Betty The Bird Woman

I’ve always been an avid reader and writer. The walls in my childhood home were covered with beautiful leather-bound books, and even our old wooden staircase was a shrine to every genre of book. The wonder of books is that they remind you that you’re not alone in this world. You can float to other lands, transform yourself anywhere, lose yourself in a character, and share in others’ experiences. Every genre delivers an exciting burst of wonder and everlasting potency in the mind of the reader.

For hours I would hide away in the corner of my room, my legs tucked up underneath my chest, peanut butter sandwiches in one hand and a book in the other whilst devouring every single word as if my life depended on it.

My artistic and bohemian parents allowed me to skip homework just so that they could see the smile on my face and the spring in my step after reading Charles Dickens, or Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, or Jonathon Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. My Irish mother and Dutch father were not your usual run of the mill parents by any stretch of the imagination, and for that I am extremely grateful. But that was just one side of life, one beautiful dream that every young girl envisages as a continual right of passage into teenage years and beyond, a certainty and a given.

What I didn’t know then in my innocent dream state was that one day I would find myself all alone, abandoned and orphaned, hungry and penniless, and homeless in the cold.

Somewhere along the way my path would become muddled and covered in thorny bushes, and monsters would bookmark themselves deep into the pages of my mind refusing to leave despite my animosity and vengeance against them. So dark and so menacing were they that I imagined not even a real live witch from Macbeth could find her way out of such an evil spell.

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon the true meaning of the universal energies that are at the heart of witch craft that I could tap into its powerful source and magick the chords that I needed to transform my life from poverty to prosperity.

And that energy came from a place I never could have imagined.

Betty was a homeless woman who lived under the bridge right near the water at Circular Quay in Sydney. She had pigeons for pets, a bed made from old dirty boxes and just a few cheap tattered possessions. As a child, my mother and step father would drag me quickly past her little enclave enroute to the ballet at the famous Opera House, or to one of Sydney’s finest five star restaurants. I remember staring into her dark green eyes, her thin face screaming out for some nourishment, her emaciated body wearing only thin rags, shivering in the cold as I stood there wrapped up in a luxurious white fur coat and my handmade dress and shiny black patent leather shoes. Even at that young age, I was stung by the hypocrisy that I even dared to care about her whilst draped in expensive finery. It made me feel sick to my stomach.

The fact that everyone walked right past her without even acknowledging her plight pulled deeply at my heart strings. Mind you, if anyone came within an inch of her, she would lift her pointy hat and hiss and even spit at them. She trusted no one.

Despite her open hostility, I knew I had to do something to help her and so I made a plan that the next time we trekked into Sydney I would sneak away from my parents’ grip momentarily in order to hand Betty all the pocket money that I had saved over a month.

It was my biological shaman father who instilled in me the importance of empathy and giving. I missed him dearly, I was his little indigo and despite my father having run away to escape the insult of my mother’s many lovers and affairs, even if she claimed she and my father were polygamous, my father was my greatest guide and teacher.

And so that was what I did the next time I saw Betty, I ran over without hesitating and patted her pretty pigeons with their brilliant iridescent pearl-coloured necks, and I dropped all my pocket money into her lap. She asked me to fetch her a café latte from the nearby kiosk which I did immediately. Betty smiled warmly, took the hot cup in her hands and handed me a big beautiful feather. I would have been ten years old or so and Betty was probably 40 although at the time I thought she was much older. We sat and chatted whilst my mother preoccupied with her new lover, barely noticed my disappearance.

I never saw Betty again, not until 30 years later. I did however continue to see feathers, I saw them everywhere, black ones, white ones, red ones, all waiting for me on my path. Whenever I spoke to the universe for advice or reassurance they would fall from the sky onto the beach, on the footpath, even in the concrete jungle of the city.

Feathers became my connection, not only to Betty but to the universe and the divine. As long as I collected feathers, everything would be ok. And everything was kind of ok until my mother died. I was 16. Without warning she collapsed one Christmas and was gone. There was no warning and no preparation for becoming an orphan. My fathers – yes, in my household, I had two fathers - could not be found, so I had to deal with the details.

Life continued, I managed to survive, I took charge of my younger sister, ten years my junior, and I got busy growing up and being responsible. I eventually forgot all about my feathers, got married to the man of my dreams, had four children and life was full of abundance in every single way. The evil spell had been lifted and life was humming along brilliantly.....until.

Until my home burnt down, and my husband of 15 years turned out to be an imposter, a cheater and a snake, and everything I owned was stolen from me. I was living his lie, and the devil had returned. All I could see was his ugly face.

I was completely torn, traumatised and spent. My feathers had dried up and vanished along with my dreams.

One dreary winters night as I wandered the streets of Sydney searching for answers I found myself back down at the docks, walking the same path as I had trodden as a child, the path where Betty used to be. I expected it to be empty, cold, functional, devoid of human life. But this time instead of a bare empty space I was expecting, Betty and her pigeons had come back to roost. I couldn’t believe my eyes or my heart, of all days and times, and after all these years. In my time of great pain and of needing a real kind and empathetical soul, the universe delivered.

I grabbed my young daughters hand and made my way over to her. Sitting down with her was like no time at all had gone by. I was forty years old, Betty was around 80. One look at my little girl told her all she needed to know.

I left my daughter playing with her pigeons and her basket of feathers and I went to the same little kiosk to pick her up her favourite café latte. The happenstance felt surreal but in an organic cosmic way. It was as if the heavens had opened up and dropped its fairy dust on our heads. I wasted no time ripping off my shoes and sitting right down in my dress in the dirt with Betty and my girl.

My young daughter and I visited Betty a few more times, we would talk about life and men, and how shit happens. If anyone else came near Betty she would still spit at them and yell and swear at them until they minded their own business. Betty had welcomed me the very first time I went up and gave her some money when I was a girl of ten. And now time had flown by and landed us back together for some magical reason. Perhaps it was to reassure my little girl all would be ok, despite her father’s abandonment of her too. And that feathers really were a connection to the heavens and angels.

As far as I was concerned, Betty had delivered to us a beautiful gift that couldn’t be bought. She deserved love and respect too; both of us had been mistreated, abandoned and left for dead. It was wrong of anyone to pass judgments or make any assumptions about her or her lifestyle, and now that I was living a life fraught with evil entities and financial hardships we were connected even more deeply.

The three of us sat and read poetry and prose and contemplated life. Betty provided me with some of my best memories even though these moments were fleeting apparitions within the timeline of life. She also reminded me of my childhood promise to my shaman father to become an author. Of course, I offered to help house her, assuring her that this would happen when I was recovered financially, but she refused. We had immense respect for Betty.

She had been abandoned by her own children and left to die on the streets; and by offering her our love and some kind of accommodation however primitive it was, meant that we were more than happy to have her as our family.

As we go through life, we must learn who is really there for us, who has our backs, who will fight for us, and who has a spine of integrity.

And sometimes it’s not who you thought it would be, or even should be, as I learned.

It was my father and then Betty the bird woman who taught me never to discriminate or judge, to go through life with open eyes and an open heart. Sure, your heart may get crushed to pieces by somebody like my ex husband, but it can be put back together again by the very souls you help to rise up.

I know now that egotists and narcissists can’t see the birds or their glorious feathers, or the life giving trees, let alone a cold old and hungry bag lady living in a hovel made of boxes on a dirty street corner, and the last thing they’d ever do would be to speak to her let alone help her. All they can see is a fantasy, their fantasy, and when life gets too hard for them, or they’re unable to fill their unquenchable need for attention and admiration, you disappear completely from their path and they walk right past you too.

Life really is a hologram full of ever-shifting entrances and exits; of paths all leading to different souls and different experiences. Our human experience exposes us to hundreds, if not thousands of fleeting moments all in the name of educating us on enlightenment and ascension and dimensions. We are all souls passing each other in the night. This phrase refers to a missed connection or opportunity, where two people or things pass each other without fully recognizing or engaging with each other. However, even in these seemingly small moments, there can be hidden significance and meaning. These connections no matter how quick or trivial can change our lives for forever. Without even realising it, we create the energy or bonds that deliver to us our human experiences. I believe I called out for Betty twice in my life. Once when I was a young girl and again thirty years later for my own daughter. The facts are too coincidental to be passed off as happenstance or even delusion. What is amazing from this past connection with Betty the bird woman and what continues to be, is the gift that she bestowed on me and my girl in that small window of beautiful angelic light, that unwavering belief in humanity, myself, my future and my feathers.

By Leeza Cooper