Where does it all go?
What I want to know is: how do you remember all of it?
To start at the beginning, our, my, canary died this week. And, as it is when a pet dies, even though you’ve often wondered why you bought it in the first place, it leaves a hole in your life, always a bigger hole than you thought. This little piece of life turns out to have been your best friend and confidante and you never realized it until they were gone.
Our canary, Bright, was a baldheaded piece of yellow fluff that had lived through everything—cat attacking, air conditioner, people forgetting to feed her. She was so determined to succeed that she continuously laid eggs, but they never hatched. We finally bought tiny soft blue plastic ones so she would stop before she drained herself dry of whatever they make eggs from.
When her mate died, we got another bird because we couldn’t stand watching her be what we assumed must be lonely. I got another female. At the time, I just thought she’d like to relax and talk to another woman.
The new bird “snatched her bald” as we used to say in Mississippi. Plucked all the feathers off her head and they never grew back. We got our money back from the Bird Paradise, and deciding to talk to her myself, I named her “Bright”, a rather belated thing to do since we’d had her six years.
Everyone in the family thought it was a pathetic name but as mothers have over the years with pets their children have abandoned, I formed an attachment based on food and water. She lived in the master bathroom and seemed happy looking out the open window and chirping at me while I washed my nylons out and folded up towels and blow-dried my hair.
I liked to look at her straight in the eye and make her look back at me. It made me feel like I was communicating with the world; however, it really embarrassed her. But she’d square up her birdie shoulders and glare at me from her nest. She thought I was interesting though, I think.
She liked baby carrots and lettuce; she did not like red foods: strawberries or radishes.
She was in the bathroom because, of course, the kids got a kitten and the kitten became a cat and the cat hunted the bird.
Once we found yellow feathers on the living room carpet next to the couch and the bird on the rafters, and once we came home to Bright hovering in the back of her cage, barely predator-protected by her swing and perches.
And then, after living for years in the kitchen in front of the air-conditioning vent, she was dead, head down in the water feeder. I have no idea what happened. Suddenly it was just all over and we didn’t have a pet canary anymore. And the seven years we’d had her was over.
When it’s over, how do we remember all the things that have happened to us? All the pets, all the cars. All the days in our lives? When I sit down to think about them, sometimes it just seems too painful, too complicated, too amazingly huge to even begin to remember.
My favorite story from my childhood? My dog Prince, my best doll Susanna Jane, my first day at school at St. Andrew’s in Jackson, Mississippi? I remember the taste of sun-warmed graham crackers from the shelf under a big white window and the feel of the plastic mats we laid down on. Or do I remember the feel of plastic mats in general, the way they stick to your face when you drool if you sleep on them face down in the sun?
I remember the dust in the back of our station wagon when we drove down the road on the way to go camping and I threw a piece of gum wrapper out of the window and wondered for the rest of the trip how I would feel if I’d been left alone in the forest by the side of the road while my family went on together, forever parted.
And prom, when I think of my dress, it still takes my breath away, literally, I couldn’t breathe in it at all. And I was so embarrassed because I felt so…naked in it.
When I think back, I have a hundred memories and sensations. Where will they go when I’m gone?
To start at the beginning, our, my, canary died this week. And, as it is when a pet dies, even though you’ve often wondered why you bought it in the first place, it leaves a hole in your life, always a bigger hole than you thought. This little piece of life turns out to have been your best friend and confidante and you never realized it until they were gone.
Our canary, Bright, was a baldheaded piece of yellow fluff that had lived through everything—cat attacking, air conditioner, people forgetting to feed her. She was so determined to succeed that she continuously laid eggs, but they never hatched. We finally bought tiny soft blue plastic ones so she would stop before she drained herself dry of whatever they make eggs from.
When her mate died, we got another bird because we couldn’t stand watching her be what we assumed must be lonely. I got another female. At the time, I just thought she’d like to relax and talk to another woman.
The new bird “snatched her bald” as we used to say in Mississippi. Plucked all the feathers off her head and they never grew back. We got our money back from the Bird Paradise, and deciding to talk to her myself, I named her “Bright”, a rather belated thing to do since we’d had her six years.
Everyone in the family thought it was a pathetic name but as mothers have over the years with pets their children have abandoned, I formed an attachment based on food and water. She lived in the master bathroom and seemed happy looking out the open window and chirping at me while I washed my nylons out and folded up towels and blow-dried my hair.
I liked to look at her straight in the eye and make her look back at me. It made me feel like I was communicating with the world; however, it really embarrassed her. But she’d square up her birdie shoulders and glare at me from her nest. She thought I was interesting though, I think.
She liked baby carrots and lettuce; she did not like red foods: strawberries or radishes.
She was in the bathroom because, of course, the kids got a kitten and the kitten became a cat and the cat hunted the bird.
Once we found yellow feathers on the living room carpet next to the couch and the bird on the rafters, and once we came home to Bright hovering in the back of her cage, barely predator-protected by her swing and perches.
And then, after living for years in the kitchen in front of the air-conditioning vent, she was dead, head down in the water feeder. I have no idea what happened. Suddenly it was just all over and we didn’t have a pet canary anymore. And the seven years we’d had her was over.
When it’s over, how do we remember all the things that have happened to us? All the pets, all the cars. All the days in our lives? When I sit down to think about them, sometimes it just seems too painful, too complicated, too amazingly huge to even begin to remember.
My favorite story from my childhood? My dog Prince, my best doll Susanna Jane, my first day at school at St. Andrew’s in Jackson, Mississippi? I remember the taste of sun-warmed graham crackers from the shelf under a big white window and the feel of the plastic mats we laid down on. Or do I remember the feel of plastic mats in general, the way they stick to your face when you drool if you sleep on them face down in the sun?
I remember the dust in the back of our station wagon when we drove down the road on the way to go camping and I threw a piece of gum wrapper out of the window and wondered for the rest of the trip how I would feel if I’d been left alone in the forest by the side of the road while my family went on together, forever parted.
And prom, when I think of my dress, it still takes my breath away, literally, I couldn’t breathe in it at all. And I was so embarrassed because I felt so…naked in it.
When I think back, I have a hundred memories and sensations. Where will they go when I’m gone?
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