Been There Voices: Anita Perez Ferguson - In the rear view mirror

We have a crappy old Chevy van parked in our driveway. I have resented it ever since we stored it for an acquaintance who will probably never remove it. It is a big ugly white box, old enough to vote. Oddly enough, there is someone who loves it and gives us much joy as he clings to the rearview mirror. 

This tiny strip-headed sparrow visits the mirror each morning at sunrise and engages in deep, deep reflection. He pecks at his image in the mirror, then flutters against the driver’s side window. If there were a sparrow dervish dance, this would be it. 

Because of the car’s angle, the sparrow must see several self-images; in the mirror, in the window, the mirror reflecting the window, and the window reflecting the mirror. It’s all him, all the time. 

So, this clunker of an unwanted vehicle provides some amusement and consideration of my own frantic self-absorption and my fascination with the rearview mirror of life. While our bird friend wears himself out pecking at the past, a bowl of fresh bird seed sits five feet away, the rising sun creates an unbelievable spectacle, the blue sky and fluffy clouds adorn the scene above, but he pecks, pecks, pecks.

I have even cleaned the mirror for him, enabling his fruitless pursuits, even while I urge him to look up, see the sky, the birdseed, and the new day. Two days ago, he brought a friend. One bird pecked on the driver’s side, the other at the passenger side mirror. My husband and I chuckled and continued our own morning pursuits. I reminded him to look up at the sky during his walk to work. 

And I remind myself, and you, to do the same. Happy New Year. Look ahead. 

** Anita Perez Ferguson, PhD, Santa Barbara, CA, young adult historic fiction author

Books; Twisted Cross (2020), Women Seen & Heard (2019)

https://www.amazon.com/Twisted-Cross-Adventure-World-Mission-ebook/dp/B08GCXKS9F

Click here for more about Anita and other Been There Voices  

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Been There Voices is about us, our lives, our successes and failures, our joys and sorrows, our lessons and our gradual, hard-won wisdom. We have survived and thrived throughout whatever has come our way.

The reasons are arbitrary and not intended to dismiss half of our population, however, this project focuses on the stories of women, and begins with fourteen women, well-polished grains of sand on the beach of life, tumbled by the waves of time until their light shines through, offering their stories, joys and sorrows, to the ocean of wisdom.