A Messenger Between
In the summer of 2022, we moved to South Bend, Indiana. It was once my college town, though I never paid much attention to the gray city that lay mere steps outside of our immaculate, manicured campus. While the University of Notre Dame — a Catholic college, steeped in revered, long-held tradition and world-renowned legacy — glows with limestone, castle-like buildings and a glittering, golden dome atop the main building, my fellow classmates labeled South Bend as dangerous, dilapidated, “dangerous.” A means to an end, a drive-through city to get to campus, the city is often treated like the outer skin of an orange, peeled back and discarded hastily, a bitter but necessary hurdle towards something sweeter. The closing of Studebaker in the early 60s has left empty red-brick factories and six-story assembly plants as looming reminders of haunted past glories.
My husband and I could have lived near one of these abandoned buildings. Instead, we chose the new high-rise downtown. This is where the crows congregate, clustering around St. Joseph River along the East Race Waterway that borders our parking lot. From November to February, just before sunset, they swarm bare branches and clutter the pink sky, thousands of black dots blocking the rare warmth that peeks through the Midwest winter permacloud. Like black confetti, the crows circle and drift, cackling and gurgling — a basic call to others in their flock, as if to say “We are here. Come join us.”
* * *
That first winter in South Bend, I lost my mind. Being in your late twenties is a strange age of feeling too old to be lying on a closet floor, crying, yet too young to know how to ask for help. It was the beginning of a time when my friends peeled off from our collective paths and settled into separate lanes in life — towards parenthood, new jobs, different cities, significant others. An odd purgatory: the year I got married, but felt isolated in a new, urgent realization that life was somehow both completely in and absolutely out of my control.
Meanwhile, there was my body. A biological clock ticked towards something I wasn’t even sure I wanted, and when would I know? When she was my age, my mother had already birthed two children fifteen months apart. I only worried about keeping myself alive.
The crows that winter were noisier than ever. As a student, I never noticed them, too distracted by dorm parties, football tailgates, midterm papers. Now, they were impossible to ignore. I hated the crows as much as I hated myself and saw them as a death sentence. Forbidding creatures, crows — according to a South Bend Tribune article — are thought to be messengers between the living and the dead. They represented my own psyche — a chaotic creature trying to make sense of that space in between — and I found nothing magical or spiritual about their presence, unlike my my neighbor, who stood in our parking garage recording videos of them circling the sky. She turned to me and shrugged.
“I just want to document what this was like in case they never come back,” she said.
* * *
How does one document a life? How would I be remembered? I was jealous of the crows and craved the attention they received in our city—everyone seemed to be talking about them. My husband retook a photo of me for the fourth time at the bar with my espresso martini. I reangled my face to show my good side, make my smile more “candid.” In portrait mode, the world around me blurred and I saw myself with renewed focus. At home, I spent the rest of the evening editing. If I could post myself into existence, accumulate enough likes to keep me in reality, then maybe I wouldn’t disappear.
Slurping down the rest of the martini, I refreshed Instagram. Watching new red hearts appear, I imagined myself perched on the edge of our apartment balcony with the crows. Beyond the black railings was only a thin slab of concrete, an extension of our balcony, where I would balance myself in line with them, clutching the rails behind me. If I let go — uncurling my toes and lurching myself forward, like jumping across a puddle — and fell from our sixth floor, perhaps the crows would skydive in formation to lift me up, cradle me, a floating gurney of black feathers, to the nearest tree. There, they would initiate me into their roost. Reborn, I would grow silky black wings, my beak sharpened and eyes newly alert.
* * *
Ornithologists describe crow roosts as accidental gatherings drawn together because “the place is good.” Their roosting exemplifies the selfish herd hypothesis, where birds shuffle to get inside the group, protected from predators. I had not come to South Bend accidentally. I came for a job, left a place I had lived for five years with memories and friendships. I’m still trying to shuffle somewhere inside here. I’m still trying to find my good place.
On a Zoom call with my therapist, the crows poke around my window sill while I lounge on the couch. A “Live, Laugh, Love” sign floats above Dr. Wilson’s head in the top right corner of my screen.
“Do you have a plan?” she asks. “Any intention or thoughts of what you might do to yourself?” I wanted my thoughts to sound like Dr. Wilson’s voice — calm, patient, like she was leading a yoga class. They felt too kind to be real. I thought about the balcony, the daydream I had. What was the difference between a daydream and a thought of what I might do to myself?
* * *
A year later, I run along the river close to our new home. As I head downtown, I shuffle under the Colfax bridge, the faded “South Bend is Our City” mural on my left, and cross Main Street. Downtown hovers somewhere between a ghost town and hope for the future, the newly repurposed vintage-looking spaces and storefronts offering a glimpse of what could be. I pass the abandoned historic State Theatre, but across the street I hear the EDM beats from a crowded, hipster food hall.
I’m starting to love this city — the way it doesn’t give up on itself, the way I still haven’t discovered all its hidden gems and old bruises.
As I head back home, the morning sun starts to peek out of the clouds. I close my eyes and trust the ground of the city to carry me to the end. I’ve been too harsh on South Bend, too harsh on myself. It’s fall now, and the crows haven’t yet returned to South Bend, but I know they are coming. This winter, I’ll welcome their arrival, ask them to stay awhile before they move on.
