To this day,  I have memories of sitting around the campfire as a kid and someone leaning forward, wrapped in a sleeping bag, to tell the inevitable ghost story. Which almost invariably started: “This actually happened…”

That’s kind of how I feel I should kick off this post. The stories I’m about to tell actually happened, even though they have the feel of fiction. So gather ’round as I tell my tale.

The two cardinals

Shortly after my husband’s mother passed, roughly two decades ago, a cardinal started showing up in our backyard. It visited predominantly when my husband was outside and often sat near him, seemingly without fear. He became convinced it was his mother visiting him.

Of course, it’s easy enough to write off the visitation of a lone cardinal as a total fluke—even if it did come around consistently and regularly every single year. But then, less than a decade ago, one of my husband’s dear friends died. And within a week of his passing, two cardinals started turning up in our backyard, together. Every year. Even when we moved. They still come to this day.

The dive bomber

My husband doesn’t share the story of the cardinals very often. I mean, right?

So it was totally out of nowhere and out of context that a friend shared his story with us. A whole bunch of us were out for dinner recently—a group of people that meet roughly once a year, so we tend to have lots to catch up on. During this recent dinner, one of guys in the group was sharing his experience of recently losing his father, which was obviously a challenging time for him.

This guy is really down to earth. No crystals, rainbows, or woo-woo for him. So when a cardinal started visiting him after his father’s death, he totally ignored it.

Except the cardinal wouldn’t be ignored. It sat in the branches of his tree out back virtually daily. When it wasn’t acknowledged, it began to approach the house. And, ultimately, it took to dive bombing the windows when my friend was in the kitchen. It was literally sitting on the sill, tap-tap-tapping with its beak until it got attention.

This happened around witnesses. It happened regularly. Did I mention it was wintertime?

The dinner guest

After my friend told this story about his visit from the kamikaze cardinal—who he now firmly believes is his dad visiting—I resolved to write a blog post about this. So this was about two weeks ago.

Just last week, I was out for dinner with a friend of mine from high school. The Restoration Hardware store near us recently opened up this awesome dining room that we decided to go to. It’s an indoor location, but they’ve decorated it to look like the outdoors. So the ceiling  has skylights, all the dividing walls are windows, there are little lanterns everywhere to light up the place, and the whole restaurant is decorated with plants and trees. It actually feels like you’re sitting outdoors.

As we were waiting for our order to arrive, my friend was reminded of the last time she had visited. She was with her boyfriend, and they were enjoying their meal when a bird flew in and landed in a nearby tree. They didn’t think anything of it initially until they clued in—it looks like the outdoors, but it’s actually indoors.

Ok, no big. Birds get inside buildings all the time. Except my friend’s boyfriend had also recently lost a father, and he’d been getting visitations from birds for weeks. A bird had taken to sitting on his car hood when he was parked in the driveway. While visiting Florida, an egret had parked itself directly outside his condo and wouldn’t leave. And now, inside Restoration Hardware, the bird flew down from the tree, landed on the table, and just sat there. Yes, it was a cardinal. No, I hadn’t told her the story of my husband’s or friend’s experiences.

Harbingers and portents

Like any good ghost story, this one has no ending. I can’t wrap a bow around it and share the moral. All I know is that this world is full of wonder and that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Open to the magic. It’s all around.