BETTER...

BS"D


Okay, yesterday wasn't a total Murphy's Law kind if day - I did remember to send e-Mother's Day cards to my mum, my sisters, my aunt, Joel's mom & grandma, my nieces (yes, I'm a great-aunt!) & our rebbitzen as well as mommy-types from our shul.

Today was better. Got a late start due to the Horrific Day Which Will Never Be Mentioned Again, but after a good night's sleep, it all came out in the wash. I went for my walk after shachrit along the bike trail here & it was just gorgeous.

There were magpies! They are so beautiful! I remember this hardcover nature book put out by the CAA which my parents bought in 1975, after we moved to Victoria. I couldn't be parted from that book for all the tea in China. I used to sleep with it. In fact, it's still in my bookcase at home, to this day :)

Anyway, I digress. Not that it's bad to digress, but I ain't no Garrison Keillor. So the book was called "Outdoors Canada" & it was in that book I first saw a picture of a magpie. I wanted to know why, if they were members of the raven family, why we didn't have any on the Island (that would be Vancouver Island in BC-Speak). My parents couldn't answer me. Perhaps they had been so throughly caught up in their responsible adult lives that they had not noticed that we had no magpies...

So I didn't get to see a magpie until I was 11, on our first trip back to England, where my mum is from. I was enchanted. & then not again until my first trip to Norway at 21.

& here they were again, here in the desert. The light rain had left the ochre earth damp & smelling of fresh life. Everywhere were rainbow tumbleweeds of beige, grey, yellow...
Tiny desert flowers on spindly stalks poked out of the cracks in the ground & all over was this one magpie. So beautiful. I watched it negotiate the wind so skillfully, delicately. I wanted to come close to it where it landed near the edge of the trail, just to feel its presence, & yet secretly I wished it would shoo when I approached so I could ogle it's striking black, white & navy plumage. So I kept my head facing forward, so the bill of my ball cap would give this bird the impression that I wasn't taking it in out of the corner of my eye.

I marvelled at the spread of of its feathers.

On the way back, I caught sight of a red-winged blackbird in a eucalyptus. In-drawing.

After I showered & got ready, I packed up my tools & headed to the synagogue. I spent the next 9 hours patching holes & tears, re-inking broken letters & repairing seams. But at the end of all that time, I was done! YAY!
One thing, though: I decided to leave one letter, the last one which needed correction, for Joel, just so he could get the mitzvah.

Then I made sure he said a shehechiyanu :)