And it continues....

"Grandpa I don't understand?"

"Understand what my dear? There are many things that we don't understand, we just have to believe in them, not understand them."

He looked at me over his paper with a spark of humor and knowing in his eyes.

My grandfather. The man that dressed like it was summer all year round, and spoke in rhyme. And then every once in awhile, when you thought you understood what he was talking about, he would smile and say "why yes, you've hit the nail on the head." It was a game for him really. He liked to talk in rhyme, and he loved to puzzle people.

"Grandpa why won't grandma talk with me about what I saw?"

"Maybe for your grandmother seeing is not always believing."

"But I thought it was the other way around, seeing is believing?"

"Well yes some say that, now don't they?"

I could tell I was getting nowhere with my grandfather and fast. He wasn't going to tell me anything. No this was something he was going to leave to me to figure out.

Then he looked at me and whispered, "you have to ask them why."

"What" I said. I could barely hear him.

"Oh look at the time, shall we go feed the owls?"

The owls. Good lord the owls. My grandfather had rescued every injured owl this side of the mason-Dixon line. He could hear an owl in distress at night, and often would wander in the woods in the middle of the night to find that injured owl. People from all over brought him owls. And then their were the owls that were as white as snow, with eyes so dark you thought you might be sucked in by them. These were the owls that just showed up, no one ever brought one of these, and my grandfather never found one of these, they just appeared as if out of nowhere. I liked to call them the "ghost owls."
We made our way to the barn, that my grandfather had converted into an owl sanctuary. Owls were everywhere, sitting in the rafters, flying about, perching on huge trees that my grandfather had planted in massive containers and moved into the barn. And as we walked in they started to swoop down. They knew it was feeding time, they always did when they saw my grandfather. To see my grandfather feed his owls was one of the most amazing sights I have every seen.
There he was in his bermuda shirt and shorts, sandles on, white hair and spectacles standing in the middle of the massive barn with it's huge valted ceilings and the afternoon sun drifting in. One by one the owls would swoop down and land on his shoulders and all around him. He fed them nuggets in the afternoon, and let them do their real hunting in the barn at night. And in that moment watching my grandfather with all these animals that he had healed and tamed, standing in the afternoon sun raining down on him from the high rafters, I saw poking out of a torn hole in the back of his shirt a tip of a small wing.
I lost my breath, like I'd been kicked in the stomach, and felt myself falling and falling back, and then everything went dark.