My Lonely City

Today was very hard. For a few reasons. A cardinal flew full-tilt into the window at my grandmother’s house where we were visiting, breaking its neck. I watched it die, its wings quivering, its body convulsing and then, within a moment, growing still. My young cousins came over to gawk at it, looking through the glass like a television. I asked my grandma if she had a shovel to bury it with, but she said to throw it over the fence.

I did; it was her house. It fell awkwardly, hitting branches and landing with almost no sound. I hope it finds rest.

After leaving there – my family’s Thanksgiving – we went to my husband’s family’s. And the cousins were all there, with their endearing, hyperactive, generally delightful children running amok.

I miss my baby so much. We would have been parents by now. Tomorrow we have a final Thanksgiving meal, with another cousin (I seem to collect them the way other people collect teapots or ceramic roosters) who is pregnant. I am happy for her and her husband, but I don’t want to hear about her symptoms, or name ideas, or … anything, really. I just don’t want to hear it.

I saved a baby cricket from working in our office this morning; I know how scared I would be if I was snatched from my surroundings by something roughly two thousand times my size, but still. Just relax; I’m not going to hurt you. Really.

And then when I went to put him down outside, he sat on my hand for a few seconds, and I had to shoo him off onto the ground. I tell you.

So last night my friend and I went to one of our favorite restaurants in Norman, OK, Misal (seriously tasty tabouleh salad, and the veggie samosas are one of my new most frequent cravings), which was busier than it’s ever been because of some unknown event that was screwing up traffic like a game day. We sat behind (before? near? beside?) a large-ish family with two young children who behaved as young children often do. The boy, who was the younger and by far the louder of the two – probably three years? four? – was sitting directly behind me. So as I’m trying to listen to my friend’s conversation I’m hearing a simultaneous stream of “Strawberry shortcake? Where’s the guy? That guy? That guy! There he is!” as the waiter comes over and laughs. (The wait staff are all awesome, too.) So he orders strawberry shortcake, kind of. All sorts of fun. He leaned over the back of my booth at one point to gaze at my purse (which I moved out of his reach … ) but that got shut down pretty fast. It was really more a source of amusement than frustration or annoyance. As the family left, the (I think) grandmother came over and apologized to us. That was … nice, in a way. Refreshing, that someone acknowledge the disruption.

I feel like there’s a great piece of commentary that should slide in here, but I can’t think of it, so I’ll just sign off. Hopefully I’ll be back soon.

So my Best Friend (at least since 8th grade, which seems like forever ago, so the term actually almost applies, scary as that is) has had a spot of trouble with snoopy out-laws lately. No need to go into the details (nor would I be at liberty to do so even if there was a need), but I got to thinking. I might as well be considerate and save any similar nosies some trouble, if they take a notion to snoop in my direction.

I drink, but I don’t smoke. I curse like a sailor, depending on the company. I don’t do any drugs that have not been specifically prescribed to me by a doctor, and I never have. Except for occasional speeding and an illegal u-turn or two, I have never broken the law. Unless you count jaywalking. I didn’t drink alcohol until I was twenty-one, even when I was in countries (Mexico and New Zealand) whose drinking-age laws would have permitted me to do so. The worst thing I have ever done was made out with a boy who was engaged – engaged! to someone else! what was I thinking?! – on the way back from my senior trip.

I didn’t have sex until after I got married. (Yes, really.) I have never cheated on my husband. I love him very much, and love sharing my life with him. Most of the time it’s easy to love him; sometimes I love him because I promised him I would. Marriage is harder than I thought it would be, but it’s also more rewarding.

I sometimes hate spending time with my family – immediate-ish and extended – because I feel we have very little in common. I spend time with them anyway, because it’s the right thing to do.

I love God but Christians piss me off. I’m a vegan, feminist social critic with dozens of radical, half-formed ideas and almost no-one to bounce them off of. I complain a lot about being lonely and having no-one to talk to, but I don’t seek out any new relationships because I’m a lazy fraidy-cat a lot of the time.

I volunteer. I tithe. I pray. I read the Bible semi-regularly, though not as often as I ought to. I try to understand how God wants me to apply what I read to the way I behave. What I keep coming back to is this: Treat others the way you want to be treated.

I tip. I sing loudly in the car by myself. I sometimes preach sermons to people who are not, physically, present with me. I pick up paper towels that bastards in public restrooms throw on the floor. (Sometimes.) I wear underwear when trying on swimming suits.

I have a concealed-carry permit (somewhere). I enjoy shooting bottles and targets, and I’m pretty good at it. I doubt I could shoot a person, though, because I don’t want to be shot. Even in self-defense.

Sometimes I carry insects and spiders outside when they get in; sometimes I kill them. I don’t feel guilty. My cats are both declawed – though I wouldn’t make that decision again.

I lost my first child this year – a missed miscarriage six weeks after conception, discovered around four weeks later. It tore my world apart. I’m getting used to the pieces floating around, and I’m not trying to fit them together yet.

I think too much. But I’m okay with it.

Satisfied?

I rescued some starling chicks today! They had fallen from their nest into our backyard. I was so sad when I saw them on our lawn, looking small, lost, and scraggly.

I called WildCare yesterday evening, after giving them a day to try to get back on their own, and they told me what to do. (WildCare is an awesome animal hospital/facility in Noble that rehabilitates wild animals for re-release.) Since the nest is actually inside my neighbors’ dryer vent it was inaccessible; they had me put the babies in a cushioned basket near the nest to see if the parents would find them and move house. If it didn’t work, the woman I spoke with told me to bring them to their facility.

My husband helped me tie a basket to our fence, sheltered by a trumpet vine; I put on some gardening gloves (I’ve heard, but can’t verify, that parent birds will reject chicks who smell like humans) and placed them carefully in the basket. They were frightened and upset, but they knew they were in a nest again; they opened their yellow-envelope beaks wide and cheep-cheeped with gusto. I left them there, hoping for the best, and kept my distance the rest of the evening. I checked in the morning, and they were there; I hoped that by the evening the adults would have found and fed them.

When I arrived back home, they were still in the nest, but they barely moved and made no sound. They panted – I haven’t seen birds pant before (that’s what it looked like to me). I decided to take them to the animal hospital. As we drove, I watched the birds. They were afraid but curious, continually raising their heads to look out the window, huddling together, opening their beaks silently for food. One cheeped, once or twice, but that was all. They were not “adorable”. Their feathers are starting to grow, so they look rough and prickly; their quills look like straw wrappers with black fuzz poking out the top. Their yellow beaks looked too wide for their heads, opening and closing like folded paper. Their baby fuzz poofed like a halo around their heads. They were such small, perfect, beautifully strange things.

At the hospital, the interns were knowledgeable and kind; the babies are in good hands. Since WildCare’s objective is to release their animals into the wild at the appropriate time, I feel they will have a good life. I told the parents what I’d done, but – since I don’t speak Starling – they are probably, like me, still wondering, perhaps grieving, asking why their children were taken from them.

I got to hold a baby today. Cheryl, the morning receptionist at our office, just became a grandmother, and her daughter brought their five-day-old up to the office today. Cheryl brought him back to Deborah’s office and then – blow me away – asked if I wanted to hold him. If?!? Of course, I said I’d love to. And I did. Evan. He was beautiful. He would stretch a bit, put his mittenned hands over his eyes or ears, and wrinkle his face up. He’d purse his lips and bunch his chin, curl his toes under, arch his back against my arm. He’d relax, snuggled in my arms, his face toward my chest. I held him and hummed to him. I held him in our office for a few minutes, then carefully carried him up to the front, where I met his mother & father, who were lovely people. We talked, and I was able to keep holding him for another fifteen minutes or so, until my bottom arm’s wrist started to cramp and I thought I ought to give him back.

It helped.

In further news – news in the sense of sad – my in-laws had to put their dog Sadie to sleep today. Jared & I went over to their house last night to say goodbye; Jared had picked her out when she was a puppy.

Maybe she and Pi can look after each other while they wait for us.

There was a bird’s nest that was blown down from my in-laws’ tree in the storm last night. A dead baby bird and a broken blue egg lay beside it.

IXOYE
It may be greek to you, but it means everything to me.

Does this not just piss you off? More later.

Oh, and I saw a man riding a motorcycle with his dog – a dog on the seat in front of him.

“Each year in the United States, there are an estimated 74,000 cases of turtle-associated salmonellosis in humans…”

Be afraid. Be very afraid.