Friday, May 31, 2013And Then They Were Gone
Remember 8,000 kitten photos ago when there were the baby bird photos? And how I said they were never moving out? WELP. It turns out that there are two truths when it comes to the baby birds.
1. They really were super late moving out. Dr. Google says house finches usually move out of their parent's basement between 11 and 19 days. Those baby birds stuck around for a full 19 days. They pushed their luck and then some.
2. If I tell the internet that some birds are never moving out, their dad WILL get mad.
On moving out day, I happened to go outside to take a photo of the birds who I was certain were still there just as the very last one was considering the whole flying thing.
She eyed me suspiciously for the FIRST TIME IN HER ENTIRE LIFE, inching slowly away from me.
That whole scared of the human who could squish them thing took entirely too long. I'm just sayin'.
And then she inched a little too far and found herself falling to the ground. A smart bird who was in a hurry to move out and see the big world would have tried to fly. Not that bird, though. Nope. She tumbled to the ground and then was all "Cool. I'll just hang out here."
And hang out she did. She sat there and she sat there and she sat there, in absolutely no hurry to do anything other than stare at me.
Meanwhile, mom sat up on our roof screaming her fool head off at me.
Ummm ... our gutters are dirty. Somebody do something about that.
ANYWAY.
The dad bird was there, too. I know it was the dad bird because he was sitting way too close to mom to be anything other than someone she was willing to share a nest with, if you catch my drift. Also, he had a red belly. Google is smart about this sort of thing and told me that the males have red bellies and heads.
Dad wasn't mad at me. Dad was mad at the baby.
The very second I backed away from the baby bird, he swooped down as fast as he could, scolded the baby, and started shoving it, willing it to fly.
So I stood there and watched a baby bird learn to fly.
And that is most definitely not a bad way to spend a morning.
The (Non) Fiction Portrait in My Head
When you grow up surrounded by lies, you're never quite sure exactly what is true and what isn't. Did he really get laid off, or was he fired? Does she really have cancer, or is this just another desperate plea for help?
I could never be sure.
There's really no sense in trying to figure out the why or dwelling on how really stupid the whole thing was, the basic point is that my father is, was, and continues to be a liar. Facts are facts, and that's a fact. Every day there was some sort of lie or half-truth or something. Most of the time the lies are completely pointless, which I think proves that he truly doesn't realize that he's doing it. He certainly didn't realize it when he told the biggest lie that stuck with me. "Your mom killed herself today," he said as he burst into the kitchen when I was 14 years old.
He forgot the word "tried." She TRIED to kill herself today. That word -- tried -- it's a very important one in that sentence.
Anyway, he could never be trusted to tell the truth, so I grew accustomed to living a sort of alternative reality life.
Which is why I always wonder if I'm exaggerating just how bad it was. Did we really go months and months eating only TV dinners, Banquet chicken, and tuna casserole? Did I really wander the neighborhood at all hours of the day and night like some sort of stray cat? Were my parents really as bad as the image I have in my head?
It turns out the answer is yes. Definitely. And, it's entirely possible that I've applied my give-credit-when-it's-not-necessarily-due thing to the whole mess. I might be exaggerating the first 17 years of my life, but if I am, it's because I'm rounding up and making things a little better than they were.
But I didn't go through it alone.
We moved for the zillionth time when I was in 3rd grade. We went from the ghetto trailer park north of town to the slightly less ghetto trailer park south of town. Instead of rented property, it was a neighborhood where everyone owned their double-wide. Or, as I saw it, the wealthier people owned their own double-wide. Those of us who weren't so lucky were stuck in a single-wide.
She lived in a double-wide. I was jealous, but not so jealous that I was blinded. She seemingly had more, but she was super nice and for many years, she was my best friend. The adorable red head with the maze of freckles and I spent day after day roaming the neighborhood, riding our bikes up and down the street, exploring the gravel pits, and sledding amongst the crazy little cactuses that grow wild in North Dakota.
But then we grew apart. There was no reason for it, it just happened. There was no falling out, no hard feelings, nothing at all. The culprit was time. Nothing else.
Days turned into years turned into decades and we hadn't talked. We had managed to keep track of each other thanks to the magic of the internet, but there weren't any real conversations. That is, until she let me know that she was going to be in Pittsburgh for a conference.
Of course I kidnapped her for an evening.
We roamed downtown and ate the best Mexican money can buy and we talked. We talked about the good and the bad and we compared notes and there are exactly two things that I walked away knowing:
1. What really happened matches the portrait I have painted in my head.
2. Damn, we did good. Both of us. We both refused to accept our lot in life and found a way to make today better than yesterday while always keeping an eye on tomorrow.
If success can be measured by happiness, we're the most successful people on this earth.
Thanks, Jill. And ... good job, you.
