|
What the
World Needs Now What
the world needs now is
more ducks. Ducks
might enlighten us,
give us a new outlook, even a glimmer of hope.
Take the duck I spied in my Baltimore neighborhood. Walking beside a stream
while wallowing in my
woe-is-me widowhood, I looked up, and what did I see?
A duck!
In a tree! The
nerve, I sniffed,
apparently air and water to keep you aloft and afloat aren’t enough for
some
ducks.
Well, actually, they’re not, at least if you’re a wood
duck. Wood ducks
are squatters, who make
their homes in abandoned woodpecker holes. So the duck I saw was doing
what
came naturally, just hanging out on a limb. The
more I stared at her, the more I came to regard her as serendipity with
feathers, one that gave me fresh perspective, made me think that maybe
we all
should go out on a limb. Ducks,
for example, don’t let their crossed eyes and waddling gaits interfere
with
their love lives. With a friend from my bereavement group, I once took
a trip
through the American Southwest where she and I encountered high duck
drama. On
a clear lake high in Utah’s La Sal Mountains a female swam, all
coy-like,
behind two drakes paddling shoulder to shoulder best-buddy style; one
slightly
larger, but the other slightly slyer. Feigning weariness, he’d lag
behind his
friend and, oh so subtly, insert himself between his pal and the
female.
Then
the bigger drake, realizing he’d been duped, would take off, zooming
around the
lake in a fury. And then the smaller drake would take off. And then the female—talk
about your mallard
madness. And just
when their tortured
tableaux was growing tiresome, they flew away. Maybe to a mountaintop ménage à trios? Why
not?
Life is fleeting. Ask any widow.
Late
on a Friday afternoon, my friend and I flew back Baltimore to find that
her
battery was dead, so there we were, two tired widows with no way of
getting
home. But then the parking lot attendant came with jumper cables, and
while he
recharged the battery, I watched ducks.
A
drainage ditch between the parking lot and a highway made a perfectly
lovely
home for two mallards, swimming in a nonchalant zigzag pattern. The more I watched, the
more I admired how
those two were utterly committed to zigging while on the zig. The same went for when
they were on the zag. They
calmed me down. Put things in perspective: the battery would get fixed,
I’d get home. Even
might have time for a stroll
along the stream before dark. Who
knows what I’d see? Maybe
feathered
serendipity sitting in a tree. Patricia Schultheis is the author of Baltimore’s Lexington Market, published by Arcadia Publishing in 2007, and of St. Bart’s Way, an award-winning short story collection published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House in 2015. Her memoir, A Balanced Life, was published by All Things That Matter Press in 2018. She is a member of the Authors’ Guild and the National Book Critics Circle. http://www.pschultheis.net/
|
This author has enabled feedback from readers. Please feel free to contact him or her and provide comments. Scroll to the bottom of the page to do so.
|
