It's been a terrifying year for me. You and I have looked at each other and tried to focus on the past twenty years and how we could be so strange to each other. How can two people commit the same crimes over and over, harmful patterns repeating, repeating...?
What are the lessons learned from heartache and tears? What is the return on investment?
There have been two women working on us, counselors, applying their wisdom and their persistence. Like attorneys for the psyche and the soul. Stubborn things, these intimate parts. Unyielding things, they chafe and they burn, raw and tender.
I prayed to God often for relief.
One particularly stressful day while working around the apartments, I found a white duck abandoned underneath a tarp. She was just hours from death, so I put her in a box and took her home. She was too weak to stand, and could only squeak. I washed the filth off of her and looked her over. Her feet and bill were too large for her body, and that meant she'd never had good nutrition, distorted growth through wasted muscle and sparse feathering.
I crated her until she was strong enough to stand and quack. Her appetite grew from sipping a little water and just a few bites of food to robust and enthusiastic eater, and she began to gain weight. I asked you to make-shift a pen for her, and you did that for me.
Duck was grateful. She greeted me with loud quacking when I came to feed her twice a day, she wagged her tail feathers and flapped her wings. Two, then three weeks passed. Plumage was appearing a bit fuller each day, I thought, and then I noticed the eye infection. I treated it with antibiotic ointment, and it seemed to be getting a little better.
One day I took her to the pond and set her down into the water. She sank almost to her neck. Her feet could not paddle straight, and she struggled to the bank. I pulled her out and set her on the lawn, and she began drying herself with her beak as ducks do. And feathers fell like rain from her body.
I examined the feathers. They were pin-feathers, and those are the new growth that should emerge filled with blood as they grow out. As they progress from quill to feather, the blood will recede and be replaced with air... that is how a bird gets the lightness to float or to fly.
These pin feathers contained no blood. They were dead. This is a set back, I thought to myself, and I finished drying duck with a towel, returning her to her pen.
The next morning when I went to feed her I noticed blood coming from her injured eye. This is worse than a set back, I realized, and she cannot survive this. What to do? First thing, I'll give her a good meal.
Remembering that you raised meat rabbits as a kid, I called you from my cell phone and asked if you could euthanize the duck. She cannot survive her current state, I explained, it is so very sad for me. I am in the car on my way to work, and I would be very grateful if you could help me with this. Can you? It's just a duck, right?
I came home at six o'clock like I usually do, and I saw that the pen was gone, not a single feather remaining where it sat. Not a trace of duck.
I found you in the kitchen and your eyes were red from crying. You were waiting for me.
Not just a duck? I said to you. No, not just a duck, you said back to me.
Thank you, I said, both of us with now with tearful eyes.
And you took my hand and we sat at the table together.
