Patience - “Patience”
Macdonald writes, “Looking for goshawks is like looking for grace: it comes, but not often, and you don’t get to say when or how. But you have a slightly better chance on still, clear mornings in early spring, because that’s when goshawks eschew their world under the trees to court each other in the open sky. That was what I was hoping to see. I slammed the rusting door and set off with my binoculars through a forest-washed pewter with frost. Pieces of this place had disappeared since I was last here.” The goshawk is emblematic of great patience. The narrator is aware that the chances of finding one are minimal but still goes ahead to look at it. An impatient individual would not manage to track down a bird that is not easily found. Bird watching is a hobby that requires patience especially one who is interested in viewing a goshawk.
Grief - “Lost”
The narrator recounts, “Sometimes, a few times, I felt my father must be sitting near me as I sat on a train or in a café. This was comforting. It all was. Because these were the normal madnesses of grief. I learned this from books...They spilled over my desk in tottering piles. Like a good academic... I read that after denial comes grief. Or anger. Or guilt. I remember worrying about which stage I was at. I wanted to taxonomise the process, order it, make it sensible." Here, the narrator perceives the ghost of the deceased father in the course of grief. Psychoanalytically, the imaginary sightings of the father give the narrator an illusion that the father is still in existence. Moreover, the books encourage the narrator to implement some actions that are considered to be ordinary components of grieving.
