The Bernard Charles Show

As I toss and turn in my sleep about Oprah Winfrey giving a message to my class, a little unknown creature was stirring about above me in my bedroom ceiling. I managed to drift away from befriending Oprah and my eyelids flung open as soon as that animal flew right above me and onto my door frame. We always had encounters with animals and my mom keeps the animal kingdom very close to her heart. Hence all those camping trips and family vacations to the national parks. Yes, my family I guess you can say loves animals. No wonder why we have five dogs and a parakeet. Life’s little enjoyments I suppose.  Along with the family connection to the beasty world out there, we adore superstitions. More so my mother and I, but the kids have picked up on the freakiness too. Not saying WE are the freaks, I am just saying that the “coincidences” are a bit freaky. Well, two months ago, after I made my surprise visit to my mother for that wonderful Thanksgiving surprise, we did have two parakeets, but the white one died. Before that, we had a yellow-butter cockatiel named Popcorn, and we also had a Guinea pig. They both died at the same time. So this white bird dying on us wasn’t really so far from reality, but it was white and it died in our house so that incident leeched onto my mother’s spiritual self. But because we are aware of our thinking processes, she and I both know how to combat such metaphysical intuitions like these, we simply don’t think about it or in anyway jinx ourselves or the ones we love.

I gingerly moved my arm and hand to reach for my phone to not scare off this little brown sparrow on my door, and I captured a picture and the sound it made scared it off and it flew right down the hall. So I quickly got up and went down the wooden hall and took this picture:

Pretty snazzy if I do say so myself. Well, it then flew right out and back to my bedroom door and decided to be funny and fly right at me. I ducked faster than a prairie dog and yelled out to anyone who was downstairs getting ready to go to school “It flew at me! It flew at me!” But no one came, so I had the bright idea of capturing the little fella and taking ‘em to my mommy. So I went into my brother’s room nearby the bathroom and grabbed his Spiderman blanket and proceeded to open the bathroom door ever so slowly. There it was hopping around on the window sill wanting to escape this human infested contraption. I then raised my arms as high as I could reach and tried to block the bird from leaving the window. I reached over and cupped the tiny sparrow into my blanket protected hands and failed. Yes, I failed at getting him into my hands more than once. Why you ask? Well because I did not want to hurt him so I tried once more with more confidence and then I succeeded! I opened my shaking hands of thrill and excitement just a little to let the bird have some air and then I proceeded downstairs following the jovial sound of early morning conversations that my mother, my brothers and their friend were having.

This awakened sly cat with a grin from ear to ear bearing the successful capture of a wild bird in his claws entered the room. There my mom was with her blonde locks of hair mimicking the light of the room as she played with her blue robe talking to my brothers, dressed in the same sky blue shirt and khaki uniforms like two goofy twins along with their friend that can only be described as a disshoveled tea-mouse with his Einstein like hair going every which way. I walked in at the right time! I tippy-toed over to my mom in such delight and told her “Here you go.”

She countered me around the kitchen island and said “No.”

“It’s not a bat!” I replied eagerly waiting for her dramatic exit.

She smiled and looked at me as if she was fine with surprises again. She leaned forward in curiosity and then I knew she was ready so I opened my clutch a little wider and shouted “I caught a bird!”

In our family we believe in superstitions like some people believe in religion. But, we awe at the wonderment of life’s coinky-dinks as my mom calls it because life’s magic is so much cooler than being told what to do by an authority figure. Sometimes painting the roses red instead of white is much healthier than battling it out with a royal highness that can’t see the true meaning of the heart in the first place. So my mom let the bird go and we all washed our hands for safety reasons, but it has certainly started out my day with an adventure.

The superstition for a bird flying into your home is foretelling an important message.