Battle Cries

The barn owl, native to California, runs an average wingspan of 16 inches. In ancient Greek mythology, it is said that Athene, Goddess of Wisdom, was so taken by the owl it became her favorite creature of flight. The owl became a protector of Greece. During war the bird soared alongside Greek armies and served as a muse to the people. If an Owl flew over Greek Soldiers before a battle, they took it as a sign of victory. I was ten or so the first time I saw my owl, my protector.

When I was a child my parents would have explosive arguments. The subject matter seemed futile compared to the consequences. There was broken furniture, shattered glass, and lost hope. One of the worst battles I had witnessed was when I was ten. At that point I had been sleeping in my mother’s bed for a while. One night some weeks before the incident my father had raped my mother. From then on out I took it upon myself to be her owl, to sleep in her bed so my father could do no more harm to her. I failed. At 9 o'clock my father barged into the room he once called his own. I could smell the rum on his breath from 6 feet away. He drank a handle of rum on a slow day. He started yelling about something inconsequential. My mother, naked, arose to defend herself. Out of fear, rage, or stupidity, she kicked an end table. The table was beautiful. Mahogany, with claw teeth, the table was something you would see going for hundreds of dollars in an antique store. The end table slid across the floor at the speed of light and in slow motion simultaneously. It grazed my father’s leg. It grazed him in a way that would not have done tremendous damage, but in a way that made his soul turn black. His eyes filled with a fierceness I have never seen in a man or woman again to this day. He was swallowed whole by an emotion dark and inhuman.

What happened next went so fast, like it was happening in a cinematic rhythm. The end table flew out of my father’s hands faster than he had retrieved it. The antique soared towards my mother, it missed her beautiful face by a quarter of an inch and collided with the wall-sized vanity mirror that had stood directly behind her head. Shattered pieces of reflective glass filled with childhood memories struck the bed like thunder. A piece the size of a fist flew right past my eyes then hit the backboard of the bed and landed on the mattress. In the mirror shards that lay around me, I watched my innocence destroyed. All of the good moments in that house seem to be pulled out the reflections and replaced with what can only be described as hell. And then, through my tear drenched eyes, I saw it. Looking back at me in the mirror fragment that encapsulated the end of my youth was an owl. It must have heard the battle cries. I would come to learn it was a barn owl. The creature had a snow-white face, a beak that resembled a talon, and jet black eyes. Eyes that look like they swallow all of the dark out of the night so we can see light again. I don’t even remember watching my father leave the room, but with the slam of the door, he was gone, and unceremoniously so was my owl.

Eventually, my parents would get divorced. An event that I thought would bring peace to my life and it did, but not much. My father was a terrible drunk with a host of personality disorders, but I so badly wanted a Dad. I tried every way I could to fit him into a mold I had made for him. I never could make him better. He just got worse. Towards the end of his life, his words sounded more sorrowful. His syllables strung together like a musical score when you know one of the important characters is going to die. When we spoke he stopped making sense and it got harder and harder to pick up that 300 lb phone call.

The night I found out my father died should have felt easier. It seemed like a moment I had practiced hundreds of times. I had rehearsed it over and over throughout my whole life. I half hoped for it and half dreaded it. My brother called me late at night, too late in the night for good news. I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

They found my father alone. He died surrounded by human filth, maggots, and weapons. They say his death was painless. A consolation prize for such a painful life I thought. I cried, of course. He left me without the father I wanted or even worse the one I needed. My husband stroked my back and tried to console me, but it was late and eventually, he had to sleep. I could hardly keep my eyes open, but closing them felt too painful. When I closed my eyes I saw the shards of that broken mirror. I saw him bouncing me on his knee when I was five. I saw him bloated, dead, and alone. I went to our spare room to write, a solace that has always helped soothe me in my darkest hours. As I grabbed a pen and notepad from my desk, I saw it, my owl. We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity but I'm sure the exchange lasted for only moments. That snow-white face, that talon shaped beak, and those jet black eyes. They seemed to be getting darker by each moment it swallowed my pain.

I have never been the most spiritual person, but sometimes when you are dancing with death you can’t help but hear the music of the angels. Maybe the owls were a complete coincidence, maybe the trauma of the events was so overwhelming that there was never an owl at all. Or maybe that was my same owl from all those years ago. Maybe, just like in Greek mythology, that owl was my protector, following me into battle, being my inspiration, soaring in to tell me I had won. I think the owl is an omen of survival. I survived the chaos and the traumas of domestic violence and I survived the death of the person who was put on this earth to protect me and had failed. The owl soared over me to show me that by enduring through my battles and telling my story, I in fact have won.