The Four Crows

The first crow came from the east just as she was dragging an old tire across the yard.

It belonged to a life she no longer wanted to explain—one of those leftovers from a marriage that had ended in silence and left scattered bits strewn across the yard of her existence. Tires. Pipe. Rusted metal. A ladder too heavy and too tall for an aging woman to appreciate. For years, she’d tried to pretend the clutter did not exist. Neglecting it and herself. When she couldn’t avoid it, all she could see was the accusation in it, as if every object was intentionally left to remind her of what was broken, what was unfair, what was now her sole burden to carry.

"This crow was louder than the first, opinionated and unabashed . . ."

Today, though, the yard looked different.

The old tire was no longer a tire. It was a planter waiting for honeysuckle—and the hummingbirds that would follow. The long length of PVC was no longer a self-storage unit for pine straw, rodents, and snakes.  Now, a bright, radiant red, it was the beginning of a bird-feeding station. And the old tetherball pole was designed to match.

As for that twelve-foot ladder . . .

Its rickety, burdensome, silver frame had the makings of a beautiful gateway. A lush, flowing, living backdrop to a secret garden she planned to tuck away behind the shed in the far corner of the yard.

She stood in the middle of the grass with dirt on her hands and the hot, Southern sun beating down on her head.

Should’ve worn a hat.

Wisdom tried once again to work its way through her resistance to wearing one. A loud buzzing vibrated a warning in her left ear. She vigorously waved the notebook and pencil in her left hand around her head.

As if that’ll do any good.

A defeated thought, yet true nonetheless. Deer flies are notoriously relentless—and when intent on biting, they bite.

Hooking the tape measure onto a belt loop, she grabbed a nearby can of bug spray and doused herself with another dose. She’d rather endure the fumes of that spray than the biting sting of a deer fly. As the pesky fly vanished in search of fresher game, she glanced around the yard and wondered when the world had shifted so completely.

Was it yesterday?

She mindlessly scratched at a mosquito bite.

Or was it the day before?

When she’d nearly fallen back into an old pattern and climbed into the bed and surrendered the day to grief? Or was it this morning, when she’d told herself, out loud, with a newfound authority that surprised even her, “I am not going down that path?”

The crow landed on the fence, angling a black eye at her as if taking inventory.

“You’re late,” she squinted at him.

The crow tipped his head.

“I know,” she said. “Me too.”

By the time the second crow arrived from the south, she was kneeling on the ground, trowel in hand, scraping and digging at the hard Georgia dirt. This crow was louder than the first, opinionated and unembarrassed, hopping along the fence rail and calling as if it had every right to supervise.

Head shaking, she laughed in spite of herself.

“Think you can do better?”

The crow answered with a sharp bark of a call, and she thought of all the voices that had judged her before she could judge herself—you’re not working hard enough, you’re doing it all wrong, you should have known better, you don’t ever listen to what I say, if you’d listened to me you wouldn’t have this problem. She’d carried those voices in her jean pockets like stones for years. But today, she was emptying her pockets, dumping out the stones and using them for decoration.

A familiar lump in her throat, she pressed her hands to the earth and whispered the words she’d been practicing all day.

“I don’t want to go down that path.”

A soft breeze sifted through the leaves. The yard stilled. The crows were silent.

Something in her stilled with it.

The third crow came from the west just as the light began to change, bringing gold into the weeds and shadows beneath the porch. Wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist, she stared at the old ladder lying on the ground next to the shed.

In the wrong mood, it was a burden. Too heavy. Too awkward. One more thing left for her to deal with.

In the right mood it was a doorway.

She could see it all at once: the ladder anchored upright, colorful clematis climbing upward while waterfalls of fern and ivy cascaded downward, solar fountains and crystals tucked into niches, a portrait of peace framed against the wall of trees that would serve as the boundary to the little sitting space she had not yet built but had already begun to love. She saw the butterfly bench covered with potted plants, the lights softly outlining the pathway at night, the birdhouses, the trailing green things, the cozy chairs where she could lounge and drink it all in. She saw the yard not as evidence of what had happened to her, but as the potential of who she was becoming.

The third crow dropped from the branch above her to the ground and pecked once at the earth.

A laugh rose up in her chest then, sudden and bright.

“All right,” she said, “I hear you.”

By the time the fourth crow arrived, dusk had started gathering itself around the edges of the yard. She sat on the porch steps with dirt-covered knees, sweat-soaked shirt, and the taste of possibility in her mouth, exhausted in the best way—the way that follows creation.

The crow did not land in the tree with the others. It came into her yard and stood there, black and glossy in the dimming light, close enough for her to see the intelligence in its eyes.

She thought then of the day before her birthday, of how close she had come to disappearing into sorrow. She thought of the prayer she had whispered before drifting off to sleep, asking God to converse with her, to celebrate her birthday with her. She thought of the strange, joyful flood of the next day—the ideas, the beauty, the holy insistence that life was not finished with her yet. She thought of the flat tire, the unexpected expense, the old panic that had risen to test her the day after and then passed because she had answered it differently this time. She thought of the card in her purse, the way she had handed pieces of her work into the world as if she finally believed it had a right to be there.

The crow watched her.

Honesty was a tool she’d learned to wield with great precision so she willingly answered the unspoken question in his steady gaze.

“I thought I was cleaning up a mess.”

The crow did not move.

“Then I realized I was learning to become a good gardener.”

At that, the other three crows lifted from the fence and crossed the yard in a black sweep of wings, one from each corner of the evening, until all four were circling overhead. East. South. West. North. Watchers at the edges of the world she’d almost abandoned—a world she was now, with dirty hands and a tender heart, choosing to keep.

For one suspended moment, she understood.

The garden was not something she would create once she had healed. Building the garden was how she would heal—one rock at a time.

She watched the crows fly together toward the darkening edge of the sky, leaving the yard changed behind them.

Or maybe it’s just me who’s changed?

She sat on the porch until the last of the light slipped away, surrounded by tires that would become planters, pipes that would become perches, ladders that would become gates, and all the broken remnants of a former life waiting patiently for their next name.

Tomorrow she would sow seeds.

Tonight she gave thanks for the four crows.

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Food for Thought:

Where in your life are you only seeing the mess left behind, when it might also be the place where the seeds of your sacred garden are waiting to be sown?