Paying Attention

For as long as I can remember I have known John James Audubon’s painting of four pileated woodpeckers. A 32” tall reproduction by R. R. Donnelley and Sons of Chicago, where my grandfather worked as a printer, hung in my parents’ home until my mother gave it to us. Now it hangs in our family room, still in a plain wooden frame that bears the marks of a long-forgotten ceiling leak.

The painting communicates life and death. An adult female and an adult male perch on a dead tree trunk. The female holds a large caterpillar in her long bill. Two juvenile males, perched on a horizontal branch growing from the trunk, face and look to be calling to each other. The birds’ blacks and whites topped off by bright red crests convey bold power. A grape vine twines around the branch; from that vine hang narrow bunches of purple fruit, clustered in the center of the painting, just above the heads of the younger birds. The tree speaks of death; the birds speak of life; the caterpillar speaks of life consumed by life; the grapes and the young birds speak of generations to come. The scene’s interplay of life, death, and fecundity is dynamic and vital.

The Donnelley print holds special meaning for me, because it helps me remember my maternal grandfather, James Bohaty. I do not know if he himself worked on this particular print, but I am confident that if he did it is perfect. I recall grandpa’s exacting person and standards when I see “Pileated Woodpeckers.” Once I saw the original Audubon in a natural history museum; it meant no more to me than this reproduction, one of many avenues by which his life has come to mine.

Though I have been aware of “Pileated Woodpeckers” all my life, I have not always paid conscious attention to it. Like most things that hang around our lives, I regarded it more as background to real living than as living itself. But it was always watching me and my families grow and change, even if we did not know it.

One afternoon I was vaguely staring out our kitchen window when a flash of black and white and red caught my eye. It was near a stump that pokes out of the ground under an evergreen tree. I immediately knew the species of bird, though I had never before seen a living one.

Our backyard’s pileated woodpecker foraged there for no more than 30 seconds, and then, as quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared into the woods beyond. Large as it was, the woods swallowed it completely. Active as it is, I have never seen it again, but I know it lives nearby.

As soon as it flew away I walked into our family room and studied our Audubon reproduction with renewed interest. Then I checked out Peterson’s Bird Guide – yes, a pileated woodpecker really can be a foot and a half long. I had finally seen the living bird. I was grateful for the six-and-a-half decades that had prepared me to know it when I saw it. I may not have recognized it “in the feathers” had I not been passively aware of its picture for a lifetime.

Which is more real: the reproduction of the painting I have always lived with, or the actual bird I saw for a half a minute?  I have learned that awareness over a long term is just as real as attention given to the present moment.