My Sick Bird

Where to start. First, if you didn't read the posts below -- go back and check them out. A bird whacked into our door today in Boston and lay sadly little stick feet up in the air on his back on the brick bib around my front door where they usually toss the New York Times every morning in a blue bag.

We made him a shoebox condo with green grass wall-to-wall. We found out who he was ... I thought he was a she for half the day ... but then the markings told me he was a he and he was a black-throated blue warbler. Pretty bird.

We had to go to a football game in the afternoon. God, I wish I could make this less complicated. I should label certain paragraphs OPTIONAL PARAGRAPH 1A and 1B etc. If you want to jump to the not-optional paragraph, feel free. Earlier I wondered if I should take him to the football game. Poor bird, thinks he's just flying around looking for insects to eat and next minute he's at a football game routing for the losing team, waving a felt banner with a little head plaster on his head. Never know what the day will bring

OPTIONAL PARAGRAPH 1A: I decided to leave the bird home in his shoebox and hide him in the entryway but then some cat might get him so I wasn't sure if this was the best way to go. I mentioned this to my son who seemed not at all concerned, being an 8-year-old boy and more interested in what his two friends who were visiting were up to and all. So I finally got all three boys in the car and we go over to the impromtu football game which is a bunch of local dads and their sons and my kid and me.

OPTIONAL PARAGRAPH 1B: Of course, my idea of playing football with a bunch of boys and their dads starts with sitting in the car putting on my make-up which I hadn't managed to bother even putting on that day, being exhausted from the non-stop conference the day before. My son is NOT wanting to go play football I'm noticing, and as his friends and he have been trashing my house all day, I'm not really happy to find he does not want to play, because I would like a break, but he wants to stick with me. To get a minute to myself, I lock the car doors. It was hopelessly selfish, I admit, but sometimes you just need a little estrogen refuge and time out from all these men. Honestly, for some weird reason, having to do with growing up in a family with 4 girls and a boy (who was off to college before I really got to know him) and spending my first 20 years completely in the company of women, girls, Barbies, pink ponies and all things feminine -- I'm talking pink -- and then went to an all women's college, now the tables have turned and I am mobbed with men. Sometimes it's just too much.

OPTIONAL PARAGRAPH 1C: I'm having "a divorce reaction". I'm beginning to be very aware of when a "divorce reaction" is happening. This one was called -- "Listen, I can teach my son a lot of things -- what a hard-on is, what a urinal is, why men love to fart and belch, but a woman must draw the line somewhere and FOOTBALL is it." I refuse to teach him football. I refuse to play a "pick-up game of football." I refuse to unravel the mystery of why men like to play football. I refuse to comment on the weird linguistic problem that all Europeans use some form of the word "football" to describe soccer and we use it to mean something completely different that has little to do with a foot or feet.

OPTIONAL PARAGRAPH 1D: I get my make-up on, I get out of the car, I witness my son standing on the football field hating to play football, not knowing what the hell is going on, not knowing why everyone runs back when the guy with the ball looks like he's going to throw it deep into the field, being the only one standing there looking like he's waiting for a bus. I gesture for him to come over to me. He comes over and starts crying that he hates football. I feel like an absolute shit. We sit and watch and I tell him not to worry, I hate football too, but thought maybe he'd like it. We decide to go for a walk. I have been writing in a journal with an ink pen, I ask him to come with me to the car to lock them up in there before we start our walk.

OPTIONAL PARAGRAPH 1E: He opens the car door for me and tells me that he's got the bird. I say, "What?!" He explains that he's smuggled the bird in his shoebox in the back of the car to the football game because he was worried for him. I flip -- knowing the bird's probably been jostled to death by the car ride -- and ask him to show me the bird. The bird's in the shoebox, big hole cut in the top of the box thank god, and when I lift the lid looks pretty perky.

We put the bird next to the car, the box open to the air, no lid. I'm hoping the bird flies away. We go for a walk. The only other people around seem to be the dads and kids playing football. I speculate as to whether the football might just land in the shoebox, kill the bird and then my son and I will be feeling really horrible about that, but decide that won't happen.

We walk all the way to the other side of the field. I look over at the car, I see the box. I see two kids about age 12 looking down into the box. They are neighborhood kids on their bikes. I suddenly get worried. Maybe they will mess with our bird. I start running across the field fast, yelling "Hey, that's our bird," and they are peering down into the box and then curiously up at me. Now I'm somehow crossing the football playing area and everyone is running with me in my direction. I suddenly realize I've managed to run right into the big play of the day and one of my kids friend's is holding the ball and racing me for the goal line, or whatever it's called, but I'm racing to make sure the birds okay. The two boys on bikes are looking at me.

The kid makes the touchdown and everyone cheers about a second before I get to the shoebox. The shoebox is empty.

"Where's our bird?!" I ask, breathless.

"He flew away," the one kid says. I wonder if he's telling me the truth. Maybe he smashed the bird's head on a telephone pole and won't tell a mom about it.

"Where?" I say.

Both boys point off into the woods in the same direction. That's good enough for me -- they couldn't have conspired to tell the same story I figure. My black-throated blue warbler is free. Free free, we set him free. The box looks so empty.

"Where'd you get him?" the kids ask, now beginning to wheel their bikes down the road.

"He hit the house today," I explain.

They look slope-shouldered like disappointed adolescents -- makes me know they would have probably liked to do something to the bird, but really did miss out because he flew away.

I wish the bird the best. I empty the shoebox grass and wood chips in the woods and we go home. We are not big football fans. We're happy our bird flew away.