Turtle Progress

I went to see the new Pixar movie Up with my boyfriend yesterday. Helium balloons, a lovable curmudgeon, a boy scout, a talking dog—what could be sad about any of that?

Within 20 minutes of the opening credits, hot tears were sliding from beneath my 3-D glasses, pouring down my cheeks in a torrent.

I’m not a movie crier. Did you see The English Patient? I did. And when 90% of the theater was snuffling loudly into their tissues by the end, I was merely . . . incredibly bored. Is this thing over yet?

So, I’m not a movie crier as a rule. But the thought of true loneliness makes me weep. If you’ve seen Up, you can figure out what early sequence made me cry fairly easily. I don’t want to give the movie away for those who haven’t seen it, so I won’t go into details here.

What I will say is: at some point, every person we love will leave us; or we will leave them. Whether this is through death or some less clear-cut division, we will be taken from each other.  Sometimes I truly feel that I can’t bear it.

Cheery, aren’t I?

* * *

After the movie, we drove home. Coming in from the house, we saw a little bird sitting unmoving on the ground a few feet from the curb, underneath a shade tree in the front yard.

“I think he’s dead, honey,” my boyfriend told me gently. “I’ll move him in a little bit.” He steered me indoors.

But when I went back outside a little while later, I saw the bird had moved slightly. It was wobbling, staring confounded up at the tree. Its legs were too long for its small body, and its wing feathers still had downy fluff clinging to them in places.

I called an animal welfare hotline that told me the bird was probably a fledgling.

“They learn to fly from the ground up,” the woman said. “Their parents watch from the tree above. This is probably normal.”

I shifted back and forth on my feet, watching the bird staring upward with tiny blank eyes, wondering if he was wondering what he had done to be so forsaken by those who had cared for him. He didn’t look like he was trying to fly at all.

“We have two neighborhood cats around here,” I said uneasily. “The guy across the street feeds them. I don’t know if this is safe.”

“If you’re worried about the cats eating the bird,” she said, “You can move it somewhere a little safer.”

I got off the line and stood sweating in the late afternoon sun, watching the fledgling. I waited from a distance to see if he would do something, anything. Occasionally he opened his beak wide as if to call out, but no noise emerged.

Finally I put plastic baggies over my hands and gently scooped him up. He struggled weakly as I put him in the lowest crook of the tree, and immediately toppled back to the ground. He righted himself quickly but once again stayed planted on the lawn.

Heartsick, I realized I just needed to let nature take its course, as the woman on the phone had recommended in the first place. Two hours later, as the sun was setting, I peeked outside and the fledgling was standing as close to the trunk of the tree as he possibly could, his head angled up at the branches. Such a small, solitary figure, as far from flight as any bird I had ever seen. Were his parents still watching him? Had he failed to develop some crucial skill or muscle that would enable his escape?

Over and over again, the chorus repeated itself in my mind: Nature is so cruel.

* * *

I am soft, and I am weak.

I have rarely been afraid of being alone on my own terms—the times when I have chosen to be single, for example—but I am so afraid of that moment when my heart will be ripped asunder, loved one gone for good, and I am bleeding and alone in the world.

* * *

It is hard for me to write all of this down and share it with you. Somehow these small incidents in life make up a large part of who I am, though, and so here they are. They have nothing—and yet everything—to do with my weight and my general state of being in the world.

Please tell me there is hope. Not for mankind, or animalkind, or the world. But for me. And for you.