My backyard feathered friends are back in force, and wow, are they noisy. The cacophony of the birds in the morning is deafening and I love it. Welcome home!
I use my birdsong-identifying Merlin app when I take our pup April out in the morning or evening to put labels to the competing noises. One recent sample of the backyard-bird-crew: House sparrow, song sparrow, white-throated sparrow, Carolina wren, American robin, red-bellied woodpecker, savannah sparrow, house wren and northern cardinal. There’s a pair of black-capped chickadees regularly flitting around usually, but they must have been exploring elsewhere on that particular morning.
I still can’t identify most by their unique songs, my brain just doesn’t seem to want to hold on to the differences between a whistle and a coo, except for that of the crows. There’s no mistaking their cawing.
Amy Tan, in “The Backyard Bird Chronicles,” her accounting of what she terms an “obsession” with birds, notes she is an “unreliable narrator” of her avian neighbors. She explains that in fiction, first person narrators are “deceptive, unbalanced or … lacking in knowledge” and cops to the last. I do as well. But what I lack in bird know-how, I make up for in pure enjoyment. A goldfinch at my thistle feeder prompts such a goofy, wide smile, you might wonder what’s in my coffee cup. A flock of ducks hurrying somewhere overhead, their quacking loud enough to announce their flight path to nearby Anatidae air traffic control, always elicits a joyful, “Hello duckies!” (Be assured, I summoned their biological family name — anatidae — from the recesses of Google, not of my mind.)
David likes to say I’m made happy easily. That definitely beats being called “easily amused” but I admit I’m both. And birds fit both bills (see what I did there?).
I have another reason to be happy, and hopefully even amused, this season. Our two graduates are landing in our otherwise empty nest for the summer before they fly off to their next destinations. It is more than likely the last time the four of us will be living under one roof. There’s no Amy-Tan-equivalent human chronicle to turn to for guidance, but I know enough from our forced COVID-pod experience to keep my expectations low and my sense of humor high.
I’ve written before that during the lockdown, I thought I had to be the Julie McCoy of our family’s Love Boat. Homemade pizza-making? Check. Game nights? Check. Dining room turned into a ping pong arena? Check. New adventurous dinner recipes? Check. It was exhausting and demoralizing when none of the effort could really alleviate the stress and sadness of losing school, time with friends and a sense of safety.
This is obviously going to be different, and, I pledge, I am, too. I don’t feel the same pressure to entertain or to make delicious, nutritious dinners every night. (OK, I do feel a little like I should make an effort with dinners. Once my little baby birds fly on, Uber Eats burgers and Sweet Green salads will mostly replace home-cooked meals, but, hear me oh-guilty-conscience, not every night!)
Also, my babies are not little anymore. This summer is an opportunity to spend time together as adults, to hear their thoughts on the world, to get to know them as not just our children but as our friends. And to let them get to know us, too, to share more of our inner selves than parents in the midst of child-raising, get the chance to do.
It won’t be perfect. It will be noisy and messy (sometimes emotionally, definitely spatially). We’ll over-parent, they’ll under-adult.
But maybe those are both false assumptions. Maybe, just maybe, it will be great.
I hope I stay open to the unexpected. I know I will be as grateful to come across this pair of temporarily relocated siblings sharing a moment at the kitchen counter, however brief, as I am at noting a pair of birds sharing nourishment at the feeder. With a wide goofy smile, I will say out loud, and in my heart, welcome, welcome home.
Virginia Buckingham is a member of the Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors, the former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”
Virginia Buckingham
Virginia Buckingham is a former president of the Marblehead Current board of directors, a frequent commentator on WCVB’s On the Record and author of “On My Watch A Memoir.” She is working on a second memoir, “As This Mountain” in her newly empty nest and writes a biweekly column for the Current.
