The Mourning Dove and the Magnolia
by Tommie Lyn
Grandma had a magnolia growing by the side porch of her house. It was huge, pushed high into the sky by many years of growth. The magnolia grew, untrimmed, as dictated by its natural inclination, and the lower branches reached the ground. To me, at five years of age, it seemed enormous. And its polished, leathery leaves dwarfed the small soft leaves of the hedge which grew by the fence. The lemony fragrance of its creamy blossoms sometimes floated down to me and made me stop to sniff.
I played under its dense branches alone. But not alone. My imagination was a fertile field for ideas and suppositions and scenarios, peopled with interesting individuals.
There was Princess Lucy, a delicate beauty, all pink skin and golden hair and soft blue eyes. And her friend, Prince Larry, dark and handsome, a man of honor and bravery. He had flashing brown eyes and a shock of black hair on which rested a jewel-encrusted crown. When I closed my eyes, I could see the castle where they lived. It was identical to the drawing in one of my picture books.
At other times, cowboys on pinto ponies rode the dusty ridges I constructed on the bare earth around the base of the tree, singing to their cattle. "Whoopi-ti-yi-yo, git along little dogie!" They wore faded red bandanas tied around their necks in the open collars of gray or black or blue shirts, and had white hats pushed back on their heads, revealing smiling, honest, sunburned faces. They usually visited my under-the-magnolia playground for a few days after I'd gone to the Saturday morning western movies with my cousin Joyce.
Joyce was six years older than I, and worthy of much respect and awe. At least, she received mine. Joyce could cross the street alone, whereas, I was allowed to do very little by myself. But Joyce never visited my magnolia bower. It was too childish and too dusty to attract her interest.
A half-grown yellow cat sometimes padded from under the porch and joined me in my hideaway. Particularly when something fluttered and caught the attention of its round amber eyes with their black slitted pupils.
I was mostly content that summer in my private retreat. I'd never had a playmate, and the lack of one didn't bother me. And so I played and imagined and prattled on while my mother lay in an upstairs bed dying.
I didn't know that then.
I only knew that Mama didn't bake cookies for me anymore, and Mama didn't read me stories at night. I felt that loss and its attendant anger.
"Louella!" Grandma called. "Come to supper!"
I laid aside my medicine bottle cars I'd scooted around a make-believe town with scraped-out dirt roads and houses of mud-pie construction. I climbed the stairs to the porch and went into the kitchen. Grandma stopped me before I took two steps.
"Land 'o Goshen, girl! Just look at you! You been wallerin' in the pen with the sow and shoats? Git along and wash those hands and that face," she said. She went to the oven to take out a skillet of cornbread, muttering to herself. "I swannee, I don't never know what that young'un is goin' to do next."
After supper, we sat on the front porch in the warm evening air watching the sun go down, Grandma and Joyce and me. The scent of freshly mown grass rose from the lawn and the sweet mustiness of old wood drifted to us through the screen door. I watched the lightning bugs that rose above the grass, with only a fleeting desire to catch them and put them into a glass jar. I'd done that when Mama and I first arrived here from the city, and I didn't like the aftermath. Dead lightning bug bodies tainting the floor of their crystal-clear prison.
So, like Grandma and Joyce, I merely sat on the porch and watched them, enjoyed the beauty of their yellow-gold beacons from afar as they rose heavenward in the encroaching dusk.
A soft voice called out in the twilight.
"Was that Mama? Does Mama want me?" I said, scrambling to my feet. I was not allowed to bother Mama. But if she was calling me, surely I could go upstairs to see her.
"That's not your mama, child," Grandma said. "That was a mourning dove."
"It's not morning, it's almost night."
"Not morning like when the sun comes up. Mourning, like being sad."
"But it sounded like it said 'Lou-a, Lou, Lou, Lou,'" I said. "It must be Mama. She wants me."
"No. Your mama is resting. When the doctor came today, he gave her some new medicine. He said she will sleep most of the night. Now, you leave her be, don't bother her."
I sat on the top step pouting, taking no further pleasure in the beauty of the sunset. Grandma's restriction chafed and annoyed me. I directed my anger by turns at Grandma, who kept me from Mama, and at Mama herself, who did not ask for me.
The next day, when I took my place under the magnolia and my mind started down the pathway of my imaginings into a wonderful new place, I heard the voice call me again.
"Lou-a - Lou - Lou - Lou."
The gentle sound of the mourning dove soothed me. I closed my eyes and imagined it was Mama calling my name, wanting to see me. And the fresh scent of the magnolia flowers which drifted down to me reminded me of the fragrance Mama wore. I felt somewhat comforted in my leafy lair.
The dove had a companion. I saw them several times when they flew to the magnolia and lit on the upper branches and when they left again. And I heard the dove call me, again and again, over the next few days.
One day, it appeared to me that the doves were busy working on a branch not far above my head. I became engrossed for a little while and watched them until, as most children would, I lost interest and went back to pretending Princess Lucy had come to tea.
"Look!" Joyce said one morning. She stood on the side porch finishing a jelly biscuit from breakfast.
"What?" I asked.
"There's a nest in the tree. I never saw it before, but the sun is shining through the branches, so you can see it. Look," she said, pointing to a brownish object resting in the crotch of a limb. "There's a bird in it."
I squinted and looked until the nest became clear in my sight. One of the doves sat in it. "Oh yes. I see it now."
"They probably have eggs in the nest," she said. "Let's watch and see when the babies hatch."
"All right," I said doubtfully, thinking that if I could only see a brown clump of sticks lying on the limb, I would have difficulty seeing any bird babies which might hatch into life inside it.
We checked the nest faithfully each morning from our place on the porch. One morning, we were rewarded. The doves both flew away and we caught sight of two tiny heads wobbling above the edge of the nest, waiting for their parents' return.
One morning two weeks later, Grandma cooked breakfast while Joyce set the table for the three of us and prepared a tray for Mama. I went to the side porch to look at the doves and their babies.
"Joyce, come see. The kitty wants to look at the bird babies, too."
"Oh no!" Joyce shouted, tossing the handful of forks and spoons onto the table. She rushed out the kitchen door to the porch railing and shook a dish towel at the cat. "Shoo! Scat!"
But the cat paid no attention to Joyce or her towel. With a single-mindedness, it crept along the limb toward the nest, moving slowly, fluidly.
With the suddenness of a streak of lightning in a thunderstorm, the cat pounced and Joyce and I screamed. With a flutter of wings, the two fledgling doves rose from the nest and flew to higher branches in the tree. But the mother dove was not so fortunate. With a squall and a growl, the cat fell to the ground with the dove clutched in its mouth. It sprang to its feet and ran under the house with the mother dove.
I cried inconsolably the rest of the day.
Grandma came to me before sunset, took my hand and led me to the side porch. She sat on the swing and patted the cushion beside her. I sat, with tears still trickling from my eyes.
"Louella," Grandma said. "What happened today made you feel sad. But it's the way of the world, child. Some things die so that other things can live. The cat has to eat, or it would die."
"But I didn't want the mother bird to die."
"No. None of us want sad things like that to happen. But, even though something sad happened, something good happened, too."
"What's that?"
"The baby birds. They learned to fly, didn't they? And they got away from the cat."
I thought about that for a moment or two. I nodded.
"So the mother bird helped her babies, didn't she? Since the cat caught her, the babies got away."
I nodded again.
"So, something good came from something sad."
Grandma sighed, grasped my hand and held it. "And Louella, when someone good leaves this life, God takes them to be with Him, to be in a better, happier place than this one. Something good comes from something sad."
My mother died that night.
We saw the fledgling doves a few times before they flew away for good. But all the next day after his companion was taken by the cat, the dove who was left by himself sat in the magnolia tree and called to me.
Many years have passed since the summer I lost Mama. So much that happened then has gone from my memory. But there are three things I will never forget. The call of the mourning dove which was, for me, my mother's voice, the magnolia that sheltered me and spread my mother's scent around me. And the knowledge that something good can come from something sad.
The End
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tOMMIE: I'm a 63 year-old grandmother who has been writing for about two-and-a-half years. What I learned while doing genealogical research spurred a desire to share that information through the medium of fiction (many people have no desire to read a dusty history book but will read and enjoy a well-told tale). In the process of writing that first historical novel, I discovered that I enjoy writing fiction--and now I can't seem to stop!
