My mother was crazy for birds.
That she was in love with all things winged was perhaps the most solid thing to be said about her. The rounded sweep of her cheek, the shy upturn of her smile—even the steel blue of her irises—none of these was clearer to me than her fondness for creatures of the sky. Perhaps because she was as migratory in nature as they were, my mother liked nothing better than to tilt her head upward and trace the departure of birds with her eyes. When a flock of geese passed overhead, she called us out to the yard, thrilled by their honking, told us to crane our necks and follow their movement through the clouds.
“Hurry kids! Come on now, or you’ll miss them.”
This mother who pulled gnarled vegetables from pockets of stubborn earth and made them into something soft and warm, who laughed off things like sassy children and hairy-legged spiders, who maneuvered lightly through all manner of political and religious conversation—saying her part, but listening, too—this same woman sounded frantic while calling us out to see birds. Failing to set our eyes upon a flock in flight was a sin of omission to her, and there was more worry in her voice over missing out on a bird or two than when she wondered aloud how to pay the rent.
It was like a parade to her, all that commotion on high. She couldn’t get enough of the trumpeting, the beating of wings, the buzz of flight. And if whatever yard or porch we inhabited did not offer a big enough view, she’d drive out to the wildlife refuge for a better look at mallards, tundra swans, and snow geese.
She went there often—to savor a good mood, or to quell a low one. She loved the sanctuary and could spend whole afternoons tracking the take-off and landing of birds. She knew the land, all its plants and animals, its strangled bodies of water. It was hers, like a child—or better, perhaps, because it asked nothing in return.
Convincing herself that we loved it, too, she herded us into the car, and made her drives to the refuge a form of family recreation. We complained, but she’d pack us into the car just the same, tell us to stop our whining, for heaven’s sake, and try to find something pretty to look at.
And why should a bird sanctuary be the place my mother most liked to visit? Better than a trip to the cool brick rooms of the Swan Library, better than the luxury of resting among strangers over a cup of coffee at the diner on Main Street, better even than sitting sloppy and happy in a kitchen full of talkative cousins?
Perhaps she was able to find peace there. With all that silence and sky, perhaps she was able to travel to places far away. Or maybe the refuge, with its unspoiled land, reminded her of home—her first home, the one her father had built from trees growing at the base of granite mountains.
She talked about him often, her father. He was the only man she ever spoke of without salt on her tongue. To her (and to us, who never knew him) he was a giant of a man, a sort of saint really, and everything the long-dead were supposed to be. Quiet and good-hearted. Solid and hardworking. Honest. She had nothing but love for her father, the woodsman who had learned the art of storytelling as a boy sitting around the logging camps of northern Maine, the copper-haired Swede with a cleft in his chin, whose worn hands carried home bags of sweets for his middle child and only daughter.
The Iroquois Wildlife Refuge stood just east of Buffalo, between the Tonawanda Indian Reservation and Albion, north of Batavia and the factory job my mother held. Indeed, that was how she first found the place, on break one day from the metal-walled rooms. Though we’d abandoned the big old house in Albion, and had left behind the tiger lilies and bullfrogs of the reservation, we’d still file out of the motel room that housed us and load ourselves into the car for a drive past Old Orchard Creek, into the freshwater marshes and hardwood swamps. We complained, of course, as we pressed faces and knees into the tight compartment of the car, but in truth, we’d been trailing our mother for years and knew nothing else. For the past four years in fact, those sodden acres and their winged residents had been about the most consistent feature in our lives, more regular than the clothes we wore, the schools we attended, the beds or floors or chairs we slept on.
And so my mother brushed aside our grumbling as she would have a passing swarm of gnats, hands in the air, batting back the dark-eyed glances and snotty remarks launched at her through the rearview mirror.
“You kids just don’t know how to have a good time,” she’d say, seeming hurt and genuinely perplexed by our lack of enthusiasm. She must have wondered how such a sad and heavy defect could have taken hold of anything that had come from her. Her mood always lightened, though, as she steered the car onto the marshy refuge road, her lightness becoming excitement as we passed thistle and cattail and finally pulled into the lot where she parked and headed down to the pond, banged-up binoculars in hand.
Some of us followed my mother down the trail, but a few stayed behind and kicked our feet through gravel while leaning against the car, swatting insects from our hair, and complaining about how hot it was.
“How long you gonna be anyway?” someone always asked.
And though she’d be halfway to the pond by then, she’d turn back, glance over her shoulder, and catch our eyes long enough to put a finger to her lips and shush us.
“You’ll scare the birds away,” she’d say, and make her descent to the milky pond below.