Have you ever experienced love as a concept?

You know you’re loved. You feel gratitude, inclusion, even safety, by being in the inner circle of people’s lives.

But you feel like you don’t really belong anywhere specific. You’re a free spirit who dances with the wind.

As a single, solopreneur, woman who rides a motorcycle, I’m alone a lot. My family are four-legged and winged-ones. Even the wild NYC birds congregate and nest on my terrace.

It’s no wonder that when my 25-year-old conure––the smallest of the parrot world––got badly hurt, my free spirit crumbled to the ground in a heap of uncontrollable tears. We have shared a life for 20-years.

O my Goodness, life without my little man––Fred––felt too barren to bear. Please stop bleeding! Please don’t leave me! Please LIVE!!

My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a fist. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around how to text the vet tech (as instructed) when I arrived at the hospital doors. And, having to pass him over to a stranger on the sidewalk, because Covid prevented me from going inside, left me standing in the rain with tears streaming down my cheeks.

I tried to busy myself with work, but could hardly speak. Tears were all I had to share. My heart ached with a depth of love I hadn’t let myself fully know… until it was breaking open.

I didn’t see him again for nine hours. At 8pm I picked him up with his head in a plastic cone and his talon bandaged up making him lopsided and toppling over.

Manic, he went from spinning on the floor of his cage wrestling with the cone––unable to climb to his perches or food bowls––to collapsing with his head leaning sideways on the cone passed out.

There were times that the vet’s words, “It’s pretty bad,” echoed in my head, as I desperately tried to will him well.

Between my tasks he’d scramble to the edge of his cage to be held. Our cuddle time eased both our hearts. We’d take deep breaths together and purr like the kitties at my feet watching with wide-eyed concern.

Fred is my little man. A bird-man who has taught me of trust, loyalty, commitment, play, and most of all, love. He has melted a frozen part of my heart. The part of my heart that has been petrified to let love in again.

Well, I finally FEEL love again. It’s not a mental concept, it’s an emotional fierceness. It tugs relentlessly at my insides, until it’s quenched with touch on the outside.

Fred lives and love prevails.

Never get too busy for cuddle time. It offers belonging. Love your animal.

(Perhaps now, there’s even room for a trustworthy, loyal, committed, playful, tall, dark and handsome two-legged?!)

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