PERCEPTION

My Neighbor’s Driveway

“Perhaps it takes courage to raise children…”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I. On the Roof

Nearly four months ago, two western gulls mated on my neighbor’s roof. The male, wings extended and outstretched, cried out in what could only be described as bird erotica as he fertilized the eggs that would hatch in twenty-seven days. The female bore his weight silently, turning her head away as if indifferent.

Once the rhythmic squawking ended, I half-expected to see the gulls puffing a cigarette, like the woman upstairs in my old apartment, who always stepped out onto the balcony for a smoke after sex. Whether she was with a man or alone, it didn’t matter, the ritual was the same. Day after day, night after night, once the cries of “Oh God!” subsided, the balcony door creaked open, and out she went, cigarette in hand. The smell drifted into my apartment, reminding me she had finished, celebrating, or perhaps simply unwinding from the tension.

But the gulls were different. After their time together, they immediately went to work building a nest. They carried pine straw and twigs to build a refuge, a place to nurture their young. The mother bird looked calm, while the father strutted around the roof, as tense as a bird can be. I’ve seen plenty of human mothers and fathers prepare for their new arrivals with the same excitement, enthusiasm, and anxiety. My wife hurried to prepare the nursery when she went into labor; I jumped up and cleaned the bathroom. I had to do something. As a clinical chaplain, I’ve seen many anxious parents, some awaiting healthy babies, others bracing for heartbreak, but always sharing that same edge of anticipation.

II. Raising the Young

For a month I watched the gull couple care for their nest, keeping the eggs at the right temperature until finally two chicks appeared: fluffy, gray, shaky, and, by the sound of it, very hungry. They screeched like contestants auditioning for a heavy metal band.

All summer their cries rang out. With August just days away, the gulls had become part of the neighborhood, and I found joy in watching them grow. Perhaps it was because they reminded me of my own children. My teenage son is stretching his wings, sometimes screaming at his mother, always searching for food.

One evening I watched the mother regurgitate a silver fish into a chick’s yellowing beak. Its tongue flicked in a gagging motion as the fish slid down its throat. The other chick sulked in the corner, refusing to eat. But the mother was patient. Up came another fish for the brooding twin. With full bellies, the chicks finally grew quiet, settling for the night. I caught my reflection in the window and thought of my own children falling asleep after a meal, their breathing rhythmic, the refrigerator humming in the background.

III. The NICU

Those quiet moments take me back to my time as a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit chaplain. I had been an Army chaplain for five years when I accepted the assignment. I still remember mothers desperate for answers about why their babies were sick, and my own frustration with a God who allowed suffering. I prayed often, with mothers, fathers, nurses, grandmothers, and alone in the hallways.

What I see most vividly are the wooden rocking chairs with flowery cushions, stationed beside incubators holding fragile lives. Mothers sat in them for hours, heads cradled in their hands, faces bowed toward the floor. It was a posture of prayer. Fathers often stood behind them, eyes glazed with exhaustion, reaching through plastic walls to stroke tiny wrinkled hands.

The incubators, machines of light, heat, and wires, sustained fragile bodies, but none could help a parent hold their newborn. Parents waited in these sacred spaces for days, even months, hoping to see their children grow strong enough to follow them to life’s feeding grounds.

Meanwhile, the gull chicks grew stronger. Their wings stretched, fluttered, and eventually flapped in hopping bursts across the roof. In Pacific Grove, the fog kept the air cool enough for their training ground, a rooftop playground for would-be pilots. Soon their parents dared to leave them alone for short spells. I wondered what the mother gull thought about when she flew off.

When I left my children alone for the first time, they didn’t chase after me like the gulls. They were happy with popcorn, root beer, and a movie. The gulls, lacking such distractions, tried to follow—but their flimsy paper-airplane wings couldn’t yet lift them. Left behind, they grew more determined. I watched one chick flutter from one rooftop peak to another, reckless and resolute.

IV. Sara

Before long, the chicks would stretch their wings and ride the coastal winds, gone from sight forever. Like them, my children will one day leave for college or work. I know the pain that departure causes; I caused it myself when I left home, returning only for funerals or weddings.

I often wonder about the babies I’ve met through the years. One in particular remains vivid: a girl I’ll call Sara. She was born with omphalocele, a condition where abdominal organs protrude through the body wall. In her case, nearly all of her organs, intestines, liver, spleen, lay outside her tiny body. It was as though a predator had torn them out and placed them on display.

When I met her, she was three months old, smiling and beloved by nurses, though confined to an incubator. Doctors from around the world studied her case, but her prognosis was grim. She was outgrowing her organs; there was no way to return them inside her body. She lived on borrowed time. I remember her feathery brown hair and the shock I felt when I saw her mother changing her clothes, organs exposed. Life is held together by such a delicate skin, and it takes so little for it to fail.

V. Loss

One foggy morning I stepped outside and sensed something wrong. A chick bawled from the rooftop, while the silent mother perched on the chimney, staring toward the sea. In the driveway lay the gutted carcass of the other chick, insides torn open. My stomach turned as my mind leapt back to a conversation with Sara’s mother.

“I don’t understand God,” she whispered, lips cracked. “Why does this have to happen?”

On the morning Sara died, doctors explained the plan in detail: medication for comfort, the removal of machines, a final embrace in her mother’s arms. We wept together as the plan became reality. Sara died at 8:51 a.m. Her mother bathed her, combed her hair, painted her tiny nails, and wrapped her in a blanket before laying her in a crib one last time.

I assume the gull chick, eager to fly, tumbled from the roof into danger. A mangy coyote, perhaps a bobcat, dragged her into the driveway.

I didn’t know what to do then, and I don’t know what to do now.

Standing in the driveway, I looked from the lifeless bird to the mother above, her silence echoing the grief of Sara’s mother. Motherhood is sacred, but it is often painful, and always demands courage.

There are times in life when our head does not know we’ve entered a holy place, but our heart does. Our spirit does. Sara’s death was one of those times. My body reacted, hair standing on end, chest tightening, signaling the presence of the sacred. I believe she was taken by the hand of her Heavenly Mother and entered the presence of God, becoming one with the universe. We were left with her body, rocking in chairs beside a manufactured nest, contemplating death.

Now I stand in my neighbor’s driveway, towering over the lifeless bird, wondering what I should do.