Our family spirit animal revealed itself to us the night we got engaged.
We were camping on a little riverside sand bar just off the Mountain Loop Highway, and I knew it was the night. Engagement was going to happen in a matter of hours.
Married guys will tell you that the nervous anticipation you feel on the day of a proposal is like no other feeling, and so I’d taken a walk a short distance upriver to center myself and make absolutely sure I was making the right decision.
That’s when I spotted the Osprey circling above me.
We’d just seen the Andy Samberg movie Hot Rod and we loved the parts where he calls on his imaginary spirit animals to help him with his moped stunts.
So I jokingly said, “Spirit animal Osprey, guide me in my way.”
And a second later, the animal screeched and dove into the water not thirty yards from where I was sitting. It thrashed and popped out of the water with a struggling fish in its talons, and flew right past my head and then cruised downriver past Amanda.
We both looked at each other from a distance as if to say, “Whoa, I can’t believed that just happened!”
Looking back, I’m not really sure who the bird in the story is , and who the fish is, but…
I mention this today because one month ago, our son Ian entered this world. As I was reflecting on the experience, I remembered how the afternoon before he was born, I’d seen an osprey circling above my living room window.
That’s not the first time an osprey has appeared immediately before or during a meaningful moment in our relationship, and as it turns out, once again the osprey was a harbinger of good things to come. Our boy is a delightful, happy and healthy little kid.
If you really pressed me, I would probably admit that I don’t really believe in a spiritual connection with an individual animal species. But in the off chance that there actually is an animal out there for everybody, then I’d like to know which animal is mine. And now that we’ve found our osprey, we’ve adopted them as our family talisman.
This past weekend we were gathered on the floor cutting up scraps of fabric for our new flag. In ancient times (or if you’re a Game of Thrones nerd like we are), a family coat of arms would hang in castles and be carried into war.
In our case, our flag will be flown atop our raft, Sloppy Swish, as we navigate familiar rivers and explore new waters.
I’m excited to introduce Ian to those experiences, and weaving in a tradition of a spirit animal into his life will only give it more texture, I hope.
