Thump

January 10, 20159 Comments

I am a dreamer at heart. There. I’ve admitted it. I’ve tried to deny this for years, doing the practical things humans do, fretting about getting good grades and finding the right mate and how to keep a roof over my head and food on my table, marching in painfully uncomfortable lockstep with the other grownups. I put that uniform on when I need to—food and shelter are not to be sneezed at—but the wool itches and the vest constricts my breathing and let’s not talk about how the crotch rides up on those ridiculous trousers.

Right about the time I began to worry whether I’d let the uniform become a permanent part of my epithelial cells, sort of like a Simpsons character, this weird little cardinal started attacking my back deck.

Male Northern cardinals do this sort of thing, I’ve heard. They are territorial, especially during brooding season, and when they see their own reflections in shiny things like windows and car mirrors, they think it’s a rival bird and attack. Over and over and over again.

We named him Napoleon.

I did the things people suggested to make him not see his reflection. Decals on the windows, dangling distracting strips of things from the glass…everything short of covering the sliders with white sheets, which the spouse nixed. I’d rather have a thumping cardinal than a husband grumbly that the lack of natural light coming into the house might kill his cacti. And his mood.

Eight months later, well past normal brooding season, he’s still flinging his winter-fluffed body into my windows. But in the beginning, my little dreaming heart wanted to tell stories and make meaning out of it.

My first flight into the nature of his arrival was that he had come to teach me something. About perseverance, perhaps. Or how to survive getting hit on the head over and over and over again, a common way of life for freelancers and indie authors.

Thump.

Next I entertained the possibility that the meaning was a little more subtle and archetypical. He represented something. A message from a friend, sent on a wing and a prayer, perhaps. (I apologize for that. No, I don’t.)

Thump. Thump.

Then I attempted communing with him. While waiting for my coffee to brew in the mornings, I’d inch up to the window, watching the proud set of his banged-up beak, the determination in his shining black eyes. He liked the sound of my voice, or at least did not fly away from it. At this point, Husband considered that I might need professional help, or a hobby, but I ignored him. Instead, I went deeper and imagined his story. I let him tell it from his point of view. In the first, he had come to save me from my itchy, semi-permanent uniform, a sort of cage I’d locked myself into and did not realize I could leave. Next, and I admit I might have been a little loopy that day, maybe from the repeated percussion of a determined cardinal banging up my house, he’d been sent by a Disney princess to be one of those magical cleaning birds but was continually frustrated that he couldn’t get inside the window.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I latched wholeheartedly onto the next theory, relayed to me by several Facebook friends. Some say that an appearance of a cardinal means that you are getting a message from a loved one who has died.

Then I was all about what the message might be. From my mother-in-law, watching over us? Telling me to clean the house and fretting that my husband is too thin? A friend who likes that we’ve hung one of his paintings in the hall and hopes we’re happy? Someone else? Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate the love from beyond, but those windows are going to need some serious power washing come spring.

I know that my time with Napoleon on this plane is limited; I know that some think I’m making too big a deal of what might be a simple avian instinct gone awry. But his presence gives my little dreaming heart something to thump about. And now, instead of rattling my imagination for meaning, I spend a little time with him, send out a thought-beam of kindness and compassion, and say, “thank you.”

Why Tell a Story?

September 5, 201411 Comments

For as long as I can remember, I have been observing people. Not in a creepy, stalker-ish way, or at least not according to the local authorities. But as a watchful, introverted child attempting to make sense of the world, and later, as a watchful, introverted adult, still attempting to make sense of the world and my place in it.

People are fascinating. How they can say one thing and do another. How they are capable of great feats but falter at the smallest tasks. How they can smile at you and promise the world, right before crushing you under their heels. Continue reading →

Flash Fiction in Triplicate

July 19, 20143 Comments

When Friday afternoon comes around, I’m ready to play a little. Lately that means hopping over to JD Mader’s website and “posting my two” as we’ve started calling it. Grab a timer – mine’s been failing me lately – write for two minutes (usually) and post it in the comments. Even if you’re not into writing exercises, check out all the great writers who are just killing this thing week after week. Anyway, I’m not sure what caught me by the tail this time—a little nostalgia, or wondering what happened to Aunt Sylvie and her cats, perhaps?—but when I started, these three pieces popped out. [Edited just a tad for spelling and eye-rolling grammar errors.] Continue reading →

A Better Place to Be

March 10, 201313 Comments

If you’ve ever read any of author Chris James’ blog posts, you know that he normally ends with a video of one of his favorite songs. Normally this is something from Genesis’ discography. I think he has a side deal with Peter Gabriel, but I could be wrong. This week, he ended with a songwriter close to my heart: Harry Chapin singing “Cat’s in the Cradle.”

I’ve adored Harry Chapin since high school. He was a New York guy; he and his brothers, Tom and Steve, were born upstate near Watertown and some of his family still lives there. I’ll get to them later. Harry eventually landed on Long Island and that’s where he died, playing chicken with a truck on the Long Island Expressway. My father and stepmother were huge fans and still are, so I got the privilege of hearing him perform live three times: at a college in Newburgh (he loved playing colleges), at the Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, and at the Hudson Valley Winery in Highland.

At the winery, three days before my seventeenth birthday, is where I finally got to meet him.

After the performance—spectacular, by the way, and he played the extra-extended version of “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” but only after the audience begged—we stood in line to meet him and get autographs. My parents had been involved in fundraising for Pete Seeger’s Sloop Clearwater Project, among other causes, so I’d been to a fair number of small-venue concerts by then. Enough to know if the guys in the band didn’t really give a crap about meeting fans, that it was just an obligation because you paid for your ticket and it was good PR to act like you cared. Some didn’t even hang around long enough to do that. Harry Chapin didn’t have to stick around and meet fans. He’d played in London. He’d played Carnegie Hall. He’d been on Johnny Carson. But he hung around. He cared. He shook hands. He listened to stories. This was what, he’d said, inspired the songs he wrote. He traveled around and listened to peoples’ stories.

Meanwhile, as I waited with my father, I sneaked glances at Harry, cowed and amazed at the easy way he engaged with people, like he was born to it. Like that one person he was talking to was the most important one on the planet. When it was our turn, my dad shook his hand and thanked him for his music. I think I might have said something, but I was terrified. I think I asked for his autograph. He signed the front of my T-shirt (collarbone level, no straying hands), made an innocent-yet-slightly-naughty joke and smooched me square on the lips, right in front of my father.

Then I bought all of his albums.

Three years later, he died.

Almost exactly a year after that, I met a guy from Upstate New York. His last name was Chapin. Yes, they were related. There are a lot of Chapins running around up there, in that Watertown/Black River area. Some look exactly like Harry, I mean a freakish resemblance, down to the cleft chin and twinkling eyes. The hole in the family still pulsed, a raw wound. The cousin I met listened to my albums so frequently I thought I’d have to replace them, and I was not allowed to speak while Harry sang.

The relationship did not end well and the less said about it, the better. But for a long while afterward, I could not listen to Harry Chapin. I’d let my sweet, lovely memories be subverted by some bad associations. And one day, years later, I found a cassette tape of his greatest hits in a box long forgotten.

My car was old and still had a cassette deck, so I popped it in and cried all the way through. Not for the Chapin cousin. But because I’d denied myself the pleasure of Harry’s songs and stories for so long. And because fate and a tractor-trailer denied us more of them.

Here is one of my favorites. Thank you for reminding me to focus on the good memories, Chris.