Hidden in Plain Sight



One of the running jokes at home is I can't go anywhere without watching birds.

At an outdoor wedding I was more interested in whether the woodpecker in a tree overhead was a downy or its larger cousin, the hairy. At a graveside funeral my mind was distracted by a distant honking of Canada geese. In noisy downtown Chicago one summer visit I heard, and located, a chattering goldfinch on a traffic light.

I've been a birder for over a decade but it turns out there have been birds all around me from my youngest days. I had no idea.

As a child the only birds I knew were pigeons, jays, robins, cardinals and "sparrows" identified for me by my mother. Birds meant nothing in particular to me. They were just there.

As far as I knew, my mother had no interest in birds either. But then I found the bird images.

My mother collected china - plates and figurines. I took a lot of it after she died and put them on tables in my formal front room, the room hardly anyone goes into. Thanks to the southern exposure I keep my plants in there and every so often I come in to water and to dust.

It was during one such cleaning time recently that I picked up a stack of little plates from one of the tables to dust it, and I realized I was looking at a blue jay. I looked at the three other plates below it. Each had an image of a different bird - a male cardinal, a male indigo bunting and, one of my favorite birds, a male rose-breasted grosbeak!  

Where did these plates come from? Unfortunately, my parents are no longer around to ask.

We never had feeders. My father's parents kept caged canaries. That was as close to wild birds as anyone got.

And yet, here were these plates...and more. There was a statue of a bluebird (or "blue bird," as it was labeled) that was made in Japan. There were two figurines of male goldfinches, also from Japan.

I started to wonder - were these gifts? Did someone, perhaps her traveling brother, bring them? Were they bought by my mother because they are colorful or reminded her of something?

I remember towards the end of her life my mother told me she didn't mind the sparrows (house sparrows, I know now) that built a nest in the space created when a room air conditioner was replaced with a smaller unit. She liked hearing them "sing." She was sick with cancer and stuck in her bed.

House sparrows don't sing but they do "cheep." Perhaps it reminded her of something from her childhood or trips she made to mountain resorts as a young woman.

I hope this reminder of the outside world comforted her. I can understand her need to look to birds and nature when trapped in the house, as she was at the end.

I've watched the birds at my feeder and in the world beyond my backyard and remain fascinated by the different types. Looking for them gets me away from stressful work that keeps me indoors on a lovely day, or a too-messy house or an argument with MH. I look and I find and I use my brain to focus on the song and the field marks and try to identify them.

Birds make me feel more alive. "Discovering" birds has vastly improved my life more than anything except MH. But it turns out the birds have been there all along. I just wish I could've shared bird watching with my mother.

So these plates and little birds are no longer objects on a table. They are a reminder of what was, and what could have been.