One of the most difficult things about living with multiple sclerosis is that it can steal parts of your personality. Some traits are missed by no one; some defined your very soul, such was my theft.
I loved helping those in need. As a child I formed “The Good Guys” club, consisting of my two younger cousins and me. We met in my dirty, cobweb and bat infested basement to plan what good deeds we could do that day. During snow filled Indiana winters, I loved to clean off the cars on our street. . After my great aunt lost some of her vision, my beat up Ford station wagon, was always available to take her to get her hair styled or keep doctor appointments. Surrounded by three rivers, my hometown often flooded and sandbagging in the pitch dark at the rivers edge to try and save a senior’s house filled me with great pleasure. After I moved to Seattle and MS took hold of me, my days of helping others turned into nights of questioning who I was.
One of the reasons I moved to Seattle was to see the seagulls depicting the Seattle scenery in a brochures I had requested upon turning 18 and knowing home was not in Indiana. Something about seagulls called to me. Soon after arriving I headed toward the scent of Puget Sound waters and the sound of seagulls. My first sighting was in front of the Seattle Public Library. Hearing the unique cry of the gull I looked up and there one was, in all the grandeur I imagined, and I could have sworn it was watching me too.
When I would move, it moved with me as if it were following me, welcoming me to my dream, performing just for my…plop! Suddenly my glasses were covered with a white substance I would come to know as seagull poop. Then it unceremoniously glided away.
It seems when diagnosed with a life altering disease that we humans are left with three choices: Stand still, move sideways, move forward. If we stand still, frozen by shock and disbelief, eventually we become as rigid as a tombstone--nothing but a stone where once there was a life.
If we move sideways then we immerse ourselves in our physical condition. We obsess on our losses and our what-could-have-been, or what-may-be. We spend our time searching for a cure, a reason, a logical outcome. Everyone around us seems to be moving to and fro. We become spectators at a tennis match that never ends.
The only option that made sense to me was to move forward into the unknown. Accepting that I would become a new me, embracing whoever that would be was an exciting idea. I chose to focus my moments on what I still could do. Luckily, I had help from above.
Looking out of the office building where I worked as a customer service representative for Seattle City Light, my co-workers and I noticed a seagull preparing a nest on the ledge of the building across the street. This provided several of us with a daily distraction from our stressful time on the phones handling angry customer’s complaints.
We were disturbed to see that a baby gull had somehow dropped to the ledge a story away from the nest. The mother (We presumed mother, though often there were two seagulls that hung around, daddy was very “wings on,”) was not happy.
She seemed unable to reach the baby as it had fallen to a very precarious, thin ledge six stories up. Now we had real drama. After several days it seemed mother and father gave up on the little one. We watched it shiver in the cold early morning Seattle rain. Swirling winds almost flung it to the street below. Many of my co-workers laughed at me for worrying so. It was a bird after all, it will not fall, it will fly. That made sense, but after a week of watching it all alone and not being fed…one day I looked over and it laid down, apparently too weak to stand.
How could I watch and do nothing?
“Can I borrow your sweater for a few moments?” I asked my co-worker who sat next to me, as I reached for it.
“Uh, ok.”
“Silvia, let’s go get that bird down,” I said as I swiftly walked past her desk in front of mine.
Silvia was a short, stocky, almost sixty, Greek woman; who I greatly respected and felt her to be a woman of action. She quickly removed her headset and off we went.
Sometimes, no, often, I wonder what motivates me. A flat land Indiana small town girl who hated the ride up to the Space Needle, hated Ferris wheels, hated ladders, loved my feet planted firmly on floor one, plus I happened to have multiple sclerosis; and I’ve decided that my friend and I will scale a big city sky scraper to save a baby bird? But this is all in hindsight, at the time Silvia and I never hesitated.
By elevator we made it to the height where the bird was, and I asked Silvia to wait close to the exit. “Silvia, I’ll grab the bird in the sweater, hand it off to you and you take it up...” “OK,” she replied in her heavy Greek accent. That was the only discussion we had about it. What could be simpler?
Oh sure, I had bouts of Vertigo, yeah dizziness on occasion, loss of balance, just the usual MS symptoms. As people in nearby buildings watched the two kooks up by the baby seagull, I got as close to the ledge as I could. The baby was within my arms length. It was considerably larger up close, robin size with a very sharp beak. As it saw my head poke around the corner it immediately backed away. “Diane! Be careful,” Silvia cried out as I turned and put my finger to my lips signing “sshh.”
With as much sweetness as I could muster I began, “Hi, little gull. It’s okay, don’t be scared. Come here.” The bird was scared to death and trembling uncontrollably. With the sweater hidden behind my back, bending further over the ledge, the gull started scooting slowly towards me. Just then a woman’s soft voice asked in a whisper, “What can I do to help?”
Tina, a friend of Silvia’s, had heard of our rescue attempt and ran over to assist. The baby bird was startled, as was I, and again it retreated.
“Tina, find this building’s maintenance man and tell him to bring a ladder. I’ll get the bird, hand it off to Silvia then she can give it to the man to take it up to the nest.” “Got it,” she said as she quickly turned and ran off, telling Silvia the new plan. Turning my attention back to the bird it had retreated further away now than when we first arrived. It looked exhausted as it slumped onto its side.
Think, Diane, think, I was saying under my breath, but it was hard to think because there was a strange, distant high pitched whistling sound in my ears. It grew loud enough to drown out the sound of the traffic below. As I glanced at Silvia for just a moment the look on her face was one of terror. Turning my head as if in slow motion I looked down Third Avenue, a main street in Seattle, and flying swiftly our way right down the middle of the street was a seagull. It was headed for me and the closer it came the larger it grew. It stopped two inches from my face, hovering there, its long beak as sharp as any sword I cold imagine and it stared at me.
Maybe this is a good time to tell you what happened at a small duck pond in front of an apartment complex I once lived at. The ducks had become aggressive to residents who fed them bread crumbs. After my bag of bread crumbs was eaten I would hold up my hands to the ducks and they simple turned away.
So when the parent seagull stared me down I pointed to the baby, and then made the motion of lifting it up to the nest. The huge, beautiful bird watched my movements then flew over to the baby and screeched until the baby stood and started moving towards me. The adult bird flew away straight down the street again and out of sight. Trembling more each step it took, I repeated my soft words of encouragement, cupping my hand, not reaching over too far so it might feel it had far to go before I could…swiftly with one motion I threw the sweater over the little gull and scooped him up, gently I handed it to Silvia who ran it to Tina who handed it to the maintenance man who had his ladder in place against the roof tier and up he went. Moments later he returned, the bird was back in the nest and within seconds the parent bird appeared out of no where and landed at the nest. Silvia summed it all up with, “There.” We headed back to work.
Returning to some applause, I collapsed, exhausted, into my desk chair as my co-worker who sat next to me said nonchalantly,” Where is my sweater?”
Thus began a series of bird rescues. Walking past an empty apartment in my building the shrieks of the apt. manager could be heard. She was chasing a sparrow around the room like a crazy woman. I calmly walked in, took off my jacket, and I began speaking softly to the frightened bird. It landed at my feet and I quickly covered it with my jacket; then scooped it up and released it out the window. The apt. mgr. was thrilled. “How did you learn to do that?” she asked. I shrugged my shoulders.
At these times a memory does come back to me when a bat was loose in the house my mother and I lived in. We were both frantic. A visiting friend of my brother’s asked if we had a shoe box. The bat was clinging to a curtain. He took the shoe box and using the lid flipped the bat inside.
Not long after the gull and sparrow experiences, I was sitting on a bench near Lake Washington watching a duck having a fit. Passersby were trying to chase it away. It was quacking so loudly without out taking a breath, of course it came up to me. Showing it my empty hands, no food here, ducky, it just got louder. OK, I stood and it waddled away. I followed down a steep embankment, relying greatly on my cane, along the lake’s edge, “I can’t swim you know!” (Now I was shouting logic to a duck)
Suddenly the wise-quacker stopped and looked at me with a, “Well, get to it!” look on its face. “Peep, peep, peep…” I heard, but where was it coming from? The duck was getting an attitude with me now and began circling a spot ahead. Sure enough there in a hole in the ground was a baby duckling, muddy and pitiful looking, but not so far down I couldn’t simply bend over and pick him up. Off they waddled without so much as a thank you.
Over the years birds in trouble have somehow found their way into my life. Even now that I spend most of my time in a power chair, birds serenade me and fly into my balcony. Just last week I escorted a wayward sparrow back outside from my apartment buildings hallway. I am me again.
Native American Proverb:
“That which was stolen from my soul has been returned. I shall follow the birds great and small.”
Retired in 2004 after 18 years of working for the City of Seattle, recently turning 51 and living with MS for over 20 years, I continues to seek new ways of embracing who I have become by focusing on all that I can do while moving forward past what I can not do.
