“Hello!” My mom yelled over the rolling gusts of wind, waving her hands to the crows perched high up in the aspen. “I’m Jennifer!”
“Mom,” I said, ducking my head in embarrassment from the staring families. She laughed and took out our skis from the car. As I put on my boots, she asked for some of my sandwich.
“Give me some bread to put out for the crows,” she said. My mom tore apart the turkey sandwich, piece by piece, and spread the bread across the roof of our gray Toyota.
“You know, crows will remember this and they will call over all of their friends to come eat,” she said, smiling. “Then, they might want to be friends with me.”
The sky, covered in transparent clouds, brought wind that swept the smell of white bread into the air. More and more crows appeared, ruffling their feathers and standing tall on the rickety tree.
Transformation, change, destiny and rebirth. These are the symbolic meanings of a crow. While not so pretty on the outside, crows bear just as much intelligence as a 7-year-old human.
“Well, I like that they’re smart,” she said.
This is my mom’s reply whenever I ask about her obsession.
To me, her weird passion holds a lot more than she thinks. Over the past few years, my mother has been changing in ways I cannot describe.
When we first moved to Durango in 2017, she worked diligently to afford us a home. Being a single mother has no break. Amid survival and safety, my mom always put herself last.
Now that we have a comfortable life, she has transformed into something different but beautiful. She has always been very fascinated with all birds, but not to the extent that she is fascinated with crows. And she doesn’t know why.
Maybe their attitude, scrappiness or intelligence. Or it may just be that crows have been with her all along, she just needed to look around and realize them.
“I don’t know why I have been liking crows so much lately,” my mom said.
Well, she might just have a little more in common with these birds than she thinks.
Hadley Miller attends Mountain Middle School in Durango and completed a weeklong internship at The Durango Herald.
