The Turtledoves

THE TURTLEDOVES

Once a pair of turtledoves wondered where they’d gone wrong.
Granted, when they were alone, they didn’t spend any time worrying about going wrong or going right. They were too focused on one another to be aware of much else. When they looked outward was when they became concerned that they might have missed something important.
What struck the turtledoves at moments like these was how divided down the middle so many of the other species around them appeared to be and how often those divisions were seemingly accepted as the natural order of things. There were many who even declared that males of a species and females of that same species might as well be from different planets.
Hearing such assertions, the turtledoves could only look at each other with puzzlement. What could that mean, different planets? The turtledoves had no doubts about who they were, but it didn’t depend on their being different. In fact, what they shared seemed far more important than what they didn’t.
One turtledove never began to coo without the other’s joining in. One never took wing without the other’s matching it beat for beat. Whatever they thought and felt, they did so in concert. And when they leaned together in the still of the night, a single heartbeat was all they could hear. The thought that one of them might pass away before the other filled both with equal sadness.
So how had they missed what so many others saw as the natural order? Would they have been happier if they considered themselves opposites, divided from one another by countless distinctions? But how could love survive if it depended on repeating over and over again how little you had in common? If to end up together, you were convinced you had to fly at each other from worlds apart?
What were these turtledoves missing?