The Cult of the Red Tail Hawk

I have this consistent image of being settled in our new home in Cincinnati, everything in its place.
I see myself going to a store and finding a cedar chest.
In it, I will put Tikva's things...
The box that tells the story of her life.
The album of photos I made.
The shrine I made for Day of the Dead.
And other things too...
The nightgown I wore when I birthed my second child.
The clothes I wore when I held her for the last time, outside.
Maybe the shirt I wore only once on the day of her funeral.
Maybe, eventually, the sweater Michelle gave me which I wore almost every day during the second half of my pregnancy,
Throughout the foggy cold summer at UCSF,
And so much of the time since.
Maybe also the scarf Laurie made me that I wore that night and so many days since.
When they get holes in them, I will add my Miss Piggy socks,
The ones Dave gave me for my birthday on the day of Tikva's surgery.
I'm wearing them now, my Miss Piggy socks.
They make me smile, thinking of the love of my husband and the hope I felt that day.
It makes me a little sad, too, but I still wear them.
Maybe I'll add the hamsa necklace I wore during most of her life,
Which I love but haven't had the heart to wear since.
Maybe I'll put my journal in there, too, when it is filled.
A printout of all my blog entries since Tikva was conceived.
My I'm with Tikva t-shirt.

Her story, her mighty life, all together.

I have another consistent image...
It is of a beautiful wall in our new home,
And all the homes that will follow.
A wall away from direct sunlight,
Where I can hang Tikva's prayer flag quilt,
Where it won't lose its brightness from the rays of the sun,
But still be lit beautifully by indoor light.
Next to the quilt will be the photos of Tikva that I am waiting to have framed until we get to Ohio.
The big one of her peering out at the camera just a few weeks before she died,
Which is a still I made from a video Dave took while holding her...
Her big brown eyes so wide, so penetrating.
And some smaller ones of the three of us with her - our daughter, our sister.
Our beloved.
I see this wall following us in all our homes for the rest of our lives,
Perhaps following Dahlia too once Dave and I are gone.

I have these images sometimes of my grandchildren and great grandchildren
Opening the cedar chest way in the future
And looking slowly through Tikva's things,
One by one.
Getting to know this baby aunt and great aunt they never knew
But will surely know.

On the plane to Las Vegas last week, Dahlia told the woman sitting next to us,
My sister died.
I don't think the woman heard, and I didn't push it.
She tells people about Tikva a lot.
She talks to us about her a lot.
She's not stuck... she's just integrating,
Figuring out how it all fits, probably understanding in some deep place that this is something she will always carry too,
Just like me and Dave and everyone in our family.
We stand by her on her journey of understanding, patiently.

Life is juicy, messy, crude, and beautiful... all together.
I don't think we can shelter our children from life.
But we can be there with them to explore it together.

The morning before Dave and I went back to visit UCSF a few weeks ago,
I went for a cup of coffee with sweet Amy.
While we were talking, I glanced over at a computer that was sitting on a table across from us,
Open to a photo of a bird, huge wingspan stretched, coming head-on at the camera.

I joke about our Cult of the Red Tail Hawk, and how my friends have slowly become believers.
The Red Tail has followed us closely since the weekend before Tikva was born,
When Dave witnessed one swooping out of the sky and capturing a pigeon in mid air just a few feet away from where he stood.
I saw the Red Tail fly by my labor room window the afternoon before Tikva was born.
Red Tail flew by twice the day of Tikva's surgery.
Red Tail has been so close to us since Tikva died.
I found a Red Tail feather when I walked in the woods of Mt. Parnassus the morning I escaped yoga class, crying.
The day of the March for Babies, Red Tail visited me twice close up,
And Laurie, who was with me, said, "Now I get it."

So that morning at the coffee house with Amy, as I looked at this photo,
I knew before asking that it was a Red Tail Hawk.
I got up to talk to the guy whose computer it was and asked, What kind of bird is that?

It's a Red Tail Hawk. I photograph them.

Of course you do, I thought to myself.
How could it be any other way?

Amy got up to join us as he showed me his website and the hundreds upon hundreds of the most incredible photos he has taken of the Red Tail Hawks of San Francisco. This incredible artist, Walter Kitundu, is a MacArthur Fellow and also a musician, and he happens to belong to the Cult of the Red Tail Hawk too. No joke, this guy is deeply connected to the Red Tail like Dave and I are. He knows which bird is which, where they live, what their behaviors are, and he captures the moments of their days with some of the most gorgeous photographs I have ever seen of any living creature.

I didn't go into Tikva's story when I told him how much I feel connected to the Red Tail, but I did ask if I could put his website on my blog.

And then this happened: Amy, who stood next to me as Walter showed us some of his hawk photos, said, That's my house!

As if there hadn't been enough magic already, she had spotted the ornate roof of her house in one of his photos, Red Tail perched on top of it. It was, indeed, her house, and this particular bird, named Patch, lived in the park across from where she lives.
Of course.
How could it be any other way when Tikva is involved?

Walter told me that in a few weeks, baby Red Tail Hawks would have hatched at Sutro Heights and I might be able to spot them there.
Sutro Heights is one of my favorite places in San Francisco,
Reminding me of the sweet years Dave and I lived next to Ocean Beach,
Taking walks there together, and then with Dahlia when she was a baby.
We went there yesterday, in search of Baby Red Tails.
We didn't see any, probably because there were too many people everywhere on a sunny day,
But it was so beautiful up there, and smelled so good.
We just sat and looked out at the ocean,
And I felt how much I am going to miss its infiniteness when we are landlocked in Ohio for four years.




I felt a deep love and gratitude for this magnificent place that has held us on this difficult journey.

We left some hope and love a few weeks ago in the garden at UCSF where Tikva breathed her last breaths.
I could feel her presence in the wind as we returned to this place again.
A new little baby with brown hair slept in an isolette in Tikva's spot in the ICN.
We hugged Tom, her doctor, and he remembered how transcendent it had felt to be in the garden with us that night.
We ate chocolate in Stephanie the social worker's office one more time, remembering Tikva's mighty existence.
The young receptionist at the ICN desk asked me how my daughter was doing,
Not knowing that she had died because she rarely had her shifts when we'd been there.
She didn't make it, I replied, but thanks for asking.
I started to cry and buried my face in Dave's chest.
He told me later how gracefully I'd handled that.

There's no place for me there anymore, Dave said.
He's right. Our daughter isn't there anymore.
But the tape that hung up her prayer flags still marks the walls in the back bay of the west wing,
Too high for anyone to take it down without standing on a chair.
One of her nurses pointed this out, and I smiled.
Even though hundreds of babies have come through the ICN since August 7, 2008,
I think a precious part of all those hearts Tikva touched with always remember her.

I get stuck sometimes in frustration,
Feeling like one of those t-shirts that reads,
My friend went to Paris and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
My sentiment reads more like,
I had this amazing child and loved her unconditionally for 2 months, and now I have to be satisfied with this huge life experience and the magic of regular hawk sightings.
I really just wanted a second child, healthy and alive and keeping me up at night and just beginning to walk.
When I sat on the beach in Sinai, wondering if I was, indeed, pregnant and worried about the twinges I felt near my right ovary, unable to settle completely into the sweetness of possibly being pregnant, but still incredibly excited...
It was not a huge life experience that I was anticipating, but another child joining our family for years to come.
You just never know what you're gonna get.

At preschool they say, You get what you get, and you don't get upset.
Well, you can get upset, but you still get what you get.

Dave is right, I grew in a way I never could before knowing Tikva.
I'm still learning from her with every day.
And...
And I miss my Baby Girl.
And I would give back everything I've learned to have her in my arms again.
And I long for the purpose and the joy and the raw clear love I felt every minute of every day she lived.
And I hunger for the feeling of her in my arms, her smell and her softness and her gaze into my eyes.
And I am scared of how it will feel to leave this place where her story unfolded.
And I worry that there won't be any Red Tail Hawks in Ohio.

On my last of four visits to the headstone company over the last few weeks,
I left feeling so peaceful and good after watching Danny, their main sculptor,
Carve the stencil that will create grasses on the side of the headstone,
Grasses that look like they are blowing in the wind
While they are pointing upwards toward the sky,
From the Source of the earth to the infinite Source.
I pictured the grasses in my mind's eye before we ordered the stone,
And I needed their help to get them just right,
To get the whole stone just right.
Dave and I chose all the fonts,
Unique ones, pretty ones, ones that flow and are sweet and beautiful,
Like our daughter.
It had to be perfect, and Henry and Pierre and Danny have been very patient with me, ensuring that it will be.
That's what you do when there isn't much more you can do for your child.
You create something beautiful for her.
I know it is more for us than it is for her, but still...

Tikva's prayer flag quilt is pure magic.
Every time we've worked on it, new sparks of beauty have been lit.
Now there is embroidery, thanks to Laurie's inspiration,
And all of the flags are sewn together in a circle,
Thanks to Elizheva, my quilting midwife.
Last weekend with my girlfriends, I wore the quilt like a poncho,
Enveloped in Tikva love.
I see myself finding a bubbe in Cincinnati to help me finish the quilt,
Because there is still quite a ways to go.
But boy is it beautiful already.
Of course.
How could it be any other way?


In the weeks, months and years ahead I want to be like this guy...
Peaceful, calm, smiling, laughing, remembering that I don't need to be so serious all the time,
Even if life is serious business and I am a serious girl here to do serious work this time around.
Dave keeps reminding me that good times are ahead, and he has noticed that each time I look at him both with belief and a cynicism that good times are really truly possible.
Sometimes I really believe him from the bottom of my heart.
To be honest, I know that there is goodness ahead, peace, calm, smiles, laughter.
It's just taking me some time to feel something other than, I'll believe it when I see it.
But I am more of an optimist than a cynic, even if I am a bit of a Chicken Little and Dave is my sweet Pollyanna.

We went to an old Universal Studios-like western town near Las Vegas the other day with Dahlia and some friends.
They had a petting zoo and some hammy melodrama about cowboys.
They had a pretend cemetery with some make-believe headstones with funny epitaphs.
This one caught my eye, poignantly realistic, especially for those times.



One more thing...
I am madly deeply totally completely in love with Dahlia...




Thank God for Dahlia.