Nobody’s Child #39
Frequently when setting off to pick up my son during winter in Kansas City, I would fill the birdfeeder that hung from my porch.
So that his arrival at our home would be greeted by birds.
We talked about birds all the time. I always remember when he was 5 years old, being on our bikes by the side of the Missouri River behind Kansas City, and him pointing up at the pure blue sky and a lone hawk as he exclaimed excitedly “Look Daddy, a bird!”
He knew different kinds of birds but it didn’t matter, here was a bird and that was enough to be excited about regardless of what type it was or the thousands of other birds we might see that day. So we stopped our bikes and together we watched it until slowly and gently it had disappeared into the distance.
Further on that Berkley Park cycle he insisted on taking a photo of the swallow nests high above us underneath The Heart of America Bridge, despite how incapable our little camera was of capturing something so far away.
When he was just 4 years old I wrote these words:
Yesterday Mr Moo spent ages going through my books looking at every one of the 800 plus species of Bird in North America, and then the couple of hundred in Britain and Ireland, as he tried to identify a bird he’d seen in the garden that was “the size of a crow, with a blue-ish green-ish head and black and white tail feathers”.
His description was so good I was extra disappointed I couldn’t answer his question. It should be so easy.
Wasn’t a magpie, a discoloured grackle or cowbird, a woodpecker, or a whole lot of other things. And then hours later it came to me, and I felt so proud of the accuracy of his description. He confirmed when I showed him the pictures. It was a pigeon.
On the way to the IMAX he said with enthusiasm as he watched a couple of starlings, “I like birds”.
See Also:
#30 My Kansas City Story, A Summary
All Posts in this Kansas City story
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
i’ve haven’t commented on these posts yet, what you tell is a beautiful story and I sincerely hope that it’s not a tragic one.
He sounds like a wonderful little boy, Eolai. I hope it’s not too long before you guys can see each other again.
Stay strong, buddy.
I’m with them (Sassy/Sam); but more imortant, I’m with you and Moo. There is a similar situation with one of my sisters (I’ve two, buíochas le Dia) and her clann. Though kids are resilient, the not-knowing-how-they’re-faiing is of course the worst of it. I pray ye will… I just pray.
Slán