Auspicious

I've been feeling weepy for the first time since Mom's death. This afternoon I must leave for London, and am overtaken with sadness. Why must I feel sad? Fear would make more sense: fear that Dad's operation will not go smoothly tomorrow. Is sadness an omen? I don't believe in omens.

Tomorrow is Inauguration Day in the United States. Issa (Jane Siberry) writes in her blog that inaugurare means to take omens from the flight of birds, and to consecrate or install when said omens are favourable.

I haven't seen or heard a single bird today, not in walking out, sweeping off the car, driving to the library, or coming in here to meet a friend and write for a blessed while. The universe sends no word about the future.

If the looked-for words boded ill, what good would it do? I could warn him not to take the surgery, at least not tomorrow. Maybe angioplasty would be better after all. It would not make sense if I told him, "I saw thirteen starlings." I could refuse to go to London, go to bed instead. What good would that do? I wouldn't have dinner with him tonight, and how I would regret it!

What if the universe sent something auspicious, like a cedar waxwing; what good would that do? I already have enough good omens, as life goes: the fondness and kind regard of friends, the beautiful intelligence of my daughters, the intimacy of a gentle man. Sometimes I fail to take enough comfort in these things, so what will a painted bird in a frosty tree do that love cannot? Except teach me to cling to superstition?

What am I getting at? Only that I must draw what solace is available to me already, that I must find sufficience in my life and self, that I must be content in uncertainty and the possibility of loss. I cannot fend off sadness or fear. I cannot reason them away. They are inherent to my irrational, self-preserving flesh. "Courage is not the absence of fear" (Ambrose Redmoon), and joy is not the absence of suffering.

I must go away for a while. Most likely I'll return home and life will return to normal around the beginning of February.

My words are like a flock of birds, black starlings whirling in formation on the page. We each have a wide sky of wisdom and foretelling within ourselves. I will accept and let these auguries guide me out of meaninglessness.

Bizarre

I had just finished packing my bag and was ready to go out the door when Dad phoned. He had just finished his pre-op interview; at the end the doctor told him, unfortunately two emergencies had come up and the operation must be postponed. So my uncle is driving them home again (two hours) and we're back to not having a date. Probably sometime in February.

I asked Dad if he was disappointed.

He said he was about fifty-fifty: "I'm just as glad to go home."

Regardless of what I wrote this morning, this is not what I wanted to happen.