"Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality
was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world was full of
signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them.
Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother’s shelves are full of
family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day
of hoarfrost and smoke. A cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds,
lightning strikes, comets, eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind
distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is forever, though you are
only a blink in its course."
~Helen Macdonald
H is for Hawk
This memoir took its hold on me tonight. Macdonald's writing is as keen as a hawk's eye and as sharp as each talon. Just this short passage touches on most of the things that both break and fill my heart every day.
