Photo by Keira Zhao
I am skeptical of omens. Even though I am convinced that some events in life cannot be explained logically, I almost always see coincidence where others find symbolism. Having said that, something happened last week that I am choosing to remember as an omen. It’s a good omen.
On Monday, Manyu and I drove to Madison to serve as witnesses at a wedding. The groom is an international student we hosted nearly a decade ago. We have lost touch with most of the international students we’ve helped over the years, but Hanqin remains a good friend. He was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and now is working on a masters degree at the Madison campus. His fiancée recently arrived from China, and because neither Hanqin’s nor Yijun’s parents were able to come to the US for the wedding (passport/visa problems), Manyu and I stood in as surrogates.
The ceremony was held at the offices of the Wisconsin District IV Court of Appeals. I would have thought that the Appeals Court would be downtown near the Capitol, but it is in a modern office complex on the city’s far southside. The complex has a large parking lot, and the parking lot is designed with several islands of green space.
When we returned to our cars after the wedding, I wanted to immediately get out of my suit jacket and dress shirt. Before taking my shirt off in the parking lot, I looked around to make sure I wouldn’t offend anyone standing nearby. It was then that I saw two sandhill cranes feeding beneath a pair of oak trees in one of the parking lot’s green areas. The number of sandhill cranes has increased over the last twenty years, so seeing one or two is not uncommon. This, however, was the first time I’d ever seen any in a heavily populated part of a city. I pointed the birds out to Manyu and then tracked down the bride and groom to show them. The newlyweds were as excited as I was to see the cranes and wanted to get close for a photograph. The two birds briefly looked up as Hanqqin, Yijun, and their photographer approached, but neither bird made any effort to walk or fly away.
Maybe because cranes appear so often in Chinese landscape paintings, I’ve always assumed that they are associated with good luck. I googled it when I got home and discovered that “[cranes] are frequently represented at Japanese weddings as a symbol of honor and loyalty, because cranes often mate for life. In China, cranes symbolize wisdom, nobility, longevity, immortality, and determination. In Vietnam, cranes are a symbol of longevity. In Africa, cranes represent love, long marriage, and happiness.” I immediately emailed my findings to Hanqin.
Two weeks ago I saw an endangered whooping crane for the first time in my life. Now two sandhill cranes show up to help my friends celebrate their wedding. Just as I do not believe in omens, I also doubt that “all things come in threes.” Still, if I have another memorable crane encounter in the next few weeks, I may have to revisit my thinking on both omens and groups of three.
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