Talking to you…10/27/20

PARTS AND PIECES

Baby Birds

I was a talker. I am still a talker. I’ve always been a talker. My son is a talker. I get it now. He has so much to say, and it is constant. I love listening to how his mind works, and I sometimes wonder if they felt the same about me. Because, sometimes, I know it can be exhausting.

It was a warm spring day, maybe even early summer. I’m ‘guesstulating’ because I was talking about baby birds. They had fallen out of their nest, and I had run into them on the sidewalk. I’m not sure if we did anything for them, but I know my mom was involved. I involved her in everything nature had to offer. Because, to me, she was the expert.

I remember incessantly asking if they were going to die. What about their mother? Would she come back for them? If she didn’t, would they die?

That was it. All of the memory that came with me. Until, one day twenty-eight years later, I watched an old video clip buried in a pile of 8mm tapes my dad had saved. I slid it into the video camera, hoping it would still play and clicked it on. Power! Yes! I was watching on a tiny flipped out screen, it was my little brother learning to ride his red Schwinn bike. It was a funny video, it even captured him picking his nose, disappearing behind my mom’s red Dodge and reappearing with his finger in his mouth. Haha. Gotcha little brother, he’d be so embarrassed. But isn’t that what life’s about? Those little embarrassing moments? We grow an attachment, a bond. No one else was there, it can never be deleted. And don’t worry, it physically won’t be either! Sister luggage.

Getting back to my point, as I watched the video play on, I heard my voice in the background, of course I did, remember I was a talker. My mom’s voice was present too, quieter, and I knew my dad was there, he was always the man behind the camera. And then out of no where, I asked about the baby birds! What a gift, I thought. I was going to see my memory play out in real life! I attentively listened waiting for an answer to where my memory left off. The video was eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds long. I played it till the end. I rewound it, and watched it a few more times. Never any answer. I just kept asking until my mom finally interrupted with, hey do you guys want to go tot he pool?

Well, I guess I got an answer. Maybe not the one I was looking for, but now we know it had to be early summer.