Before I go any further, I want to point out that I am not a superstitious person. I don't believe in all that hogwash about black cats and broken mirrors or spilt salt. Okay, I'll admit I do throw spilt salt over my left shoulder and I do avoid walking under ladders - but that's it, just those two things. So I guess on a scale of one to ten I might rank a three. Anyway, the point here is that the very next day I saw a cardinal fly across the street as I was driving the kids to school. Never once in the ten years I've driven down this road have I noticed the eye catching red of any cardinals. But since I'd only just written about them the night before, I figured I was merely more aware of them now. You know how we do that sometimes? Like when you're pregnant and suddenly it seems as if every woman you come across is pregnant, too?
On the way home another cardinal crossed my path. I blew it off, I'd obviously unsettled the bird when I'd come barreling down the road. The next day it was the same thing, one sole cardinal darting quickly across the front of my car. The following morning it happened yet again. While not totally bizarre it did warrant a phone call to my mother. She loves this kind of stuff. A few days later she phoned to let me know that she'd come across a cardinal standing in the middle of the road, demanding her attention. Then she asked me if I was writing.
Her question is what made me sit up and take notice. Could it be possible that this was a sign? Nah, I was more apt to believe it was pure coincidence, and nothing more. Surely most people have at least one cardinal cross their path each day. Right? As time wore on the cardinal sightings became more commonplace, prompting me, reminding me of the job left undone. I'd drive straight home and write. It was the day one of those striking red birds flew right outside my drivers side window, keeping pace with me for several hundred feet, so close that if I'd wanted, I could have reached out and touched it, that I finally began to believe. Something was at work here, something bigger than me. These birds were behaving far too strangely to continue shrugging them off.
Stranger still, after I completed the third Bittersweet novel and shifted my attention to a new series, the cardinals abruptly disappeared. Here one day and gone the next. After months and months of being swarmed, they were nowhere to be found.
However, the reprieve was short lived. Three months later (last month, actually) I finished the first two novels of my new series and decided to focus my attention on revisions before beginning another project. One morning I noticed a cardinal flying across the street near my kid's school. My children hadn't seen any of our red feathery friends in so long that its very presence made their day. I dropped them at school and then headed home. Rounding a corner, I found myself slamming on the breaks. Not one, but two of those critters were standing there, right in my lane. Surprisingly, they didn't fly away at my approach. This led into a weird sort of stand off. Weird because I'd drawn so close that I couldn't even see them past the hood of my car. What were they playing at? After about thirty seconds, one of the birds flew into a nearby bush, and then a few seconds later the other one flew to a tree on the other side of the street. I swear they were watching me with their beady black eyes as I hightailed it out of there. They've been everywhere ever since, seeking me out, making themselves known.So it would appear they've returned. After all this time I'm still not sure what they mean, if anything. Maybe they're here to slowly drive me to madness (it's not a long trip, I promise you that!), or maybe to get me back on track. Who knows? But the one thing I do know is they began to plague me while I was working on that book. Maybe this is the key I've been looking for. I guess I could finish the fourth and final Bittersweet novel. Perhaps then my little stalkers will find someone new to harass... :)
