The woman and the one-footed seagull

Just over half-way through her daily walk the woman, after buying a flat white from her favourite mobile barista, takes a seat on her usual bench and waits. Not for long. Soon enough she spots him gliding towards and gracefully landing on, the stone post immediately to her left. His regular perch. She refers to the seagull as ‘he’ but of course the woman doesn’t know the sex of the bird. Having looked it up she discovered that although male seagulls tend to have brighter, more colourful plumage the difference is so subtle that only experienced bird watchers can distinguish between male and female gulls. To her this particular specimen feels like a ‘he’, but to be fair, although she knows it to be irrational, all seagulls do. As a young child she’d passionately believed that dogs were male and cats female and it took many arguments, a few years, and a much deeper understanding of the mating habits of the birds and the bees before she could be convinced otherwise. Such a sweet and funny story of childish stubbornness might well have been something to share with her own children if the woman had had any. They hadn’t been blessed that way though. At least the woman hadn’t. Her ex, and his new, younger partner have beautifully rumbumptious curly-haired five-year old twin boys now. An orphan, her one remaining parent having died two years back, with no siblings either, the woman is either deliciously fancy free or pathetically sad and lonely depending on the onlookers’ particular perspective.

The woman isn’t too bothered about what other folk think. Although she grieves for the loss of actual and possible significant others she is popular with friends and as a work colleague and is fulfilled in her own, activity filled, company. The last couple of lockdown fractured years have not been so hard to cope with. What with teams meetings, her zoom art group and Pilates class, shared coffees on google DUO, and twitter chats with like-minded others she’s had company enough. Yet, she’s missed face-to-face in person interaction and her seagull friend has filled a gap. This was especially true before ‘Coffee-On-The-Go’ had set up shop on the peninsula where she always stops for a break and to admire the view she never tires of. But even when she’d begun again to meet, and sometimes walk, with friends, she'd still looked forward to the time spent with her best gull. Watching him she imagines where he goes when not perched nearby and wonders how he came by his disability. Whether from birth or by accident his one-footedness seems to take him regularly by surprise as he moves to put his second foot on the post before finding out once more that it doesn’t exist. The woman likes to think that the gull is as curious about her as she is about him. But, as she takes such pleasure in his company this really is all that matters. No, not quite true. More than this the seagull, majestic and proud, despite what some might see as an obvious debilitating disfigurement, represents to the woman the value of life; of all lives and lifestyles. Like so many others she’s been struck by the disconnect  between the insistence that everyone should ‘clap for carers’ coupled with the sorry amount of political support for a pay-rise for NHS staff and other key workers. She’s shuddered too at the very public debates that suggest a hierarchy of human existence with the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions supposedly less of a loss to society than younger, (presumed) healthier individuals. She’s spent more time than she probably should reflecting on her own ‘value to society’ as a divorced, childless, most ordinary woman who can’t even remember the first bloom of youth, who is on occasion grumpy and self-centred, who has bad days as well as good, who spends afternoons wishing she could do more for others followed by evenings watching Netflix and eating chocolate. Observing the seagull so secure in his (or her, it could be a she) own sense of self (the woman is aware of the anthropomorphism here of course) she knows that she too, with all her attributes and all her imperfections, has as much to offer as he (he’ll always be a ‘he’ to her) does. For she is as valued as she values him along with all the other human and non-human animals who make her life what it is. And that happy thought is enough. Enough to make the woman’s walk all the more pleasant, her coffee all the tastier, her quiet communication with the one-footed seagull all the more desired and all the more meaningful. Enough indeed. Well enough for now anyways.