Mother Duck

We took a late afternoon walk around the Tidal Basin today. The weather was fair and breezy, and the crowds were relatively thin, even more so the closer it got to that traditional American dinner hour; as many times as we have been down there, we knew it would probably be so.

As we set off, the tiny cherries on and beneath the trees took me by surprise-- could it be possible I've never been down there this time of year? Surely not! But it had to be, for I had no idea that our cherries, so famous for their ornamental blossoms in the spring, were of a fruiting variety. 

Around by the Jefferson Memorial our company was more avian than human-- a hundred or more ducks and geese swam and waddled on the beach formed from the crumbling retaining wall. There was only one mother duck: she was small and slim, barely an adult herself, but I admired the way she steered her two tiny ducklings firmly toward the water. She was young, but she was competent and resolute.

I was reminded of one of our family stories. When I was not yet four,  and my brother was just two, and my sister was an infant, our family moved to Philadelphia for my dad's job. Before our house was ready, we stayed a couple nights downtown in the Sheraton. My dad had been in Philly for a month or so, leaving my mother to pack the house care for 2 toddlers, and oh yes, give birth. 

My dad was at work when we arrived at the hotel, and my mother put us all down for naps. But who could sleep in such a wondrous place? My exhausted mother, perhaps, but not us! My brother and I got up from our beds, still in our t-shirts and underwear, walked past my sleeping mother, and opened the door. Outside there was a long hallway lined with doors, and we were eager to explore. Of course, the door locked behind us, and once we set off, there was no way of knowing which of the doors was ours.

A hotel maid found us and somehow knew which room to return us to. She knocked quietly and then used her master key to open the door. Inside, she found my mother, still sleeping. Mom woke up to the three of us standing over her. "Oh," the kindly maid was shaking her head, "she's just a baby and she has three babies of her own!"