After nine days in the hospital, I sit in lamentation in my usual spot on the sofa watching life outside the window. A red squirrel runs circles around the empty wood-and-mason-jar squirrel feeder on the deck table. Wait. Not empty. One of our many mourning doves is inside. Facing the bottom of the jar. Stuck. Pecking furiously. I stiffly make my way outside, take hold of the jar, gently shake it, and, grateful to gravity, the bird falls with wings aflutter onto the table. Before flying off, it hesitates. Looks me squarely in the eye. And I mouth, “thank you.”
Marni Hochman is a Michigan-based ESL teacher, sometimes writer, and outdoor-critter enthusiast, learning to live with the autoimmune disease ulcerative colitis.