The Heart of the Bone

July 22, 2026

6:15 a.m.

30.2260° N, 93.2174° W

On my back porch, waiting for the sun to rise, realizing the whitish sky might be too cloudy, and I won’t be able to see the big yellow ball.

Nothing seems magical, but still I hope I will see the sun rise over my back fence.

Just as I'm writing this, the sky shifts to a pale-pale blue, and the clouds distinguish themselves.

A black bird glides from on high down to a tree.

More blue.

More birds.

A touch of pink, or is it peach?

The words, the memories, aren’t arriving today.

Am I too tired?

Or is it that I haven't held my mouth just right? That's what Mike used to say.

Okay, God, I'm ready for You to wring the words from my heart, wash them through my mind, and push them out through my fingertips.

My dog. My Finny. He is my faithful companion.

He, more than any of the others, follows me into my office and sits beside my chair. He sleeps two feet away in case I need a moment of distraction, a quick pet on his head, a curly mohawk these days.

The mourning doves coo down the street, and the grasshoppers vibrate their strings.

Moments after my mom died, my phone rang.

It was a Sunday morning in Homosassa, Florida.

She was in Mike's room, as she called it, even though Mike had never lived in that house.

My ringer is hardly ever turned on, but today it was.

Anna and Amy were in the room, and Ralph still in the bedroom.

Bob Marley sang out. He's my ringtone.

"Don't worry about a thing, ‘cause every little thing's gonna be alright."

How could I have known I would need him, his reminder, minutes after my mother slipped away?

Three birds call and flutter.

I can’t see them. I don't know their names.

I can't match their songs to their faces like I can with a mourning dove, a duck, a goose, a hawk, or an eagle.

Maybe someday I'll know each call by name.

The light is lifting.

A solitary dragonfly swoops in, rests on the kudzu that has swallowed a section of our fence.

The neighbors behind the kudzu press their fob that honks the horn and unlocks the door.

One door opens and closes, then another.

It's early.

Where are two people going before sunrise?

Beyond the street, a bird sits on a wire.

Then another lands far away, I suspect not wanting to chat before she’s fully awake.

I read about wishes this week and when to make them.

I knew about eyelashes, birthday candles, shooting stars, the first star of the night, and a penny—but only if it's on the ground with its head facing up.

But I did not know about three birds on a wire.

Did you know about this moment when a wish could be set in motion?

My favorite is wishing on the seeds of a dandelion.

There are four black birds on the wire now.

Did I miss my chance to wish on this new day?

Is a wish more or less than a prayer?

Do you remember when we'd wish on a turkey bone weeks after Thanksgiving or Christmas?

My mother taught me that wishes had their own timing.

She'd dry the turkey's wishbone in the winter sun. We'd wait for days. Every time I passed that bone on the windowsill, I'd swell in anticipation, hoping, that today would be the day it was ready.

I didn’t have to worry about the timing though because my mother would tell me when it was ready.

We'd stand across from each other, close our eyes, and make our wishes.

I wonder if she was there making a wish opposite me, or if it was Anna, and we, her two girls, were wishing while she simply instructed, “Slowly.” Then, “Go.”

Maybe it was a bit of both. Maybe the day Anna became too old for our silliness, too old to hang out with her little sister and her mom, was the day my mother and I began wishing together.

I wonder if she wished that my wish would come true rather than making one for herself. That's the kind of mom she was. She was happiest gazing at her babies because they were part of her heart.

I didn't know it at the time, but she'd given birth to another baby long before I entered the world.

So maybe she was wishing that she'd meet her firstborn, the one never to fill the empty chair in the corner.

Maybe she wished that her three little birds would sit shoulder to shoulder and watch the sunrise.

That's another verse in Marley's song that helps me feel my mother's presence, even though she never listened to that man with me.

Three little birds.

On the day of her death, we became her three little birds. We sang to her, “Don’t worry about a thing,” as she crossed over the river, the lake, the electric blue waterway, from the darkness into the Light.

I know there's a house there. On the far shore.

I’ve seen it in a dream. After my husband, Michael, died.

I know it’s where we will meet. All of us. Together again.

When I arrive, we'll hug and share a meal.

A true celebration where every wish we ever blew out on birthday candles and dandelion seeds, every wish that lingered in the air beneath a shooting star, will be fulfilled.

That will be a good day.

Later in life, when I had children of my own, I dried the wishbone too. I didn't have a sunny windowsill, so I set it near the woodstove.

When the bone turned brittle, I called out to one of my boys—or both, if they were home—to come break it.

I wonder what they wished for.

I don't remember if they told me. Probably not since I’m one who believes if you open your mouth the magic—the wish—escapes, and it might not be fulfilled.

But I hope I wished that their wishes would come true instead of making one for myself.

When I became the mother, I learned if you hold your side of the wishbone tightly and don't really pull—if you let your little ones do all the work—they usually end up with the heart of the bone.

If you've never wished on a wishbone, the person holding the top—the heart—is the one whose wish will come true. There is a winner when wishing with another.

Of course, if you're a wishing mother, and you wish for your child's wish to come true, then you've learned how to cheat the system, and both wishes at the ends of a turkey bone come true.

My mother was good at cheating the system, always had an honest answer ready.

I suppose that's a story for another time.

It still makes me chuckle because, for someone who rarely, if ever, told an outright lie, she was remarkably good at dressing up a tall tale until it resembled the truth.

That quality was passed on to Anna and me, and one we couldn't help but pass along to our children, too.