The title of this post isn’t entirely accurate. It wasn’t a midnight visitor, more like an evening visitor, but “midnight visitor” sounds mysterious, which is fitting for such a mysterious visitation. Besides, it seems apt for this Yule season.
Last night I visited with a friend who wants to start a blog to spread the word about her faith. She hadn’t realized I knew how to blog, and was delighted when I offered to send her a blog tutorial I had written and to help if she had questions. She told me it must have been God’s will for her to come see me, and I agreed. (Although my faith might be so weak as to be almost non-existent at times, I am always respectful of other people’s beliefs.) A minute or two later, I happened to look out the window. The sky was a bright, happy orange. I told her, “See, God likes the idea of your blogging.”
We laughed and hugged, then she went out to take photos and I went to get my camera. I was so excited by the sunset — I had never seen such a vivid sky — that I left the door to the patio wide open. When I went back inside, a bird was caroming all over the living room. I try to shoo it out, but it hid behind a sideboard. Yikes.
Birds in the house scare me. They’re not like bugs that you can capture in a bottle and either throw away or release outside. Birds are big and wild and alien and frightened. Once when a bat crawled through a half-inch space between the screen and the casement of an open window, we waited until it fell asleep clinging to the curtains, then we used a very large container to capture it. But last night’s bird was huge. Poor thing, it was as upset by the episode as I was. Even though the door was open, it didn’t seem to be able to find its way out. My friend suggested opening the door wider, and as I did, the bird must have caught a whiff of freedom, because he flew over my head and was gone.
All in all, a very colorful evening.
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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” All Bertram’s books are published by Second Wind Publishing. Connect with Pat on Google+
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