Waking up is the hardest part.
Not the leaving sleep part, but the part where the inside your dreams is abandoned for whatever is happening outside your body.
When I found myself warm on one side, cold and wet on the other... it wasn't unexpected. The shallow scraped out hollow was warm where I had laid. My backside was pressed firmly against the ewe, who was also solidly asleep. My eyes were just about ground level, scanning across the rough dirt. There was a frost last night. Not brutal cold but still cold.
Every warm bone in my body argued with the chilled side that faced out of the byre. There was work to be done. In a few hours, the sun would be up. But first it was time to go and talk to the birds. I had been mocked for talking with the birds. Folks generally didn't get it. The conversation went both ways. In the hours before the dew saw the first rays of sunshine, we would gather near the hedge. Some mornings it was just a few of us, the birds and I. Other mornings it would be so crowded with everyone trying to get a word in edgewise.
I sat down atop a flat stone near the hedge, forgetting for a moment how cold it had been last night. The rock was quick to remind me. With my eyes closed, feeling for the last stillness of the not-quite-broken-dawn, I reached out. It was really nothing more than listening with more than my ears. Holding the silence close while spiderwebs sparkled and held nothing more than diamonds in their webs, I waited.
The first warm beam of light came over the hill gently. I felt it first as the leaves behind me turned to listen too. Even the flat rock craned to listen.
Waiting is always the hardest part. There is always that fear that today will be the day when no one comes. The day when the birds act like people. Worse, maybe today they will mock me too. I never really understood why people in town felt like they had to tease me. If someone had told me that they couldn't hear what birds and trees were saying, why didn't they tell me that? So instead I assumed innocently, that other kids would want to share their stories they had heard from the birds and leaves and stones. Maybe other kids' parents told them not to talk to birds or maybe they were afraid of the things the trees had to say. I just didn't know.
By the time the light mist had started to lift, the smallest of birds had found a spot to perch beside me. At first, they were content to just stare across the field with me. We exchanged a few looks back and forth, but after each glance, we would return to looking out into the wet grass of the field. A sharp chirp from behind me made me turn around. A chipmunk had decided to come join in the conversation but will still trying to work up the courage to explain everything they had seen this morning.
MORE TO COME -
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