Feed the Birds

I hung a bird feeder a couple of weeks ago.

I’d asked for one for my birthday — doesn’t that make me sound all homey and humble?

Yeah, I’m not. I’m just spending more time on my porch swing (feel free to refer to it by its quarantine name: “ beach house”) these days. There are azaleas, redbud trees, lots of bees, and birds — installing a feeder seemed more sensical than hives.

Last year, I’d been sitting in my swing when I noticed a pair of cardinals spending a suspicious amount of time in our bushes. A little investigation revealed a nest in the center branches protecting three eggs. The inside of the nest was hidden, but if I stood on tiptoe, with my phone outstretched precariously, I could film the eggs that eventually became baby birds.

I must have sent my mother 20 videos.

There was a day she asked “how are our baby birds?” and my voice cracked. The nest was empty. She was empathetic and pragmatic. “Well, I suppose leaving the nest was always the goal.” But honestly, she didn’t sound convinced either.

After much debate, we decided I should leave the nest in the bushes because who knew what might happen in the coming Spring.

But my mother died that August.

Just before my early April birthday, I looked online for feeders. Amazon seems to only carry a few overly complicated and expensive models- and very few ship for free (first world deal-breaker). When my husband asked for his annual gift suggestions, I mentioned getting a bird feeder. He laughed and said “alright…” with the appropriate suspicion of someone who has known me twenty years.

After a masked run to the hardware store for necessities (hey, lawn care has been deemed “necessary” here in Maryland. I don’t make the rules), my husband returned with my gift delicately wrapped in an ACE hardware bag — an utterly perfect plastic feeder whose sticker promises “cardinals and finches” for the bargain price of $9.99.

My mother loves birds (I corrected to “loved”, I did. Sometimes I just yield to the pain of wanting her present tense). She kept many feeders — one memorable rectangular tray suctioned to the kitchen window of our farmhouse, containing grains of what I now remember as looking like quinoa (wouldn’t be the first time something typical on a farm, was slapped it with an inane price tag and made bougie chic). We watched birds over breakfast.

Further out on the patio she had a larger feeder on a pole filled with sunflower seeds. Easy to watch from many windows in the house, I spent hours staring at mostly unremarkable birds. The Field Guide to North American Birds had a permanent residence on our windowsill, like a secondary family bible, it identified most of our crew as grosbeak. Could there be a less inspired name?

Occasionally I spied a goldfinch, and once an oriole. My hero worship of an older brother meant a passive connection to his baseball obsession — even at seven-ish, I knew the striking orange and black bird was far from its southern home. I called my mother to the window and I remember her hands were covered with flour. I remember she smiled.

Because my childhood home was a gentrified farm, we had a requisite outdoor cat named Cicero. He was a massive, beautiful, wild animal of dark coloring and mood. He took the term “bird feeder” literally and we were terrified of him.

More than once, my siblings and I observed the king of our jungle stalk a bird lured by the promise of an easy meal of sunflower seeds to the feeder. He’d stand in frozen attention as the bird set to work cracking open breakfast. Suddenly, in a slow-motion, National Geographic documentary lunge, Cicero would hurtle his body through the air, tag his unsuspecting prey with a stunning slap to the ground where he would immediately trap the helpless animal with his hulking bulk.

Sometimes we’d only catch the after-party — a perfectly intact, lifeless creature on the doorstep, exactly underfoot. Screams of terror or disgust were never enough for my mother to “do something about that cat” as she often promised/threatened. Cicero eventually jumped to freedom from a slightly open window of our moving car, but the feeders were permanent.

I’ve been an adult for a few years now — a mother for twelve. I was thirty-four when my daughter was born. I felt grown but completely incapable of the successful influence and care of a newly minted person. I sought lots of advice from my mother in those early years. Her response to my fear was often, “What do I know? I had six kids by the time I was your age. Things are different these days.”

SIX. My mother was twenty when she married my father. A mother at twenty-one.

My mother always said she’d wanted lots of kids.

I wonder when she decided on the birds.

I’d found a branch to hang the feeder when my younger sister called. She had real worries connected to COVID so of course, we talked birds instead. I’d forgotten my mother’s decade long war with squirrels that culminated with the hysterical purchase of an inflatable eagle who sat limp, askew and ineffective for a year before she conceded and took it down (not before several neighbors called in a rare bird sighting to the local Audubon society — a part of the story my mother loved to tell).

My sister and I remembered the animal feed outpost where we stopped to buy bird feed in 50-pound sacks. Climbing over giant bags made of fine, crispy nylon, with words stamped haphazardly in pale inks. My mother wheeled bags double her weight to our old school Suburban and rounded us up with a “time to go,” that meant business. She slung the bags into the trunk refusing multiple offers of help.

At five feet she’d often say, “people can’t see how big I really am.”

Missing her takes up an incredible amount of space. She’s been so much to lose.

My feeder hasn’t taken. Its been a few weeks, but no birds. More than a few squirrels. My neighbor made a helpful suggestion, I’m sure.

But I’m going to let it hang there and see what happens…

Because that, and missing her every day for the rest of my life are the most honest things I know.

Meghan Riordan Jarvis is a psychotherapist, author, wife, and mother of three. After losing both her parents within two years of each other she began Grief Is My Side Hustle. (www.griefismysidehustle.com).

(above photo credit Richard Day/ Daybreak Imagery)