The Significance of a Feather

The Significant Feather

See the feather in this photo? I call it "A Significant Feather."

My sister, Laura, her daughter, Abby and her four grandchildren had stopped off for the weekend on their 3 day journey from Wisconsin to Texas. We had a full house with kids running everywhere, women cooking, my daughter and my father coming over to visit, and kids running in and out of the house...


Abby and Collette, Laura, Marcia, Sarah and Ellen (named after my mother)

Family weekends like this are rare and special because we live so far from most of them. I relished every moment. And planned the next meal. And baked a cake for my sister and Dad's joint birthday celebration on Sunday. And cleaned, and cooked, and wrapped presents...

You get the idea. I was busy.

While I was being a good hostess, cooking, cleaning, visiting--I have one vague memory that stands out, that I go back in my mind every once in a while now that they are all gone and the house has quieted down.


Calvin, great grandfather John, Josh
(feather is visible above Josh's head-click on photo)

Abby's oldest boy, Josh--or quite truthfully, it could have been Calvin, the younger of the boys--came into the house with a bird feather--the one that now sits on a table in my living room. I was bustling around the house, trying to get presents wrapped for the party, not really paying attention to the boy and his feather.

I remember hearing him tell his mother or grandmother about the bird feather. Where he'd found it outside in Aunt Marcia's yard. What kind of bird was it? Did a bird die if it lost too many feathers? The usual boyhood questions.

At the time I felt a minuscule nudge in my heart as this exchange moved through the house. I don't remember why I didn't go over to look, or have him put the feather where it rightfully belonged. Too busy, perhaps, or not wanting to interrupt. And later I discovered the feather sitting on the table where it still sits.


The Family Farm, an oil painting by Dan Radig

But now as I look back on this moment, I remember wandering the yard at the Farm, finding feathers of my own. Big feathers, small feathers--perfect and imperfect feathers. I remember taking them inside the farmhouse to show my Aunt Nina. I remember talking with her about the feather. Asking my own questions about the birds. I remember the patience of my great aunt, her willingness to pause her life and share a feather moment with her niece.


The Feather Box

I remember walking into the sitting room with Aunt Nina and watching her take down the feather box from the shelf by the front door. She would carefully open the box as she set it on a table. We would look inside the box at all the other feathers, picking up one at a time, reliving last summer's findings. Then I would add my feather to the collection and Aunt Nina would close the box and put it back in its place of honor on the shelf. And I would wander off to my next adventure.


My sister Laura, Aunt Nina, and Marcia (me)

My father gave me the feather box a few summers ago while I was up in St. Paul, Minnesota on a summer visit. I added a label to the bottom of it when I got home to my Missouri home.


The Feather Box's Labels

I could have asked Josh (or Calvin?) to put the feather in the Feather Box. I could have been Aunt Nina to my sister's grandson. But I was too busy and the moment passed. And I'm not too sad I let it move on without me.


My sister, Laura, my Dad, John, my niece, Abby and her four children

I had many other moments that weekend to be Aunt Nina to these four wonderful children. And maybe next summer, there will be another Significant Feather to add to the Feather Box. And I will stop and be Aunt Nina to a great nephew with a feather.

UPDATE:
I was just talking with my father. He is the son of my Aunt Nina's sister, Eva, who is of course, my dear grandmother. Dad told me I "got it right." He remembers doing the same thing with his grandmother at the Farm.

"Wait a minute, Dad," I said. "Are you telling me that Jessie started the Feather Box Collection?"


Jessie Florence Russell Weeks

"Yes," he said. "And I remember her explaining it all to me when I was a little boy. I loved bringing new feathers to her Feather Box!"

So now you have the rest of the story. It wasn't Aunt Nina who started the Feather Box Family Tradition! It was her mother, Jessie Florence Russell Weeks, who is my great-grandmother! It turns out to be a true six-generation-tradition!

Makes me even more resolved to be a good Keeper of the Feather Box Collection. I can't help wondering what happened to all those feathers! No worry! The next generation down and I will be filling that box up with beautiful bird feathers over the next few years, you can count on it!