Hawk
06.18.2011
We haven’t seen a hawk yet in Paris, but we’ve seen pictures.
Just before you die, everything in your character seems to become reduced down to its essence.
In cooking, a reduction means cooking a liquid until some of the water evaporates and the remaining liquid is thicker and has a more intense flavor.
As a boy, he was home-schooled by his mother; they covered eight grades in six years. When he entered a private high school at the age of 12, he was smaller than the other freshmen. He made an astute decision: he would have no enemies in his life. Instead he would make friends.
He changed physically, grew tall and handsome, but that decision formed the core of him. Everyone would be his friend, no one above him, no one below.
His Amherst College roommate had a blind date one night with a girl from Mt. Holyoke, a blonde beauty, with brains, spirit and character.
When the roommate returned, he asked him if he’d mind if he asked her out on a date.
That was fine, the roommate said. He’d only just met her. She didn’t belong to him.
Hawks are the swiftest of birds.
He and the blonde beauty were engaged before long, and the roommate saw that he’d been too slow to recognize what his friend had instantly seen.
They married in Massachusetts in 1943.
Few Americans doubted then that fighting the Axis was a just cause. He joined the Navy and was soon commanding a sub chaser in the Pacific.
English, Irish, Welsh and French by ancestry, he was born and bred in New England.
After the war was over, he and his bride settled in Massachusetts.
They wanted a family, and one, two, three years later, they had three babies.
They were focused in life, and focused in work. He found a job in a pre-fabricated housing company, doing what he loved to do from the time he was five years old: building something.
No one is lucky all the time, even a man who is strong, focused and kind.
The company went bankrupt.
But he’d married a fearless woman.
Let’s go west, she said.
They drove across the continent in a Ford sedan, looking for job opportunities in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
They sat on the beach in Santa Monica, looked at each other and said, All the doors were open in Arizona.
They moved their young family to a small house in Phoenix, bought with a GI loan.
He worked for other contractors.
She sewed curtains for their house, clothes for her children and tiny clothes for the two girls’ dolls.
Then, with the right partner, he started his own construction company.
She helped him as the company secretary.
Do it right the first time, was their motto.
Get to the goal swiftly, like a hawk.
Vision and passion, strength and focus—these are qualities one needs to find the right livelihood, choose the right mate.
But what if at the core your intention was to be a friend to everyone?
Wouldn’t you then approach the business of constructing buildings and houses in an open and generous manner?
Wouldn’t you offer jobs to those whom others tried to exclude?
This he did, being among the first to hire Native Americans, blacks and Latinos in Phoenix.
Wouldn’t you offer employees the chance to buy shares in your company long before it was common practice, simply because, if your profits were increasing because of their good work, their profits should increase, too?
And if you were married to a woman who was not just smart, but had X-ray insight (the first time she saw Richard Nixon’s face on TV, she said, “He’s a crook”)—wouldn’t you listen to her, really listen, when she argued against the Vietnam War?
Wouldn’t you, a Republican businessman in a Republican state, have to re-think your convictions?
Wouldn’t you even have to admit that the Democratic Party was a better friend to everyone than the Republican, and change parties, even though almost every business associate and friend you had was Republican?
And when you and your wife, who now had five children, traveled through China in the ‘70s, and you saw how humane the Chinese practice of providing on-site childcare at work was, on returning home, wouldn’t you offer it to your employees?
And wouldn’t you laugh good-naturedly when you showed people slides of your China trips, and they called you and your wife “Commie pinkos?”
Was there anything that could obstruct or discourage your friendly approach to the world?
I never saw it.
Not when your powers failed you one by one.
Not when you could no longer work.
Not when you had to give up driving, mobility in the world.
Not when your memory started to go.
Not when it was mostly gone.
That sweet core of goodness, the kind treatment of others—that was there till you took your last breath.
You looked so much like a hawk, the slight curve of your nose, like the beak of the peregrine falcon on your family’s ancient coat of arms.
The morning after eleven of us gathered around your bed to say goodbye, all of us loving you deeply, a large hawk appeared outside your home, perched on a palo verde, looking fiercely in at the place where you and she used to sit and eat breakfast.
He looked in at your blonde beauty and your two youngest daughters.
He swiveled his handsome head to look at your two oldest daughters in the guest room.
He looked south towards the place where your son lived.
And then he flew away.
Mother had never seen a hawk so close to your home before.
She guessed that it was a Swainson’s.
I called Richard in Playa del Rey. As I told him about your beautiful death, a hawk circled the courtyard of our home. This was the first time he’d seen a hawk anywhere close to our house.
Later, you circled overhead when we walked by the sea.
Here in Paris we haven’t seen you soaring yet. But we are looking.
Reader Comments (30)
Dear Ruth,
What a gift! Thank you so much for reminding us of that poetry festival at Ballona, and the hawk's salute as you read Mary Thomson's poem. What a gorgeous poem. Especially her verbs: "screes, stirs, bumble,, tweedling, flashes, scrabbles, sighs, rattling, twitter and sing." And that last line is so lovely: "the long slow heartbeat of the sea."
She really looked and listened, didn't she. And was such a fine wordsmith.
I listened again to the link on our post to the peregrine falcons in Paris (in the first paragraph), and the sound WAS a "scree." The sound a fierce predator bird would make, high-pitched and eerie.
Say hello to the Red-tailed Hawks in Ballona Wetlands from us.
And love to you and Bill,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Dear Dawna,
Richard thanks you and so do I!
You're exactly right in your description of my father. Isn't integrity always noteworthy, and so very welcome in other human beings? It's one of the things I so love about you. I'd trust you with any secret (if I had any), trust you with the keys to our house (which we've done), and even Marley says, Where's Dawna? She really knows how to show a cat some true appreciation.
That's exactly it! "...where the natural world and the spirit world meet, we are blessed with messengers, if we are open and attentive."
Thank you again for your eloquent words.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Dear Tristine,
Thank you so much, but my father and I had different kinds of temperaments. Very little fazed him. We are alike in having no malice towards others, but different in how we handle others' malice. I get more upset with negativity in other people than he did; he simply observed it in a Zen-like way. Not that he didn't see it. Not that if it was really out of bounds, he wouldn't speak up against it. But he wasn't ruffled by much. I'm becoming more that way through intention and practice. But differences in temperament serve different purposes, and my sensitivity to the "weather" around me is part of what drives me as a writer. His balanced temperament served him well in business and in service to his community.
Love, love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
I love, love, love your message, Ann. We are lucky to have had him as a father.
Love and gratitude,
Kaaren (and Richard)
Hi Kaaren, I read this a week ago, and was so jet-lagged that I couldn't even remember today if I had commented or not! How beautiful and touching a tribute to your father. You are such a believer, so spiritual, beyond Christianity, and when life gives you proof, you express it with such beauty. There is a Buddhist monk, Lama Tenzin, who comes to stay with us periodically, and once when he was meditating in my backyard a huge bird that I believe was a hawk, at least some kind of bird that I've never seen in this environment, landed not ten feet from him and stayed, even as Lama came into the house to show me. Is it possible that was a hawk? At my pool in Santa Monica, responding to the chanting of the monk? Also, a week after my sister's death, the first time I went out, a ladybug landed on my hand and stayed there for an hour, even as I ate pancakes, crossed the street, and returned to the yoga studio to pay for the class I had just taken. Like a kiss from heaven, I was sure it was part of my sister's soul. Your letter reminded me of these precious moments, when nature expresses our spirits and takes hold of our souls. And reading about your dad made clear why you became such an extraordinary woman. xo
Diane,
I JUST today saw your message here, and it so moved me.
I don't think of it as belief, so much as experience. If you've had an experience of the invisible world, you know it exists.
That ladybug is such an experience. Have you ever had a ladybug stay that long on your hand? While you ate pancakes, crossed the street, entered a yoga studio? And the timing of it: the first time you left the house after your sister's death. And the unlikelihood of a ladybug remaining so long on you. And your certainty that it was part of the soul of your sister. Certainty, rather than belief. "Like a kiss from heaven:" how beautiful!
The image of a huge bird coming to listen to Lama Tenzin's chanting in your back yard is enchanting. The only huge bird I've seen in Los Angeles is a hawk. Oh, and pelicans and herons, but you would have recognized them.
Thank you so much for your eloquent stories, Diane.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Beautiful two of words and photos,
Thank you, Kaaren and Richard, for getting me in touch with Paris Play. I have printed out Hawk and will see Betty tomorrow morning with a copy in hand. What a high-spirited site you two are producing. I had tears in my eyes as I finished your tribute to Sam. He follows me with such strong presence wherever I go that I find myself occasionally talking out loud to him. I find myself thanking him for staying in touch and sharing my experiences and accomplishments. I had the most vivid memory last week of Sam lying in silence and stillness with his hawk-like nose so prominent. It was such an emotional moment to spend with a loved one who was gathering their spirit and moving to another existence. The ‘Power of the Universe’, that lives in all our hearts, was palpable and fresh and confusing all of my senses. I could not describe the taste of the moment but will certainly recognize it in the future. My relationship with Sam these last four years has been Surreal and strengthening. He freed me to follow his lead and live and work with truth, grace and appreciation. I love living in the present and celebrating the nuances of now. You two are doing just that and your work is filled with the joy of the moment. Thank you for bringing Sam into our home again and sharing such deeply felt love for Samuel Pharaoh Kitchell. We love you.
Jny
Jonny,
I have tears in my eyes as I read this. I called Richard over and he had the same response.
I know Dad follows you everywhere. He's so thrilled at your courage and resourcefulness at starting your OWN Green Building business, the right kind at this time in the history of evolution. I think he would have made a similar choice if he'd been at the same stage of life as you in the past several years. And you KNOW how grateful and mind-blown he was at your & Leatrice's taking him into your home. He was truly astonished. (AS IF his son wouldn't give back as much as he gave to him!)
Oh, Samuel Pharaoh Kitchell, that's it. I remember walking into the room at the mortuary where Dad was lying covered in white linen at the far end of the empty room. Jane said, Samuel Pharaoh Kitchell, a somehow perfect blending of a pun on his middle name, Farrand, and our feeling about Dad who looked at that moment like a pharaoh, at peace in eternity.
We're just stunned that all this time you were not receiving Paris Play, because of an out-of-date e-mail address.
Much love to one of our favorite guys on earth,
Kaaren & Richard
Regarding above two posts:
What a beautiful, loving, conscientious, majestic family!
All my love,
Sand
Dear Cassandra,
You're more like a lush green meadow than sand, so I'll continue calling you Cassandra!
Thank you for this blessing. You and my brother, Jon, would LOVE each other, just as you and Jane hit it off, and you and I are soul sisters.
We did receive the gift of fine examples. But the great thing about having children is that it's never too late to do it right. Lucky Solomon and his brothers! They will praise their parents in a similar way!
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)