Spring: Sparrows Matter

This is the first of a 4-part series called “The Happenings on Highway 5.”

They appear random, the memories from childhood that become part of who we are, and yet, I suspect they are not.

I spent my formative years (4-12) in a small town in northern Indiana. We lived in a weathered clapboard and haunted farmhouse (fodder for another blog) bordered by a soybean field, a sway-backed barn beside a prolific mulberry tree, a catfish swamp, and State Highway 5.

Back then, in that place, time did not fly. Summers gloriously lasted forever. School even longer. Softballs or snowballs, shorts or mittens, dogtooth violets or crunchy leaves marked the seasons. Today, seasonal changes impress me more, spurring recollections, four of which I would like to share beginning with the spring they repaved Highway 5.

Our house sat about thirty feet from the road, guarded by three magnificence maple trees bursting with chlorophyll rich buds, on this particular afternoon. The smell of tar hung heavy in the air. It was the kind of day that gets you itching for summer and the end of school, and for whatever reason, I wasn’t at school, but perched on the porch railing, counting cars, guessing how many would pass before I spotted a blue one. Like I said, time passed slowly.

There was more traffic than usual, as the highway had just been reopened, when I noticed a sparrow in the center of the far lane refusing to fly away as each car approached. I ran to the maples, fretting as tire after tire miraculously missed the bird. It’s wings fluttered in attempt to take flight, but its feet were stuck in the tar. I hightailed inside for Mom. It wasn’t long before she halted traffic with one hand and with her trusty paring knife in the other, cut away the tar, freeing the sparrow. She cradled the stressed bird in her front shirttails and carried it to the kitchen.

In triage mode, she soaked the bird’s feet in warm, soapy water, all the while cooing to it. “It could die of fright, if we’re not careful.” With the scaly and golden feet mostly clean, Mom stroked the bird’s head before placing it in a shoebox along with a canning jar lid holding water-soaked Wonder Bread. “Let the poor thing rest.”

When Mom passed away, a few years ago, the minister who performed the service chose to read Luke 12:6 in reference to the way Mom had lived her life: “Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God.” Mom, he suggested, was not a hawk, or a dove, or a bluebird, or a cardinal among women and men. She was one of the seemingly countless sparrows, the worker bees, and yet she had mattered greatly to all who were graced to know her— and she mattered to God. Just like that sparrow mattered to her.

Later that spring day, Mom set the shoebox on the porch railing and opened the lid. The sparrow didn’t budge. We sat back quietly and waited. After a few minutes, there was a rustle, and the sparrow took flight, winging away to the mulberry tree.

The next morning, still groggy with sleep, I found Mom at the open front door. “Look, “ she said.

I peered out. The sparrow was there, next to the abandoned shoebox singing a song.

Unbelievable, but true, that mousy colored bird came back for many days, to that very spot, in the morning, and sang to Mom—one sparrow to another.