This is a story of three little ducks and how we need to trust in life that everything happens for a reason. What isn’t always obvious at the time becomes clear at some point.
Last summer I befriended three Mallard ducks who took up residence in our pond. I started to feed them and before long they were part of the family waiting outside the back door every morning for their pellets and again in the evening. It wasn’t long before they ended up staying permanently outside the back door sleeping with their beak in wing between meal times. Even the dogs and cats seemed to know they were part of the family and didn’t raise an eye when the ducks all waddled in to the kitchen one day when I was a bit behind their feeding schedule.
I am always amazed at the accuracy of nature’s clock.
As the days shortened and the temperatures started to drop it never occurred to me that they wouldn’t be there anymore. I thought most of the ducks were resident now. I was wrong and one day they just weren’t there anymore. It felt empty for a while not seeing and hearing their daily quacking but I thought they had obviously gone in search of warmer lands, or the fox had taken them all out in one night, which was pretty unlikely.
This last week I was woken up in the early dawn by extreme quacking to discover the same three ducks are back. I literally ran outside with their pellets (which had been sitting in the garage all winter) and they came running. It was a reunion of much noise and excitement and what amazed me the most was to think of the thousands of miles they had flown to escape the winter, only to come back to my house – the three of them still together.
What I thought was lost, had only temporarily gone away. Sometimes when people leave our lives, it isn’t necessarily forever – they are just doing what they need to. If the ducks had stayed they would probably have died. They left so they could come back again.
Life is like a boomerang – you just have to have faith in that old adage of if you love something, set it free and if it comes back to you it is meant to be.
I am looking forward to another summer with my three little ducks.