Ducks Go By

At some level, I guess, all of us fancy ourselves amateur detectives.

Our movies and TV shows are so preoccupied with murder mysteries that it’s hard not to feel a little vicarious thrill when we cleverly figure out where our spouse left the keys, what’s in that funny-shaped box under the Christmas tree, what was going on with those two people sitting in hushed conversation at the table across from us in the restaurant.

I delight as much as anyone in my own deductions, but my inner gumshoe has a specialty: backtracking where those odd tunes come from that suddenly begin dancing around in my head.

Sometimes, the tracking is easy – caught the last half of that song on the radio at lunch, sang it in church last Sunday, endured some Muzak version of it in the elevator going up to the doctor’s office. But often enough, catching myself humming some out-of-nowhere ditty or hymn or showtune, I grow distracted, trying to figure what subconscious breeze wafted that particular melody into mind.

This week, it’s the duck song.

Smack in the middle of all the Christmas familiars, all the hymns to snowy romance, holiday mischief, and manger scenes, these lyrics stumbled out of the mental backwoods to join my year-end mental concerto:

And the ducks go by

And things go up

And things go down

And the world goes around and around and around and around

And God lives on

Yes, He does (two-three)

Yes, He does

Yes, He does

Yes, He does

We used to teach that one to the children at church. With a catchy tune and some lively motions, it’s a consistent favorite, and the verses carry just enough simple theology to make some subtle, maybe lingering impressions:

He made the flowers

He made the trees

All the birds and all of the beeeeeees

Can’t you see?

He made you and me

He’s for you

He’s for me

He came to set His people free from sin

Won’t you let Him in?

Walking an iced-over lake in Idaho, playing dominoes with the family, rummaging through the leftover Christmas sweets, the mallard melody kept up its barely audible background serenade. Where did it come flying in from? I commissioned a few of my unemployed wits to work on the problem.

They produced, soon enough, an apt solution: a childhood experience I’d revisited a few days before.

Just as I started first grade, my little sister and I were entrusted with the care of two ducks. They cheerfully graced our Louisiana backyard, waddling, quacking, splashing in the kiddie pool, and bearing up as best they could under the names we foisted upon them: Quicky (mine) and Quacky (hers). We fed them and followed them around and delighted in whatever mischiefs they got their feathery selves into.

Came the afternoon, though, when I stepped off the school bus to find my mom and my sister waiting for me, tears in their eyes. Tragedy had visited our happy bird sanctuary. The bulldog next door had dug under the fence and wreaked bloody havoc on our duck duo.

Quacky, sadly, had not survived the melee', but Quicky (aptly named) was still alive, though considerably worse for the wear. My mother gently explained that Quicky needed tending to, and that I was now coming into one of the tougher responsibilities of pet ownership. I needed to go out and do whatever I could for my wounded friend.

To this day, I vividly remember standing at the screen door, looking out at the slew of red-tinged feathers strewn over the backyard, and saying to my six-year-old self:

Today, I have to be a man.

And then stepping out into the great unknown … to do whatever love and duty required.

Something of the same feeling comes upon me, standing at the portal of a new year – one that, thanks to the machinations that confounded so much of the last one, holds possibilities that seem as ominous as what awaited me in my backyard that day. I marvel at how different my world is now from what it was a year ago, and shudder at how different it may be a year further on.

But there were mercies abundant in this bad year gone by: a bunny in the backyard, a bright day in the mountains, a cancer scare averted. New friends, new opportunities, small victories and sweet moments of rest … earnest and frantic and too-casual prayers, each answered with astonishing grace and gentle kindness. Things went up, and things went down, and God lives on.

More’s the wonder, He continues to promise me, “Because I live, you will live also.”

So ... happy new year. Bring on the passing ducks, and whatever love and duty requires. “Grant us courage, grant us wisdom, for the living of these days.” Come what may, this tired, old world goes around and around and around and around.

And God lives on.

Yes, He does.