelled dark hair and laughing deep blue eyes that now viewed the world through contact lenses. Time, it seemed, had been favouring little Thomas, as had the mother-hen influence and good nature of Ms. Grant, now his adopted mom.
And of course, there was Bruce. Standing tall upright in the middle of the stands, he cheered the loudest for his adopted brother, uncaring about the curses thrown at him to sit down so other people might see something too.
The game was quite intense; with Thomas’s team just a few points away from a long-awaited victory and only few minutes left to play. The fact that some talent scouts were sitting in the audience only increased the level of tension to nearly unbearable.
The audience seemed to feel it weighing down heavily upon them and they quietened down. With ample seconds of game time left, only one goal separated Thomas’s team from victory now.
The last chance was given to Thomas and his hands felt suddenly sweaty as he caught the ball. The absolute silence from the audience spoke of their disbelief he could perform this particular trick and nearly made the ball slip from his hands.
But then, Bruce shouted at the top of his voice: “I believe in you!”. And other voices quickly added to an ever growing chorus of encouraging cheers.
Thomas focussed with all his might and threw the ball in one smooth move across the field. And he scored…
I managed to see him shoot an affectionate grin at Ms Tannen, now older but still holding a soft spot for one of her favourite pupils, before he was engulfed in a wave of enthusiastic supporters.
I didn’t see Thomas Grant in person the next time, many more years later, but on a large photo covering the entire front page of most newspapers. It appeared he had made himself an unusually successful career as a professional basketball player and had recently received a prestigious award in his honour.
Part of his word of thanks was printed below the picture: “I’d like to say thanks to my amazing audience, and especially to its three most loyal members, for believing in me and helping me achieve my dreams. To Ms Tannen, my mom and my brother, for not keeping silent. As long as you cheer on me, I won’t fall off the tight rope…”
-
Life is like a game. You can choose to stand by the sidelines or to join in. If you join the game, you may get hurt. But if you stay forever on the sidelines, too scared to move in, you’ll never know the glorious feeling of winning. For life has to be lived, in order to discover its greatest pleasures.