When is a hawk like a writing desk?

Often, while I sit alone at my desk in the morning, checking my e-mail or writing a note to myself, a shadow streaks by, reflected in the glass desktop. I always look up too late to see the hawk slip past my window. Other times I hear the scream – a razors edge sound that seems to echo in my inner ear. While walking across base, I sometimes stop to watch them glide. They circle like the skater boys that keep the skate park spinning after school. The ride looks effortless. But it is more than envy that keeps me looking up.

My cousin died unexpectedly last March. It seemed to be the time for tragedy. Mothers, cousins, priests, friends – everyone was dying – at least that’s how it seemed at the time.

My mother and I were in the car, driving from the house of a grieving friend the home of our grieving family when she asked me, “What do Buddhists believe happens when you die?”

There are lots of answers to that question it depends on the area, the sect and the person you ask. Part of mine involved reincarnation. My explanation was a little shaky but I think mom got the gist of it.

“So Nicky could be – a hawk?”

I don’t remember if she had a reason for that particular comparison. But at the time I smiled that not-quite-free-of-the-shadow-of-death smile we had all been using lately. “Yeah, or …”

The conversation continued but that comparison stuck with me. Today, while walking to the NEX, I stopped to watch the hawks skating over the empty grade-school playground. There were at least eight or ten of them. I wondered which one was my cousin, or if all of them were. I wondered where he had gone and where he was going – and if he remembered us.

Do I really believe my cousin is a hawk now? No – not really.

But every time the shadow of one flickers on my desk I think of him. And is there really any difference?


I leave you today with this quote from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carol "Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."