I guess i'll get right to it. In 1985, I was 15 or 16, living in New Jersey. My mother had been battling breast cancer for a couple of years and in those days cancer meant death. Even the most hopeful, faithful and devoted had only the scraps of optimism to carry them through. This was before "thoughts are things" and "everything happens for a reason" had permeated our daily beliefs. Oprah had just begun to sow the seeds of Self Esteem in the soil of our daily conversation. "The Secret" was still decades away, we smoked in movie theaters and doctors said some Crazy Shit. Wait. That never changes.

I am a Greek. My ancestors come from what was once Sparta and the Island of Samos. 1st Generation American...Jersey, no less. My 1st experience in a commercial kitchen was at the age of 8 when I began bussing the banquet hall at our church in Clifton, NJ...I loved it. A Jersey Greek with a deep love of Service. No one could have seen my life coming. Now, in middle age...teetering on the tip of maiden/mother/crone (yes, there is a time when they intersect...weird...its like sex with folded laundry and thoughtful advice)...I look back on that day at every moment of weakness and doubt.

I was in the sun room, both my parents were at work. With a tendency toward dramatics and a long standing, one sided, Greek Orthodox conversation with God...I was getting worked up. I was praying loud. Crying. Insisting God Show Himself to me to let me know that he had heard all my sorrowful, late night begging that he let my mom live even though we both knew the house was filled with nothing but living death. I was on the sun room floor and working myself up into a proper froth of begging for a sign. The last thing I recall saying was that if God showed himself to me, I wouldn't tell anyone.  I looked up at the windows of the sun room...they were filled with Yellow Birds. No pinch of sky filled in the corners... Hundreds of Yellow Birds hovered at the Window. I saw their soft bellies. Their wings moving...I stared for a long time and then, stupidly, like everyone overwhelmed by the presence of God...I looked away. When I looked back...my suburban backyard was the only thing left to see through the windows. I did the obvious...I ran outside looking for feathers and shit. There were HUNDREDS of them...surely they left some shred behind. Nothing. Then I ran back into the house to break my last promise to God...I called my mother at work and told her everything that I had seen. She was weary and unimpressed. Probably the cancer.

My mother died a while later and I believed God had forsaken me. I believed he had forsaken me because I had broken my promise to him and told my mother what I had seen in her backyard. I had seen God and she would be saved. I argued with him for the 15 years. He seemed to not fight back. He seemed to have disappeared.  But I knew what I had seen. There was something out there that answered the call. It was conscious. It was available. Its silence was my fault.