I Can Feel You Breath...Washing Over Me.

I've always been fascinated by birds of prey. My community is located just off the Southern Flyway which is essentially the big Interstate connecting the literal snow-birds of Canada to their winter destinations in the sunny South. It's not uncommon to see a flock of Canadian Geese wandering around the small pasture next door in the early Autumn mornings. Neither is it uncommon for a small family of red-tail hawks to make that same small farm their permanent winter home.

One particular bird has maintained a year-round residence somewhere nearby. We are of the opinion that this red-tailed beauty is about the same age as Ben and was born on Roper Mountain, which is less than a mile due South of our home and even closer to the NICU of the hospital where Ben spent his first three months. It is just an opinion but the fact that Mary Brady, Ben's first home-health nurse arrived for work one morning to find this young hawk perched high in the dogwood tree outside of Ben's bedroom window lends some merit to our thinking.

That particular morning Mr. Hawk was kind enough to calmly gaze at Mary's entrance to our home without fear or worry. Mr. Hawk remained statuesque and proud as he then probably heard Mary, a very quiet unassuming woman, scream bloody murder to the rest of us to quickly get to front windows of our recently sleepy restful abode and see the marvelous creature that threatened to pluck her eyes out.

There he stood, body facing his home on Roper Mountain, head and eyes turned 180 degrees in the opposite direction looking directly at me and my eye-boogered orbs. He gave a quick glance to the thumb-sucking red-headed thing wrapped around my thigh before he turned his head another 180 degrees to peer at the next window just in time to see towel-clad Joan dripping wet from her interrupted shower.

He looked down at Ben's bedroom window to give Mary one last wink and a grin (she swears to God it actually did that) before young hawk dove off it's perch into gust of wind, flopped his huge wings twice, and disappeared around the corner of the house. It was awesome!

On one occasion later that summer, Joan and I were lounging on our deck behind the house. Jessie was a fixture on her swing at the time. We joke that Jessie came out of the womb talking and hasn't stopped since. She even talks in her sleep...like me. As soon as the creak of the swingset's chain began it's rhythm Jessie from the top of her lungs launched into her favorite song, "Breath" by Faith Hill.

So there we were snickering at our young daughter's vocal abilities when this huge bird swooped out of nowhere across our backyard between us and our very small daughter and disappeared behind the row of cedars that separates our yard from Gillespie's farm. I successfully restrained Joan from swooping across the yard herself to rescue "the other white meat" from the eyeball plucking talons of the flying beast.

I said, "Just sit here for a minute and see what happens." So we did. The creaking of the swing continued. "I can hee you breet, whating ober me...I can hee you breet, whating ober me."

About two minutes later we saw it coming through the clutter of cedar branches. Taking the opposite course of his entry, the hawk flew about eight feet above the ground passing once again between us and our suddenly even smaller daughter. This time though we watched a bushy tail and a tiny pair of legs dangling from the eyeball plucking talons. So long Mr. Squirrel.

It was a few years later that I suddenly made a correlation between these birds of prey and a Higher Power. I took up the sport of hunting not long after Ben was born. Several friends suggested this would be a great way for me to get out of the house and away from the new pressures me and Joan were facing - and it was.

Now before you PETA folks and animal lovers get all upset with me I can honestly say I've only killed one "beast" during my hunting forays and the "thing" deserved it. If you've ever seen a wild turkey up close then you'll know what I'm talking about. Plus the damn thing scared the living shit out of me when it plopped down out of the tree I was snoozing against and gobbled some nonsense in my face. I don't care who or what you are, if you wake me up at the crack of dawn when I've not had my morning coffee and I have a shotgun in my hand you're going down. I digress.

I was sitting in my deer stand the morning of New Years Day 2001 doing what I always do when I'm deer-hunting: not seeing any deer. So my short attention span kicks in and I begin to marvel at the scene around me. And it is marvelous. The sun has crept to the tree-line to my back. The array of colors is spectacular. It is a cloudless morning and the sky is the most brilliant blue. It reminds me of the color of Jessie's pure innocent eyes. The green of the cedar and pine trees around me are of a pigment I can only imagine I could apply to my canvas. This is God's canvas. I am intruding upon His incredible landscape. I do not belong here but I cannot leave it either.

A screech interrupts my thoughts. And then I see Him. He is there. Sometimes so very high that I can barely see Him. A few minutes later He's just above the tree-line. If I'm still enough He might come close enough that I could reach out and touch Him. He continues to circle above His landscape upon an invisible thermal. And then He's gone.

I've had one other close encounter with what I believe to be Ben's guardian hawk. It was last fall. I remember rushing out the front door with my mind on some long-forgotten errand. Fiddling with the van keys I turned the corner of my house when my heart nearly stopped and I froze. I was staring face to face with a hawk; Ben's hawk. He was standing between the two Bradford Pear trees exactly where our hammock once hung. The hammock, a wedding gift to me and Joan, was always the destination after cutting the grass or trimming the hedges on a hot summer afternoon. The same hammock was the "more fun swing" for Jessie since she, Mom, Dad, and a slew of other dolls and childhood "friends" could all fit into it at the same time. And it was the same rope hammock that rotted into hundreds of pieces the winter Ben was brought home.

So here we were, me and Him just standing 10 feet apart. I don't think I took a breath for those few seconds before He grinned and winked at me (I swear to God he did that), picked up some object between his eye-plucking talons, flopped his wings twice and then disappeared over the Underwoods' fence. I turned and went back in to gather my composure. I told Vickie what had just happened and so the two of us went back out to see if we could figure out what the big bird had made off with.

It didn't take but a few seconds to identify what Mr. Hawk had already mostly devoured amongst rotted pieces of rope. Being the neighbor to a retired farmer provides plenty of fodder for doves escaping the larger fields that are popular hunting grounds in the autumn months. So much for that God and dove analogy. No shit.

Taking that huge step toward becoming a full-time artist has led me to some far from home places, particularly the several lonely and frustrating trips to Florida. There have also been some exciting and successful festivals in little towns and locales that most people pass by and never notice. Even though I felt comfortable in Atlanta, Georgia and Sarasota, Florida I would choose to visit Aiken, South Carolina or Banner Elk, North Carolina above those other places 100% of the time. Anyway, those traveling adventures all had one thing in common: I did a lot of talking to God. More specifically, whether it was a show somewhere down I-26 or up I-85 or on some two-lane road into the hills of Carolina I always said a prayer to keep my family safe while I was away and to grant me mercy to be able to return safely to see my loved ones a few days later. It never failed on any of those 28 trips during 2006. My prayer was answered and I looked for and always saw a hawk.

We see "our" hawk every now and then. In fact me and Vickie have seen it many times sitting atop the tall pine tree in Gillespie's field. He grooms His beautiful feathers and then silently studies the landscape around Him. His landscape.


Today, since we are continuing to experience spring-like temperatures, I walked around the corner to the school so I could walk home with Jessie. I was thinking about the past few days worrying about Ben. As I turned the corner onto the street that leads to the back entry of the school I looked up and saw four hawks. They were riding one of those late fall thermals that form on a warm afternoon. As I made my way down Birnham Court I watched one of them circle lower and lower right above me. I stopped and shouted, "Are you really Ben's guardian?" The hawk circled a few more times and then flew into the bright Sunlight. I could only see the other three now so very high that I could barely make them out.

As me and Jessie walked home I told her about seeing the hawks. We talked about how they fly and their huge wingspan. She stretched her arms out and began to run in a circle. "I wish I could fly like that, Daddy." I replied, "Me too, honey. Me too."

Jessie grinned and winked at me. I swear to God she did that!