Broken Birds

          I spent most of my childhood collecting things.  There were the usual things I suppose, different colored rocks that I would stumble across in the backyard or intricately detailed seashells from a summer vacation spent on the beach.  However, one of the things that I collected disturbed my parents far more than the gallons of seashells that took up valuable closet space.  These things were stray animals. 
          I was six years old when I stumbled upon my new hobby.  I can remember every detail of that day so clearly that it could have happened yesterday.  My family's house sat on a hillside up a long winding road that was flanked on both sides by trees that were so tall and old that God himself must have planted them.  They formed a thick canopy over the actual road that grew thicker and thicker the further you traveled.
          Everyday my mother would walk my older brother and me down to the end of the road to catch the school bus and be waiting for us when it was time to get back off.  My mother would guide us through the canopy, past the neighbor's houses, shielding me away from Mrs. Collins and her big black dog, Butch, who was always in a terrible mood when we walked past.   He would pull, growl and strain his chain all the while slobbering and barking up a storm while we ran to the other side of the street to avoid being eaten.
          Butch was the biggest, meanest dog you could imagine.  The whole neighborhood called him “Satan.”  I don’t use that term loosely, trust me, but Butch definitely deserved the title.  My Dad would tell us stories of how Butch would eat our fingers if we wandered too close…or if we refused to clean our rooms, eat our vegetables or generally vexed him too much when he was watching television. 
          After school one day, my brother and I stepped off the bus, but my mom was nowhere in sight.  After carefully weighing our options on whether to wait patiently on my mother or risk missing an afternoon of cartoons, we decided to make the trek to our house.  We justified our decision on the fact that our mother was being incredibly insensitive to not only our schedules, but also to the television station itself.  After all, there would be a lot of folks out of work if kids started missing afternoon programming because of absent-minded mothers.
            Crossing the street while just beginning the voyage home, I heard a muffled chirping sound--faint and barely audible coming from what would be a fallen nest hidden behind a trash can.  Since my brother could not be less interested in what was occupying my attentions, I gently and carefully stuffed the nest and its newborn resident into my coat pocket, being extra careful, right before my mother rounded the corner and scolded us for crossing the street alone.
            I stood patiently while my mom yelled at my older brother and reminding him of all the horrible men walking around in the world just waiting to abduct two little boys that wouldn’t follow their mother’s advice.  She gave us the same speech whenever the opportunity arose and I assumed that the only reason she ever watched the local news was to provide her additional proof that she would then use to keep us inline. While my mother stood wringing her hands in frustration, I couldn’t wait to get back home and nurse my new pet back to health.
            Every day I fed the baby bird squiggly worms and other backyard creatures that I imagined were tasty treats.  My parents began to wonder why I spent so much time in my room that week, but I always came up with an excuse, confident that it was totally believable. After a week, I came rushing home and found my baby bird swaddled in my lower sock drawer motionless and hard as a brick pack.  Even at six, I was prone to histrionics.  I began to wail and cry, throwing myself to the floor, understanding now, that there is no such thing as overreacting to a child.  My mother rushed into my bedroom and saw my little baby bird cupped in my hands and after my sobbing subsided, I told her the entire story.  I was prepared for a lecture on the inherent dangers of bringing potentially rabid birds into her house, but instead, she just scooped me up and held me close until I cried myself to sleep.
            Throughout the rest of my childhood, I repeatedly brought orphaned and abandoned critters into my mama’s house and hid them.  Some were lost, some were hurt and broken.  Most of them died, but there were a few that I was able to care for and nurse back to health.
            This pattern continued into adulthood, but it wasn’t fuzzy squirrels or tiny birds that I swaddled up in my sock drawer—it was guys.  They were the broken creatures that I found and was confident I could fix.  I could heal them and take care of them, and in return, they would love me.
            I see this happening now in the lives of a few of my friends and I want to tell them the lesson that took me too long to learn.  Be careful of those people that you take home and attempt to mend, patiently and selflessly swaddling back to health…most of the time, it is your heart that gets broken.