Visits with Crow

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

May I introduce my friend Crow?

We've been talking to each other for decades, which tells you something about whether I can differentiate one crow from another. It matters not. When my heart is open to a creature, all of their relations take shelter here.

I remember a child once placing her hand on mine at the swimming pool. I left it there, seeing she was uncomfortable in the water but uncertain whether she'd mistaken me for her parent. She looked up at me earnestly and smiled through a grimace. Nope. She just knew I was a safe one.

And so does Crow. Our conversations have been growing. She flies to the rooftop over my outdoor office, shouting her appreciation for the peanuts I left out.

She cleans my gutters with her shiny beak. Who knew all those dead leaves were up there? Crow brings her scrappy teenage crow-baby to breakfast. His feathers are not all in yet.

Leo is nonplussed and growls sometimes to show it. Crow soaks up praise he'd like a little more of himself. He's not convinced she's part of the family yet.

Miru sides with Leo, chattering loudly when Crow lands nearby. He's irritated by her confidence, but she's too big to concern herself with a little orange cat.

And so we make a blended-family with Crow, inviting her to the deck railing, sometimes putting Leo inside so she can eat in peace. We pick up Leo's dog bones so she doesn't suck the marrow out. That would be so annoying. Seda and I are the fulcrum of peace-keeping around here.

But who can resist a glossy black bird who pokes at the garden to find bits of her nest, flies away with tufts of Leo's trimmed fur or a dead nasturtium branch I've left for her?

There is joy in being wanted, isn't there? Who in your life has become family when you least expected it?