 A mourning dove called outside my window this morning, transporting me to my childhood home, where I am leaning back on my elbows in the grass of our front yard. It is 6:00 on a late June evening, and I have spread myself out in the vast sprawl of green grass that sweeps down a hillside in front of my parents’ home (pre-cellphone, pre-ticks). I hear the mourning dove’s haunting call, and it stirs something sad and magical inside of me.
I didn’t know about mourning yet at age 7, so I puzzled over the inapt name – why do they call it a morning dove, I wondered, since it always sings its song in the evening? Accompanying the dove’s plaintive coos every evening were the distant tower bells that played hymn-like songs at 6:00pm. The Reader’s Digest building’s headquarters was a mile from my house, and the sound of bells wafted easily from their hilltop tower, over the trees, to child me, basking in the bliss of a beautiful summer day, the keening dove, and the music of bells. Memory is tantalizing, evocative, a gift. I hear a dove, and there I am in a romantic childhood swoon, listening to an orchestra of sound, feeling the cool blades of grass on my arms and legs, staring at the clouds, my only concern a puzzlement of words. Thank you, little dove.
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 Our eighth grandchild was born on June 4th. Welcome, sweet Peter! For a long time now I have observed that birth and death, though they seem like opposites, have surprising similarities:
I’ve been a hospice volunteer for four years now, and I have sat vigil over dying family members. One of the hardest parts of the process is its unknown timeline. Might she die tonight? Should I cancel my travel plans for next week? How long will this take? Will we be here forever? You are perpetually braced for impact, with no clear endpoint. Last Friday, moments after Jonathan and I arrived home from an 8-day trip at 6:30 in the evening, we got a call from our daughter, whose home we’d just left 2 hours earlier: “I think I’m in labor. I’m sorry - this timing is terrible!” Her doctors told her she might be in the hospital that night, or at least over the weekend. I fetched Daisy from the kennel, got back in the car, and headed two hours back down the highway to stay in my daughter’s house. T and C put their son to bed at his cousins’ house, and I arrived at their home by nine o’clock. Then - contractions slowed to a halt. Hospital trip was called off. Mom- and Dad-to-be were back home. For the next four and half days, we wondered every night if baby would arrive overnight, so I stayed, just in case. My pregnant daughter and her husband woke up every morning to another unplanned extra day at home. What to do…? Fill the time with chores, activities, walking, curb-walking, rest. But we were poised on the brink of something that kept not happening. Induction appointments were bumped down the road every morning – call at 4:00, call at 6:00, call tomorrow morning – until it seemed the baby would never be born. During those suspended days, I realized why the experience felt familiar. Something big was going to happen. We wanted to be ready to face this big thing. Stomach flutters of worry made sleep a challenge – what might happen? What might go wrong? Will I be ready? Will I handle what I need to handle okay? Will it be today? All these things I had felt while watching over my Mom, then my Dad during their last days (weeks!) of life. They are full-feeling times, replete with bursting anticipation. Quotidian preoccupations slip away, but they also tug at you. Life continues on the sidelines. There’s weeping, hand-wringing, laughter, resignation, peace, frustration, and acceptance – all control out of our hands. Maybe these bookends of life - birth and death - are a reminder that control is always an illusion. We just have to go along for the ride. But beautiful things happen all along the way, at both ends and in the middle. You surely guessed this story has a happy ending. Baby Peter came on his own schedule at last, swiftly and with little fuss. His blinking gaze holds me with a curious, clear-eyed purity. Everything he absorbs into his sensory bank is a dazzling discovery, and he is a little miracle, a new chapter’s beginning, a previous chapter’s ending (where did that little soul come from?). And my heart is filled with wonder, wherever this is, somewhere along life’s extraordinary orbit. |
AuthorRobin Clifford Wood is an award-winning author, poet, and writing teacher. She lives in central Maine with her husband, loves to be outdoors, and enjoys ever-expanding horizons through her children, grandchildren, and granddogs. Archives
June 2026
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