On a Tuesday afternoon, my friend Lisa and I traveled from a meeting in midtown Manhattan to her home outside of Philadelphia. She navigated while I drove my blue Honda Civic stick shift down the New Jersey Turnpike.
Off the exit and nearer to her house, we came upon a narrow, green metal bridge. Turn left here, she said, and you’ll notice that everyone drives really slowly across the bridge.
I acknowledged the 15 mph speed limit sign as I began crossing the two-lane span. About halfway across, a group of seagulls flew just overhead. One landed on the bridge between my car and the car in front of me. I slowed, but kept the car in motion, confident that this bird—like all the others I’d known in my driving career— would fly away at the last moment. But the gull chose to remain in the middle of our traffic lane.
There was a split second when I questioned the decision of my slowly rolling tires. But by then, it was too late. The next thing we heard was what sounded like the catalytic converter and then the exhaust pipe conking the bird on the head.
My friend and I were baffled and concerned as we looked behind us. In the rear view mirror, I watched the car behind me carefully steer around the still standing bird. Was he OK?
The seagull toddled across the oncoming lane and made its way to the bridge’s edge. Other than looking a bit dazed and wobbly, he seemed perfectly fine. He’d just been run over by a car, yet here he was—intact and intent—looking as if he was preparing to fly.
At that time, I’d been feeling completely run over by life, and this encounter made me wonder. What if when being knocked about I chose the simple, practical action of shaking it off and walking towards the far edge of what I could see. In the very next moment, would I experience the possibility of flight?
Days later, I sat in a friend’s recording studio and looked up to see a photo on the wall. A picture, taken from underneath the bird, of a single seagull in wide-span flight with sun-tipped wings and tail against a clear, blue sky.