Beautiful bird, the largest North American heron.
One Christmas I had the grand (and frugal) idea of buying each person a small fleece blanket, the kind you can wrap yourself in to read a book or watch a movie, and I chose a spirit animal for each member of the family, wrote a little poem about them in a card, and then was going to embroider the animal on each blanket.
A spirit or power animal is found in many cultures, and can be compared with a guardian angel. The spirit animal also represents your connection to all life, and may represent too your physical or mental attributes.
Of course the embroidering didn't happen before the day, and actually never happened at all, because too soon the girls had to go back to wherever they were living at the time, I think Jess to varsity and Emma back to London. I feel some regret that I didn't finish that project, because I usually do finish something once I have begun, especially if it is a gift, even if it is late, which it frequently is! Perhaps I will still accomplish it one day. I did knit everyone fair-isle woolen caps a couple of years ago, and in time for the day! My mother would have been so proud of me!
I know I thought very carefully about which animal to choose to represent each person. I think this is how it went: Nick was a red-tailed hawk, and Matthew a polar bear, and I think Jess was a jaguar, Emma an eagle.
Nick was fascinated by falconry at the time and has a bit of the predator about him. Matthew was (and is) a wonderful swimmer, even in freezing water, and has always been kind of like a big old teddy-bear. Jess has always had that quiet independent mien of a wild cat, enigmatic and lonesome, but full of spitting tooth and claw when necessary! And strangely she has worked with tigers, lions and cheetahs for the past year! Emma and Nick are the bossy-boots of the family, hence the hawks. Plus, the eagle reference was one from a tender place in my heart, as when Emma was about 15 she wrote out the words of The Wind Beneath my Wings as a gift for me, in her beautiful longhand, which treasured possession was always pinned up in my office thereafter, until we moved to America.
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