Birds Art Life

by Kyo Maclear

  • • •

  In art, in wordlessness, we found moments of truce. In art, my mother’s frustration and jealousy drained away. She could take pride in being fluent and clear.

  • • •

  My British father, on the other hand, could barely draw a circle but had a way with words. He wrote things down for a living. When we were out in the world, he did not mess up his verb tenses. His public eloquence and intelligence commanded respect. No one ever looked through him as if he were a pane of glass.

  • • •

  But where had my father’s words gone? Had they just wasted away from lack of use? I resolved to make our conversations more ranging. Less tunnel-like. Aging and illness had shrunken his powers.

  • • •

  Shortly after our fifteenth anniversary, I asked my husband for a song list about roamers. I wanted suggestions. We sometimes play this game where we tag-team DJ. I pick a song and then he chooses a song that is lyrically connected. The goal is to keep the music flowing without gaps. For my first song, I chose “The Littlest Birds” by Jolie Holland and let him take it from there. Here is his list:

  “Blowing Down That Old Dusty Road” by Woody Guthrie

  “Ramblin’ Man” by the Allman Brothers

  “The Wanderer” by Dion

  “Born to Wander” by Rare Earth

  “Walkin’ Down the Line” by Bob Dylan

  “I’m Walkin’ ” by Fats Domino

  “Ramblin’ Guy” by Steve Martin

  “King of the Road” by Roger Miller

  My mother bloomed at the age of fifty-five when she and my father parted for good. I had moved out by this point, so there was no one to keep them from fighting about everything and anything. (Their final marital fight involved a La-Z-Boy recliner.) She explored the city with new friends, flourished as a social person. For a while the anger and argument drained away and she had a calmness I had never seen in her before. She smoked pot in Kensington Market and went to open-air concerts.

  My father kept moving from one apartment to another until he finally settled in two blocks away from my mother. After a brief rush of happiness, he was set back by a diagnosis of cancer and then the discovery of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He grew more fragile while she grew rooted and sturdy.

  • • •

  When she first moved into her own apartment, she took a bag of garden stones with her. I found them piled in a ceramic bowl by the entrance. Stones for elsewhere. Stones for every new thing she had to learn. Stones for resolve. Stones for gravity. Stones for continuance. Stones for love. Stones for everyday beauty.

  Sometimes when I visited I would gather a few and carry them around in my pocket.

  • • •

  My mother refused to be a nursemaid, became defiantly unnurturing, refused to cater to anyone else’s desires. I stepped in to fill the breach and discovered I had a talent for it.

  • • •

  But the serving instinct in women is never fully extinguished. And my mother’s hands are never fully empty. The other night she arrived for dinner at our house with three “party-size” bags of tortilla chips. For my father: a bag of lightbulbs.

  • • •

  Twenty-five years since they parted ways, my parents are as close to being friends as they will ever be. They do not yield to traditional forms of affection or consolation, but on good days, in the playful company of the grandsons they love, and when they release their respective certainties about how they have been wronged, I have witnessed a softness that I can only describe as an understanding.

  • • •

  They understand that they were both a bit broken by their childhoods, that they grew up with a sense of scarcity they took to be financial but that was also emotional. They understand they have both chosen to live, and age, alone and that my mother approaches her own old age with a practical fend-for-oneself attitude (stockpiling “senior clothing” like elastic-waisted pants and easy-to-slip-on cardigans in a closet my father jokingly refers to as “Harrods”). They abide in this mutual understanding. It is a bridge between them, two immigrants who arrived in a third country without any further ties. On good days, it gathers into a kind of love.

  • • •

  From my mother, I inherited my sometimes crooked humor and independence. From my father, curiosity about the world, a desire for seclusion.

  Once upon a time, I inhabited a strange, dank corner of the universe. It never occurred to me that my anxious view of the world until that point was just one framework. It had become so naturalized. Then my future husband came along and opened the windows and doors and nudged me outside.

  I walked out of that corner as if I was following a birder down a path—moving half a step behind, looking where he looked, hearing what he heard, noticing things I had never before noticed. And at the end of our walk I looked back, realizing how decisively, how devotedly my guide had brought me through the woods.

  My husband and I have built a roomy marriage. In our fifteen years, we have roamed together and roamed so far apart we might have been on different continents, living separate lives. We have saddened, maddened, and gladdened each other; been irrelevant and essential to each other in the same moment. We have gone through phases of nest primping but also, in our distraction, allowed our nest to fall to near ruin. At least fifteen marriages between us have died and been rekindled.

  In my husband I see a fellow solitary, a person with his own concentrated, if meandering, path, and while I would do anything for him and would choose his company again and again, one of the things I most love about “us” is that we protect each other’s independence.

  Marriage is not an existential cure and not all of us need it, though we could probably all benefit from one decent bedrock relationship. In my husband’s presence, I have felt my solitude dissolve, but I have also felt lonelier than the moon; such are the contradictions of intimacy.

  The gift of our love is that it has given me an earthed feeling so that I have felt free to float away. I know I can take temporary leave without it being seen as an abandonment. Pursuing a solo adventure, I have come to realize, is easier when you know there is someone half-watching for your return, ready to cushion your landing and welcome you back with a song or a joke.

  I worry sometimes that we have bred lonesome children. On our fifteenth anniversary as we headed off to the woods, I found my younger son wandering alone by the creek. The lonesomeness was there in his eyes and his crouched stoop, in the space around him. He was looking for frogs after the morning rainfall. It was a focused and solitary pursuit, so familiar to me. We waited for him to call us over or run to us, but he didn’t notice us watching. My husband signaled that we should leave our son to his quest and continue.

  And so we did, walking along the narrow trail, looking for birds, while celebrating everything that went into our marriage: the optimism, the fight, the humor, the mess, the faith, the forgiveness, the heartbreak, the solitude, the passion.

  • • •

  I had not become an astute observer of nature and I was still a bit mystified when it came to bird finding, but I did manage to spot a pileated woodpecker in the forest that day. It was hard to miss—a crow-size bird with a zebra-striped face and bright red crest—busy at work like a totem carver. The woods, after the rain, had a sparkling quiet quality, and as we stood under a green canopy, the slow, deep rolling sound quickly built to a loud hammering, a warning that we were too close. Walking away, we could hear the percussive pounding start to slow again.

  Pileated woodpeckers need large areas of woodland, just like a marriage needs space.

  That night, I lay in bed in our wood cabin, tucked into my threadbare sleeping bag, and listened to the crackling of a moth and the sounds of my sons and my husband breathing.

  Look at what roaming brings, I thought. From one detour, this.

  SEPTEMBER

  REGRETS

  (A Juvenile Great Blue Heron and a Goldfinch Nestling)
>
  On small but lingering regrets and the virtues and pitfalls of being sentimental about baby birds.

  In September, I rode my bicycle to the duck ponds in High Park. It was the musician’s birthday and I had brought him tickets to a Mahler symphony and a book about birdsongs. The sparrows were busy singing, flitting, alighting, foraging. We stopped to watch a young great blue heron standing with a gymnast’s balance on a wet log. Then we pulled off onto a smaller path.

  We had been walking for a few minutes when in the near distance we spotted an elderly couple angling their cameras toward the ground. We walked over and lowered our gaze.

  There, at the base of a tree, fallen from its nest, was a baby goldfinch. Its parents were whirling and swooping overhead, as if trying to instruct their grey nestling on how to get aloft.

  But there was no way this nestling was going to fly. It was a mere scruff of fluff, a puff of nothingness.

  The parents swooped a few more times before darting away.

  A baby bird is born cold-blooded and for the first few days of life needs to be brooded. Until birds develop the ability to regulate their own temperature, they rely on the warmth of their parents. I didn’t know if this nestling was cold or afraid, but I could see that it was trembling.

  • • •

  In my mind’s eye, I cupped the baby goldfinch in my hands and carried it home. I had a whole fantasy that involved my nursing it to full fledglinghood. I would build a shelter for it in my study with branches and an aluminum tray for a bath. I would feed it baby bird food off a toothpick. I would build a fragrant nest with tree bark and download goldfinch songs on iTunes and play them quietly so she never forgot her roots. Then when she was strong enough, I’d release her. My husband would put together a “take flight” playlist for the occasion.

  • • •

  I was shaken from my reverie by tiny tweets. The baby bird had found its voice. Little crescendos of panic.

  I wanted to rescue the baby bird, but the musician was opposed. The musician said it was not for us to interfere. It was wrong to risk making an outside bird an inside bird. If we had injured the bird, then it would be up to us to repair the wrong, but we had done nothing. He said all young birds face hazards regardless of whether they live in urban or wild settings. He said “survival of the fittest,” and, yes, it was sad but there was no point in getting sentimental about it.

  • • •

  The word sentimental got me. I did not want to seem too predictably touchy-feely or, God forbid, female. Besides, what would I be starting if I began rescuing stranded animals? Would I be agreeing to a future of wildlife rehabilitation?

  • • •

  I had known people who loved animals with a sort of raw love that was obstructive and painful. (“Every day on earth is a minefield of animal tragedies,” writes Meghan Daum.) Loving animals gets in the way of things.

  • • •

  I decided, because it was true or because it was convenient, that the musician knew best. I agreed to leave the bird alone. My brain understood the musician’s logic even though my emotions were in revolt.

  One of my favorite picture books is The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan. It takes place in a postindustrial landscape. A boy finds a strange creature on a beach and decides to find a home for it in a world where everyone believes there are far more important things to pay attention to.

  • • •

  There is a deep melancholy in the story about what gets left behind. On the one hand there is this hard streamlined world, and on the other there is this boy who is already slowed and soft enough to spot a lost thing. (He’s a bottle cap collector, so he’s accustomed to scouring the city’s wayside.)

  • • •

  It turns out the lost thing is a bit of a portal. It’s a door through which the boy encounters other lost things, creatures he would rarely meet otherwise. The story shows that it’s difficult to retain a soft focus in a hard, hypersensory world. But it also shows there are benefits to be found in doing so.

  If you are concerned that a bird fell from its nest too early, you may try and return the bird to its nest. If the nest has been destroyed or is unreachable, you may substitute a strawberry basket or small box lined with tissue and suspend it from a branch near to where you believe its nest is located. Birds have a poor sense of smell and very strong parental instincts, which means they will usually continue caring for their young.

  —Audubon Society

  What do you regret? I regret the times I have acted with too much head or, conversely, with too much heart. I regret the times it seemed better, somehow, to hang back and not step forward. I regret, along with writer George Saunders, the tepid and timid response, the moments when another “being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.” I regret the instances I have turned to others for guidance even when I already had a hunch of what to do. I regret the part of me that is deferential, that fears being sentimental. I regret I am not more propelled by impulse, nerve, instinct.

  • • •

  I regret I am not better able to hide my natural sincerity under a slant and saucy wit. I regret I am not captained by science.

  • • •

  The word regret comes from the Old Norse gráta (“to weep, groan”). It is possible that regret is a gentle, almost pleasantly wistful way of describing the dissatisfaction I feel with the flaws in my own narrow and hesitant character.

  • • •

  I do not generally see myself as a weeper and groaner, but I can see the possible pleasures.

  Every September for many years, I have attended a secular Rosh Hashanah service where my husband sings. At a certain point in the ceremony we are asked to write our yearly regrets on little pieces of paper, with thoughts of reparation in mind. The tradition is to cast one’s misgivings away on a body of water (preferably “into the ocean’s depths”), but this is a progressive community so, instead, we cast them into a big blue recycling bin.

  • • •

  I typically distance myself from religious pieties and communal rituals, but this one feels oddly satisfying. I like to spy on people and see how much they are writing down, how much “sin” they carry in their laden hearts.

  • • •

  My mother-in-law, who attends the service with us, never has much to write. I see this as a testament to her righteous character. She has spent her life standing up for, and alongside, others. She has marched for civil rights, helped to house and support Vietnam War resisters, spearheaded solidarity movements with struggles against totalitarian regimes in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and continues to champion the rights of Palestinians. She has been a lifelong, tireless fighter against economic, gender, and racial injustice.

  • • •

  Her heart is weep-less and groan-free.

  • • •

  Sometimes I worry about our collective hearts. I worry about the big things we may one day regret together. I worry, along with British nature writer Robert Macfarlane, that “we exist in an ongoing biodiversity crisis—but register that crisis, if at all, as an ambient hum of guilt, easily faded out.”

  • • •

  Would it be deemed maudlin or diabolically unscientific to extrapolate from a fated goldfinch to the current extinction rate for birds, which according to Macfarlane “may be faster than any recorded across the 150 million years of avian evolutionary history”?

  • • •

  I don’t think there is a ritual big enough to cast this degree of regret away.

  • • •

  But the goldfinch: I would like to have surprised myself. I would have liked the chance to take part in a small triumph against death.

  If I focus my intentions now, will I be spared remorse later? Can one build hedges against regret? Would a life protected from all regret be considered virtuous or monstrous? Can one experience regret for another person’s choices—a sort of proxy or companionable regret for those most connected to o
r similar to ourselves? Is this a productive feeling?

  Every now and then I am contacted by someone who wishes to thank my father for his past work. The other day a man wrote to my father (via my email address) to express gratitude for something he did nearly fifty years ago: “I have known of you since December 1970 when you conducted an interview with my father when he was an American prisoner of war in Hanoi, Vietnam. I was 15 years old then, and more aware of war, foreign policy, and their impacts and implications than the average teenager. I appreciated the contact you had made.”

  It fills me with pride to think of my father’s professional contributions. Still, a part of me wishes he had taken time to look around, that he had not conducted his life as a race to the finish. I regret he took many of life’s circumstances, including the positive ones, and shot them through with skepticism and dread in an attempt to inoculate himself against disappointment.

  I worry there might be a cost to living a defended life and moving through the world as an unstoppable self. The cost of joy.

  When I was small this is what I noticed: my father late at night fighting with his typewriter, parrying with words. I did not know what the quarrel was about, but I knew it was relentless. Something needed to be said. And then one day, many months after the fighting had ceased, a book arrived.

  Even now the sound of typing is the sound of living is the sound of home is the sound of something missing.