Page 133 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

ruby shards of cracked glass into the Gothic arches over my head. Myriad evergreen sprays of pine,

hemlock and fir provided sharp contrast and adorned every corner of the church. This display of

riotous color acknowledged and honored my father’s life on a level that I couldn’t comprehend in a

rational way — much the way the sight of the male cardinal, dressed in his scarlet coat and cap, had

affected me by appearing after my father’s death.

A year later, at the end of October, another crisis struck; I was forbidden to see my only grandchild, a

thirteen-­‐month old baby I adored. Stunned by the cruelty, I fought back. To allow our difficult — and to

me, baffling — mother-­‐son issues to poison a third generation felt ethically unjust; I took my oldest son

to court in order to gain visitation rights. On the night the court date was set for the following May, I

received news that a second grandson would be born in a couple of months. The next day, a male

cardinal briefly materialized at dawn; I was struck by the appearance of another of these “red” birds at

the family crossroads of life and death.

On the February day that Cameron was born, a buck still wearing his antlers appeared in the field,

walked over to a large fir tree, and lay down beneath it. I stared as a blossoming white moon cast her

silver shadows around him and the tree. The biblical words “and the lion shall lay down with the lamb”

materialized in the air, and it seemed to me at that moment that the snow bled cardinal red.

The day before I lost the court case, I heard the melodious whistle of the male cardinal singing to his

mate. As I rushed out the door to locate the bird, a heron flew towards me from out of the swamp,

stopping me in my tracks. Then came another and another; so many of these normally solitary herons

flew over my house that day that I lost count of them. How could I forget the decapitated heron I had

found just before my father died? I never did see the cardinals, and their song ceased abruptly. My

youngest son testified against me. I dimly recognized that I had been cast in the same role as my

father, that of the unworthy parent. I didn’t know it then, but I would be forbidden to see either of my

grandchildren for almost twenty years. By responding to injustice with a court case, I gave my children

and their grandmother (my mother) all the ammunition they needed to expel me from my own family,

which they did promptly, using the sword of silence as the weapon of betrayal.

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