Where the Birds Fly Through
by
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There exists a state of mind that is pure focus. This is the state from which a musician transcends the ordinary coaxing harmony and rhythm from the ethers. It is the mind of suicide permitting self-annihilation, the mind of the Olympic athlete singularly conscious of muscle, movement and synchronicity. It is the adrenaline-flooded mind of murder which courts do not consider insanity because life-taking is always insane. It is the state of mind of the holy one who walks on water; the state of mind of scientific break-though, of imagining potential. It is the mind of transference: of the transition, of bridging the threshold between life and death. This morning, Lawson bore that state. It started after breakfast, his feet moving toward the door as if commanded. He was aware of his actions from a distance the way one is aware of fever, just barely. If he could have examined it, he would have recognized this transcendent state. He may have known it as the state Jeremy felt at that last moment. He moved into Jeremy’s space and Jeremy into his, his feet directing him into the garden and up to the table, breaking spider webs and stay lines as he walked. Web-draped and ghostly, there stood the chorus of bonsai plants. These were the stilled frames of the last few years: the ghosts of buried memories and fears. He stood in veiled awareness looking and smelling, feeling the cool air rising from the plants and the touch of wetted wood against his chest. There are sixty seconds between one minute and two, sixty thousand milliseconds, sixty million microseconds, sixty billion nanoseconds…Infinity. This is how long Lawson stood in front of the table without moving. Finally, he lifted his hand and brushed the back of it under the miniature spruce. The bristled needles pricked, lending assurance that he was there, sentient and alive. He ran his palm over the maple’s new, lichen-green leaves and his fingers against the bark of the gnarled juniper. These were Jeremy’s plants: his bonsai collection. Still without thought, Lawson picked a leaf from the cobalt blue pot in front of him. Fresh spring moss blinked in the sunlight. He lifted last fall’s leaf skeleton from the miniature redwood. The movement felt good. Continuing he cleared leaves between the pots and from the trunks of trees, but somewhere between compulsion and efficiency a weighted burden of fatigue descended upon him. With a sigh, he turned and walked back out of the garden, into the sunlight and up the stairs. Inside, he collapsed on the couch and fell asleep.
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About the Book
Where the Birds Fly Through is a book about death and life. It is a love story between a father and son. Lawson is devastated by the death of his son. Through the seasons and years that follow this tragedy, he learns to reconcile this great absence and his sadness and regret with the warm, joyful experiences he remembers with his son. In this healing, Lawson learns to enter then embrace life once again.
About the Author
Tim Brandy is a father, an educator, and a self-educated naturalist. As an educator, he taught writing and science for three decades. His curriculum was experience based. He taught students to pay attention outdoors and to ask questions about things they noticed. He directed them to write their observations and experiences in journals. His writing students wrote weekly of events in their lives. It was, Tim asserted, through consciously experiencing life, reflecting and capturing their stories, that they would know themselves and others. Tim was deeply affected by the death of a classmate in elementary school. Later when he was in high school, he experienced death of a peer and of his favorite teacher. These things informed his writing. As a father, he was always aware of the narrow barrier that kept his children safe and alive and felt grateful every day. Tim’s best friend had a son die tragically at a young age. He witnessed the grief that never left and the slow, tentative return to life of this boy’s parents. He experienced disease diagnosis with his own children. Where the Birds Fly Through is his response to these experiences. It is a love story between a parent and a child that continues to grow even after the child’s death. Tim reaches deep into his experiences as a father—parental trials and fears, regrets, and complete joy. It is a work of fiction rooted in the reality of stories he has collected from his own life, the media, and friends.