In The Moments Before Flight

Life is filled with simple joys, moments of clarity that are gone in a flash. I have to remind myself to stop, take them in, letting them become part of me and my memory. Simple moments of pleasure with my teenage son are few and far between. His time is precious and divided between friends, work, and school. He's almost eighteen, ready to burst onto the scene and be his own man - so family takes a backseat. That is just as it should be, as it was for me when I was eighteen, itching to leave my parents house and all I'd ever known far behind me.

So when he came bounding around from the other side of the Santa Monica Pier I had to smile because he was smiling in that wide-eyed way that gets lost as we grow older. He held a napkin in his hands. Inside the napkin was cold french fries from lunch earlier in the restaurant at the end of the boardwalk.

"Mom, you've got to see this!" He motioned for me to follow.

I'll admit that there are times when I am too busy, too caught up in my own head to notice, to stop the inertia of the day and just follow my children to "go see this cool thing". It's a painful flaw that I'm working to correct. This time we were on vacation. I was relaxed and I saw his excitement radiate across the space between us. "What is it?" I laughed.

"Just come on."

He led the way around the clapboard arcade building to the other side of the pier and looked out over the Pacific ocean for a moment. His face and body relaxed as he breathed in the salt air. He pointed to a group of sea gulls trotting across the sand below us, opened the napkin and took out a fry. "Watch this."

He threw the greasy morsel high into the air. The birds took off like jets. One lucky bird caught the fry in his mouth right in front of our faces. My son started laughing - laughing like he did as a small boy, the half-chuckle, half-cackle that always accompanied the opening of birthday presents.

"Oh my gosh! This is really something!" I yelled as more birds swarmed over our heads. They swooped and hovered close enough to count the leathery toes hanging between the loose webbing of their feet. I saw their stained belly feathers. I'd never noticed how their slick bodies glistened in the sun. I marveled at the miracle of flight and imagined for a moment that I joined them in the sky. I think my son wished to be airborne, too. For a moment he looked lighter, brighter, luminescent.

When the last french fry was thrown and caught, all the birds, except one, retreated to the water's edge. The lone gull perched on the railing in front of us. We looked at him. He stared at us. More food, anything? He waited. We watched silently, afraid to break the spell. Then he was gone and so was the moment of connection to something bigger, more important than our daily routine.
My son tossed the napkin in the trash and leaned on the rail, in the exact spot where the bird had just been. He stared across the beach to the mountains far away. I studied him as I'd studied the bird, silent and still, afraid to breathe.