Miracle and Parody

Miracle: it’s always nice to start your day with a miracle.
Well, to be honest, I started the day by getting up and feeding the dog. Then I headed back to the bathroom to work on a crossword puzzle, and I could hear thumping in the other room. What is that dog doing? I wondered.
Then I walked back out into the dining room, and a little brown bird flew into the room. It headed for the windows, where it tried to fly through the glass. The thumping I’d heard was this terrified bird flying into things.
So I walked over to the window where the bird was fluttering frantically, and I gently closed my hand around the bird, then my other hand around that hand and the bird, and quietly as possible, cooing to the bird that it was all right, I wouldn’t hurt it, and please don’t die from fright, I walked over to the open kitchen door where it must have flown in, and released it. Then I closed the screen to avoid further bird misadventures.
I don’t know what kind of bird it was. It might have been a female house finch. It was small and a dark speckled brown in color. It wasn’t until a few minutes after I released it that it occurred to me that I had just gone over and picked it up and taken it outside without thinking about it much.
The first time I picked up a wild bird in my hand was many years ago. A hummingbird had flown into what was then the shop room, and it sounded like the most enormous bumble bee you ever heard buzzing against the window. I looked around and found it, and found myself suddenly quiet within. Instinctively I went over to the window and picked the hummingbird up in my hands. It went still.
I called my son, who was a toddler then, to look at the bird, and then I went over to the door and released the hummingbird, which took off into the blue like a rocket. My son wanted me to “do it again,” and I had to explain that I couldn’t.
I felt like I had experienced a miracle. The awe stayed with me for months. Wow. I held a hummingbird in my hands! I’m not Native American, so I don’t have a totem, but I do have a guitar which is a Gibson Hummingbird model. That’s the guitar I’ve played and written music on my whole adult life, and I’ve felt a special attachment to hummingbirds because of it, and here I’d held one in my hand. It felt cosmic.
A few years later, another hummingbird flew into the house. Again I picked it up in my hands. This one did not go gentle into its rescue. It fluttered and struggled as I walked it over to the door. I set it free, and away it went. Not so cosmic, this time, although I still thought, amazing, another hummingbird.
This morning when I saw the finch, or whatever it was, that instinctive quiet kicked in, and I went over and picked it up. This bird did become still in my loose grip, though its beak gaped open, in exhaustion or terror or both, until I let it go. Then it was so outta here: zoom!
Three birds, three releases, three miracles. Oh, I know, some of you out there reading this are saying, “Big deal. I pick up wild birds all the time.” Congratulations to you if you do. I don’t, and this morning what most struck me is that I did pick up that bird as if it was a ho-hum thing to do, and the extraordinariness of the event didn’t hit me until well afterward. It makes me wonder how many miracles fly by without my noticing.
As for parody: the other thing I did this morning was write a lyric, a parody of an old folk tune. It’s a topical song, which means that it has an early expiration date. Last week our local bank, Washington Mutual, or WAMU, failed, and was bought by J.P. Morgan. That put this old folk lyric into my head, and here is the lyric that came through this morning. I don’t actually know the melody, but my husband does, and he will teach me. Although the economic situation may have moved on too far, too fast, for this to be more than a TV skit:

My Name Was WAMU (But It’s Now JP)

The little bank of WAMU started out in the Northwest
It worked so hard and carefully that it was a success
Instead of staying small, the bankers thought that it should grow
What happens when banks grow too fast? I guess that now we know.

My name was WAMU but it’s now JP
The mighty bank of Morgan has acquired me
They’re saying that I grew too fast
That’s why the party couldn’t last
My name was WAMU but it’s now JP

They bought up banks in other states, their interest did compound
They gave out mortgages so fast their heads were spinning ‘round
Then the housing market crashed, the money bubble burst
The “little bank that could” became the bank that couldn’t do worse

My name was WAMU but it’s now JP
The mighty bank of Morgan has acquired me
They’re saying that I grew too fast
That’s why the party couldn’t last
My name was WAMU but it’s now JP

The greed the money brokers have they do not try to hide
They’ve taken you and me and everyone else for a ride
Anyone with sense could see it couldn’t last for long
That’s why the folks at WAMU – I mean, JP Morgan – are now singing this song:

My name was WAMU but it’s now JP
The mighty bank of Morgan has acquired me
They’re saying that I grew too fast
That’s why the party couldn’t last
My name was WAMU but it’s now JP
Lyric © 2008 Mary Litchfield Tuel ~ September 29, 2008