Heart Hope by Olga

At least four times in the last few months while sitting in my living room, I have heard a thud at the window. Each time, I discovered that a bird had crashed into the large picture window that looks into my backyard, and believe me it was not because the windows were so clean that they could not tell that they were flying into the glass pane. I’m not sure exactly why these crashes happen, but I do have a few guesses. The first one is that they just get distracted either by another bird or by the freedom that they feel gliding through the air. That sometimes happens to me in life; I lose my focus and while distracted I get myself into a situation that might be harmful or even dangerous. Another possibility for the flying mishaps could be that the reflection in the glass makes it look like there are blue skies and clouds out in front of them, but it is actually a mirage. This can happen in life too when we don’t check out things carefully we can be fooled into a false manner of thinking...

Yesterday I had four children between the ages of 5 and 2 eating popcorn on my back porch. You can only imagine the mess that was made by children grabbing the kernels and stuffing them in their mouths as fast as possible. When all of the bowls were empty, I swept the wooden deck and my grandson, Will and I discussed what might happen to the popcorn during the night. He thought perhaps a bear or raccoon, or maybe even a fox might eat it. I thought the sprinkler would come on and soak it into the grass. This morning Will woke up early and eagerly went to check on the popcorn kernels. There was not a one to be found, so we became detectives, looking for clues to solve our mystery. Since we found no evidence on the lower deck, we decided that we needed a better vantage point and would go to the upstairs deck to see if we could find any signs by looking down on the scene. Will thought he saw a bear track that could have been a hint, but it turned out to be an Aspen tree root. While looking...