The Drive to School and the Wooden Bird Owen Made That Still Hung From My Mirror
I found my mother in the kitchen when I came downstairs. She had been staying with us since the funeral — sleeping in the guest room, making sure I ate, sitting with me in the evenings when the silence became too loud. She looked up from the sink the moment she saw my face.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Owen left something at school,” I said. “His teacher found it. She said it has my name on it.”
My mother’s expression shifted into something I can only describe as a mother’s understanding — that particular look of someone who has sat with enough grief to know when a moment is different from other moments, and who doesn’t look away from it.
She didn’t ask any more questions. She handed me my keys.
At the first red light on the way to the school, I looked at the small wooden bird hanging from my rearview mirror. Owen had made it in shop class for Mother’s Day the previous spring, about four months before everything fell apart. The wings were slightly uneven. The beak curved in the wrong direction. It was, objectively, a lopsided little bird.
