Ruby-throat
By Virginia Laurie
My Mom loves hummingbirds. We have hummingbird wallpaper, paintings, pretty, white porcelain figures of the birds at their flowers that she collects and places on the bathroom shelf.
When I was little, she saved lots of birds who’d gotten trapped in our garage. She’d crawl onto wobbly counters, face half-red with sympathetic tears, trying to coax the dazed things away from the window with soft words and gentle prods.
Twice, those birds were hummingbirds. One needed only to be carried to the driveway before he darted away. One was tired and fading, sitting on the hot counter. She maneuvered him into the recess of an old sun hat before carrying him outside, gentle but steady as a heart surgeon.
When he did not stir, she instructed me to run inside to the kitchen and mix a packet of Kool-Aid. She said it was the closest thing to nectar we had (She never did forgive my Dad for breaking the feeder).
[Note: Kool-Aid has additives that are bad for hummingbirds (and probably humans as well). You should make your own nectar, properly, by boiling sugar and water if this ever happens to you. We did not know this at the time; I was seven, could barely use a toaster, and it was 95 degrees. You’ll have to forgive our field medicine.]
When I rushed back out, having completed my part of the operation, he was nestled, more alert now, between her cupped palms. I held the shallow bowl of red steady as she lifted him slightly above it and told him, sternly, to drink. She massaged the back of his neck with a finger to encourage him.
When he stuck his skinny little beak into the bowl and drank, I saw it for a miracle. His little tongue moved in and out, making bubbles in the “nectar.” My mom smiled now, more relaxed. I saw her as a miracle too, or, at least, a miracle worker. Maybe that’s when I first fell in love with gentle hands, palms facing up, cradling. The miracle of tenderness.
She told me to look at his iridescent green, his cherry-red throat, and I did. I drank my fill of the color and the heat. She told me, Remember this moment, and I did.
The ruby-throated hummingbird beats its wings about 50 times per second. Its heart (centimeters at most) beats more than 1200 times per minute, and they can fly forward up to 30 miles-per-hour, 60 if they dive.
I have seen one so still I could begin to count its 1500 feathers.
I have seen the white glint of life in a hummingbird’s eye, the size of a pinhead.
I have seen my mother hold a hummingbird like a beating heart in her hands.
I don’t know about religion, its limbs and buildings, the books and rules, but I do have faith. I have faith in my mother, and in survival, which is connected to kindness, is sugar and trust. I have seen a 5-inch miracle.
Together, we watched him revive and fly away.
Virginia Laurie is an English major at Washington and Lee University whose work has been published in LandLocked, Phantom Kangaroo, Cathexis Northwest Press, and more. https://virginialaurie.com/