Two Hawks, Two Yolks

“Now what?” I asked the Chihuahua that twitched at my feet, wrapped around my ankle. “I need to get some work done, and I’m distracted enough. This piece won’t write itself.” But complaining was a waste of breath because I always did what the dog wanted. As it was deep fall in Texas, temps were still a sultry 85 degrees, and today was that midweek break moronically called Hump Day. But my routine was off, and I was behind on everything. Here it was 2 pm, and I hadn’t even eaten yet. But 2 pm was too early for the dog’s dinner, so she must need to potty. The dog whined to confirm this. “I know, love. I am coming.”

I pushed away from the computer, grabbed the five-pound diva, and headed for the back door. But what I saw out the windows stopped me: No, that cannot be. I blinked again, but they were still there—two meaty hawks perched on the fence that separated our tiny yard from an open field. The hawks weren’t there to hunt the field, though, because they faced the house, watching me. They were so big and close that I could see the details in their fierce feathers.

Instinctively (but crazily because these were birds I was talking about), I locked the door against the predators and cradled the dog tighter. Then, I ran for my phone to get pictures to prove that this was not my imagination, half-hoping my flurry would scare off the hawks: It did not. Their appearance felt ominous, and I was alone at home, as I would be indefinitely because my husband and I had separated in June. (I agreed to a six-month period to finalize my plans, and that was five months ago. But who is counting?) I posted the hawk photos on social media and, soon, I was in the company of 100 comments like “Keep that Chihuahua in the house!” That so many of my 2,500 “friends” voiced concern validated my alarm. (This was, afterall, why we even bothered with media platforms, wasn’t it?) Then, my eye caught the lone detractor who had commented: “Whoa, are you LUCKY to see two hawks like that?! You must be doing something right!” Well, I’ll tell you. In that moment, I felt a lot of things, and not one of them was lucky.

Discovery

“Honey, will you let the dog out?” I had asked my husband in June, earlier the same night that I would uncover his infidelity, but he was on his phone where he slumped on the couch. By nature, he was an obsessive type, albeit of the innocent variety (or so I had thought), but 18 months of quarantine had magnified that tick into a major character flaw. –Perhaps, he hadn’t heard me. “Honey, dinner’s almost ready, and my hands are full. Can you please let the dog out?” When he still didn’t respond, I turned off the meatballs and muttered under my breath. As I let the dog out, I saw raw meat on the doorknob from my hands. Good, I thought, He will have to clean that up later for not paying attention now. But I knew that he would never notice it to be roused from his waking slumber. So, I sighed, got the antibacterial wipes we had bought for Covid (when supplies were in stock), and I cleaned up the mess.

After dinner, which my husband wolfed down without a word, he zombied out to a show he’d started in quarantine out of boredom and, now that it was summer of a second Rona year—and we had burned through Netflix—he was addicted to the show. I wasn’t interested in watching the 300th episode of Black List, so I scrolled through the newsfeed on my phone.

Now, when I recall that night, this next part sounds hard to believe, but it is true. And the very first post in my newsfeed—a random status from a stranger—planted the seed that started a chain of events which changed my life: “How sad is that?!” I had exclaimed because the story was about a hospitalized woman who just discovered that her spouse of four years, whom she had dubbed a saint for being by her bedside during this whole ordeal, had a secret life of prostitutes and porn. “Hey, babe, can you pause the TV and listen to this?” My husband did, and I read the woman’s plight: “Doesn’t your heart break for her, sick in the hospital and, now, she’s had the bottom drop out with his deception?” My husband looked stunned. “Honey, did you hear me?” But he just hit me with that glassy expression again, so I sped to the chase. “Her final line begs wives to DO A DEEP DIVE OF YOUR HUSBAND’S PHONE.” Then, feeling unsettled with a sickness in my gut, I shut off the phone. “That is just awful,” I repeated, hands shaking.

“Can you imagine?”

Two Yolks

One hour later, the hawks were still on the fence, facing the house. “How long are you two going to sit there?” I asked from behind the safety of the glass. “Just focus, Rita. Focus.” I forced myself away from the window to get back to work on that article. It was 3 o’clock now so I bribed my brain with food. “This isn’t for you,” I told the dog, taking two eggs from the refrigerator.

When I broke the shells and the eggs spilled into the frying pan, both eggs had double yolks. Both of them. “Excuse me?” I said accusingly to the four yolks, as if someone was playing a trick. Just what was going on? First, the two hawks setting up camp and watching me and, now, two eggs with two yolks each—a phenomenon that had never happened to me before or since. What were the odds of that? Seriously.

I was too wigged out to eat the mutant eggs, so I researched it: “Many spiritual meanings and superstitions are attached to double-yolk eggs. To name just a few, double yolks are signs of good luck, the birth of twins, and new beginnings.” And it is “incredibly rare. Fewer than 1 in 1,000 eggs contains two yolks” so you can “count yourself lucky.” –Plus, I had two eggs with two yolks each, making the event almost statistically impossible.

Well, I was too old for twins, but I welcomed good luck—and new beginnings sounded nice. Still, there was that word again, Lucky, coming at me with one weird thing after another, when lucky was the last word I could use to describe the worst year of my life with the newly-discovered betrayal that would probably end my 22-year marriage.

The breath stuck in my chest when I thought of that number again, 22. So, I wrote it down, a two and a two. In 2022, which marked my 22nd year of marriage, was I really being visited by 2 hawks and finding 2 eggs with 2 yolks each, all within minutes of each other? I knew nothing of numerology, and I was not prone to superstition because my personality skewed towards skepticism, but was there any way that something otherworldly was happening, as in trying to speak to me? Regardless. Whatever all this was, it had my attention.

Hawk Encounters & Omens

We lived in the city, but this wasn’t the first time I had seen hawks on the fence. Well, a hawk, one, because I had never seen two at once, a pair flanking the Crepe Myrtle like sentinels. But when I had mentioned the previous hawk visits to neighbors, they said no hawk had visited them, and they didn’t think it was possible to have hawks in our area. So, I wondered if there was a basis for that dissenting opinion about the hawk pictures I had posted on social media, the man who claimed that “Seeing two hawks made (me) lucky”? I looked it up.

Based on their size and markings, Google identified these as red-tailed hawks, and the article said, in general, that hawks were seen as “divine creatures in opposition to all that is diabolical.” They are “messengers from the spirit world regarding battles: If a hawk has its back turned, it is a sign that defeat is near, and if a hawk is facing you in full view” (as my birds were) “it is a good omen” and “you are protected.” More specifically, it said, “If you see two hawks together, this is a rare event. The two hawks represent the forces of the night and the day,” which symbolize the “endless recurrent movement of life. For those in a committed relationship, two hawks can be a sign to cherish your relationship with your significant other and not take them for granted.” Conversely, as per Islamic tradition, the hawk also meant both “an honorable sultan” and a “stupid boy,” depending on the path a soul took.

Much of this fit my situation, but some would call me desperate enough, right now, to believe anything, even if that meant “grasping at straws.” Still, I decided to indulge the notion to learn more. What harm could it do, and who couldn’t use clarity, guidance, and protection as we transitioned into the future? So, I kept researching …

Hawk Symbolism & Mythology

In the Celtic world, the word hawk derives from “heafoc” for “to seize,” and Gawain, the Arthurian hero, got his name from “gwalch,” which means hawk. Native Americans saw hawks as guardians from deities or their ancestors. The Chiefs “relied on hawks to protect them through trying times, mostly as messengers of warning.” Shaman believed that red-tailed hawks, with their “sharp, eagle-like whistle,” were a call to “clear your mind” because the Creator was “giving you a message that a miracle was on the way.” Hawks, “warriors of truth,” represented honesty and clear vision. The Greeks “consecrated the Hawks to Apollo” and believed you may keep seeing hawks to “remind you of your wilder nature.” Hawk omen also “denoted taking a broader perspective on things,” and “it asked you to step back and not let your emotions overwhelm you.”

Still other cultures like the Egyptians venerated the hawk and, in Christianity, hawks were “birds of passage” and “a message from God.” In the book of Job, hawks were “praised for their ability to tell time and the season” and to know “when to fly away to another region or country.” And in Hindu mythology, the hawk was considered a “protector of women.”

Overall, these ancient cultures embraced hawks as “symbols of intelligence, independence, adaptability, clairvoyance, and spiritual awareness.” And they believed that repeated hawk sightings meant you may be “focusing on too many details.” Instead, you should “eliminate distractions, pay close attention to the situation, be prepared for attacks, and get ready to defend yourself,” which seemed wise in any trying context.

I let the computer go dark so my thoughts could settle, but all this talk of birds—with All Souls Day and Día de los Muertos just behind us—brought Edgar Allen Poe’s raven to mind, a well-fed bird that appeared out of nowhere like a harbinger of doom. Assuming that “my” hawks were not here to eat the dog, could they be a sign? If so, who might my guardian be, and what was the message? My immediate thought was my father, who had recently died, and his birthday was in two days.

Dad’s Gift

As soon as I whispered the words, a memory surfaced from that fateful June when I had discovered my husband’s lies (after I did, indeed, do a “deep dive” on his phone), which will forever be the moment that divided BEFORE from AFTER. –This memory happened one week before I knew about the adultery, so I was still swimming in the ocean of delusion about our happy marriage.

My father had sent a gift card for Christmas—a year and a half earlier—but, because of Covid, my husband and I were finally out for that Surf & Turf dinner, compliments of my father. (Covid exploded in March 2019, Dad died from ALS on Cinco de Mayo, and then, the world went into prolonged quarantine. Most businesses closed, which forced many out of business.) My husband and I had dressed up for dinner, lights were low, soft music played, and things felt as if life, maybe, was starting to return to “normal.”

“Cheers!” I’d said in toast. “To my father for his generous gift. And who knew, then, that that Christmas would be the last we would spend with him on earth?”

I was drying my eyes when I heard my husband’s distress. –As I have mentioned, he was a fast eater but, on his second bite of steak, he choked. I stared in disbelief, even though I saw panic in his eyes as his color changed. I yelled for someone to Come quickly! to dislodge what was stuck in his throat because I didn’t know the Heimlich, and I always froze in a crisis. But no one came.

So, I ran to look for help, but it was as if the entire wait staff had gone offstage for a collective cigarette break, and I was sure I would have a dead body on my hands any minute.

“I can’t find anyone!” I cried. My husband’s face was dark red, and he was punching his own chest. “I am so sorry. What can I do?”

As I tried to find the courage to perform a tracheotomy on him—that emergency surgery I had seen in 100 movies, where you steakknife the esophagus open and stick in a straw so the choking party can breathe—my husband fell on the table. I do not know how it transpired, but my husband threw up into his water glass, napkin, and plate. Then, he took what sounded like the most relieved breath of his life.

I have a confession: After discovery a week later, when I kicked my husband out, this restaurant memory was the first thing that came to mind. And, now that I knew what I knew about his cheating, I could not help but wonder—and I mean I could not shake the thought!—if my padre, new to the spirit world, somehow knew about the deception. If my Dad had like divine knowledge and was not trying to punish my husband, as much as trying to warn me of the trauma that came when I stumbled on the dating sites and online affairs. Like, What if in The Afterlife our loved ones had a vision that allowed them into our souls? Into the duplicitous double-life my spouse had carved, right under my nose, my eyes open but unseeing? Not a superpower, exactly, but as if losing the body and becoming fully spirit freed us of limitations. Or released us from the finite ways humans thought, felt, and communicated.

The idea is a stretch. No, really, it’s ludicrous, the product of a grieving mind, and it is the closest thing to conjecture I have reached in this lifecapture that I am sharing here. But it doesn’t stop the intuition, this What if? from haunting me because “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” right? And, if my father had been alive when the truth about my marriage came to light, might he not have clocked my husband for hurting me? The real truth of that, though, is that my father and I were not close and, as much as I would like to dream this improbable scenario to avenge my honor, it was also unlikely because, to his credit, my father was too quiet and composed to punch anyone.

Still, whatever this fever-dream was I had while down this rabbit hole, the flight of fancy had served its purpose. –Sure, I could continue to riddle it this way or that, but the bottom line was that, in very short order, I had lost my father and the man I thought my husband was: There was no returning to innocence or ignorance. I would never get another chance to grow my relationship with my father, and I wasn’t sure there was miracle enough left in the world to heal my marriage. Those were hard realities I could not wriggle out of but confronting the massive losses had lanced the boil and, maybe, it would clear the way for recovery to begin.

The dog barked, yanking me out of my reverie. It was 4 o’clock. “Are they still there?” I asked, but the hawks had flown off. So, I reread the hawk passage that had most struck me:

Pay close attention to encounters with hawks in real life, especially during insecure times… You may even see several hawks circling, meaning they are answers to the conflicts you face. It certainly means a sense of blessing and affirmation. Hawks are wonderful symbols of freedom and flight, and seeing a hawk symbolizes a creative being. It means you should let your creative spirit flow. Seeing hawks all the time also means that you are getting a flow of ideas like a hawk does while it flies on the wind.

While I am too skeptical to give this much credence, these passages hit home. Also, I wanted those blessings, and the creative spirit was, indeed, flowing. So, even if the hawks and doubleyolks were only tricky happenstance, they had connected to my wishes and inspired me. I scrapped the article I had struggled too long to write for a new idea about finding clarity in the chaos of grief—and I might just title it “Two Hawks, Two Yolks.”

“I know you still have to potty,” I cooed to the Chihuahua. “And, good luck for me or not, two hawks twice your size does not spell good luck for you. You are not going out there alone.” I followed the dog into the yard.

“Thank you,” I said to the wind, which had picked up. “You have reminded me, and I know I am not alone. And I am listening.” I lifted my head and smiled, eyes studying the treetops, the sky.

View All Stories By Rita Anderson