A STORY WORTH TELLING
“ A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
— traditional saying “Do you ever wonder what birds are saying?” a friend once asked. “So peaceful, listening to them.”
Her beautiful photographs of feathered species were, as I remember them, consistently stunning.
Listening to a bird’s morning song while drinking coffee outside is a seemingly lost form of relaxation. This is a cherished respite I was introduced to as a child spending summers with my grandparents in Northeast Texas.
My grandfather was a man of rigid routines, even in retirement.
After awakening from his afternoon nap, he retrieved the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from the mailbox and settled into his backyard lawn chair beneath a big pecan tree. There, he spent the next hour or so reading the paper, listening to the birds and waiting for his pet chicken, Easter, to join him.
Seriously, I’m not making that up. My grandfather really had a pet chicken named Easter. He kept a half dozen laying hens in his backyard, but this one White Leghorn bird bonded with him, roosting on his leg while he perused the paper.
“Hear that mockingbird?” he would say.
“What’s he saying?” I asked. “Do birds talk to each other?”
“During the day, they sing to attract mates,” he answered. “But they sing during the spring and summer evenings just because they have a song.”
Supper was at five sharp, followed by some old-fashioned front porch rocking that included casual conversations and evening serenades from the many birds in the trees that filled my grandparents’ yard in Pittsburg.
Outside sitting continues today at my house in Center. It’s not every day, and it’s also a little different from those childhood days.
Mornings are on my secluded patio with a hot cup of strong, black coffee where I’m typically welcomed by three resident cats. “Lover Boy” wastes no time making his way to my lap. He earned his name for his constant craving of attention. He will purr for as long as you will pet him. Not far behind L.B. is “Fuzzy Butt” who was named … well, you can probably figure that one out easily enough.
She enjoys head scratching almost as much.
And the third feline is Marshmallow. She came with that name. She loves petting as much as the others, but she’s quickly done.
Birdwatching is not my thing, I’m more about the melodies. I seldom see the singers, anyway — something to do with having three cats.
Some evenings, I’ll perch on the front porch where there are fewer birds because of more activity on the busy street.
There are walkers and runners burning calories and shedding pounds, reminding me that I should be out there with them but watching out for loose “nut birds” behind steering wheels.
That’s a species noted for its lack of intelligence flying faster than the law allows in residential neighborhoods and blowing through the corner stop sign.
These birds are likely the reason why the cats and I prefer the patio.
While sitting on the patio one morning last week, I recalled another cat that once called this place home about a decade ago, when I took my longtime weekly newspaper column into the digital age with a blog site. My debut post was observations of a young orange tom “walk on” that adopted me.
Hardly more than a kitten, he spent long periods sitting and looking out the back door.
I speculated he might be wondering what was happening on the other side of that door where the birds were singing.
At the time, that is kind of the way I felt about what was ahead in the digital age of column writing.
My lifelong friend, Oscar Elliott, suggested I not worry about what might come next, that everything would always be all right if I did just one simple thing.
“Relax in your recliner,” he directed me. “Put that orange cat in your lap and take a nap.”
I’ve worked on that in the years since while trying to remember the birds don’t sing because they have all the answers, they sing simply because they have a song.
That’s when I take a nap. And if a cat wants to join me, that’s fine.
Just no chickens.
Please.
Contact Aldridge at leonaldridge@ gmail. com. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge. com.
