she was a hummingbird
The hummingbird hovered at the feeder outside the window.
It was a blur of iridescent green and blue, with a throat that flashed ruby when the light caught it just right.
I stopped talking to myself mid-sentence. Watching.
It stayed for maybe thirty seconds. Drank, and darted away.
And I thought of my grandmother, the way I always do when hummingbirds show up.
She wouldāve called it a sign, probably. Something about Jehovahās attention to detail, creating something so small and so unnecessarily beautiful. She believed in that. The divine care in the specifics. Sheād point to the hummingbirds in her garden and say they proved God had a sense of humor. āLook at that thing. Built like a helicopter.ā
My grandmother wasnāt the soft spoken spiritual type. She cried at commercials and cussed when she was happy and beat my mother in arm wrestling well into her late fifties. She rescued owls with broken wings and told raunchy jokes in whispers at the Kingdom Hall.
She was baptized as a Jehovahās Witness before I was born and believed with her whole chest in paradise ā an actual, physical place sheād get to walk around in someday, with fruit trees and no more pain and all the animals sheād ever loved waiting for her.
I donāt believe what she believed. But I believe in what she believed, if that makes sense. I believe in faith that turns you toward life instead of away from it. Faith that makes you nurse an injured squirrel back to health in a makeshift cage in your sunroom. That makes you plant flowers youāll never see bloom because someone else might need the color next spring.
She had the most beautiful gardens. She cleaned rental houses on the Bandon coast and would cut and arrange her own flowers in them before the guests arrived, even though no one asked her to. She made her own soap. She took photographs and got them published in the local paper. She didnāt wait for permission to create and there was nothing she couldnāt do.
There also wasnāt a thing she didnāt know. She studied encyclopedias. Iāve still never met another soul smarter than my grandma. She was my first internet.
The hummingbird came back while I was remembering all this. Hovered at the feeder again, this time longer. I wondered if it was the same one or a different one.
My grandmother used to say that hummingbirds were proof you could live a full life in a small amount of time. She died in her sixties. Too young. Or was it? Sheād packed more living into those years than most people manage in twice the time.
She felt everything deeply ā joy, grief, anger, awe ā and she didnāt backtrack or apologize for any of it. She was blunt. A little rude, even. Hilarious. Sheād tell you exactly what she thought and then laugh so hard sheād cry, and youād never quite know if she was laughing at you or with you or if you even minded.
She was an elderās wife, which meant she was seen as a leader among the women in the congregation. She took that seriously, but not in a solemn way. More like she took seriously the idea that people were watching, so sheād better show them something worth seeing. Strength. Kindness. Realness. She never performed "holiness." She just was.
The hummingbird left again. I realized Iād been holding my breath.
You donāt have to be still to be present.
Hummingbirds are in constant motion. Their wings beat so fast you canāt even see them. They burn through energy at a rate that would kill most creatures. They have to eat constantly just to survive. And yet when they drink, they drink. When theyāre there, theyāre fully there.
My grandmother was like that. Always on the move. Always making something, fixing something, helping someone. But when she was with you, she was with you. She looked you in the eye. She listened like you were the only person in the world. She cried when you cried. She laughed when you laughed. She didnāt multitask her presence.
I think about that a lot now, especially as a mother. How easy it is to be physically in a room but mentally three rooms over, or three years ahead, or three versions of yourself ago. How I can spend an entire day moving without actually arriving anywhere.
The hummingbird doesnāt worry about where itās going next. It doesnāt question whether itās doing presence right. It just shows up, drinks the nectar, and moves on. Fully alive in the only moment it has.
Iām not built like my grandmother. I canāt arm wrestle my way through doubt. I donāt cry as easily, though maybe I should. And I donāt have her faith. Not the certainty of it, anyway. Sometimes I wish I could borrow the way it seemed to steady her, made her hands look so sure when she touched broken things.
But I see the hummingbirds. And when they come, I stop what Iām doing. I watch them. I remember her.
And for those thirty seconds, Iām not arguing with myself. Iām not planning or worrying or wondering if Iām doing or being enough. Iām just here. Watching something small and unnecessarily beautiful do exactly what it was made to do.
My grandmother would probably say thatās prayer. And I think sheād be right.