The Birds

Fourth grade and fifth grade were combined the first year St. Elizabeth’s opened. We were in one classroom together, and Sister Cecilia alternated between the two classes. When she was not teaching us fourth-graders, we had work to complete, but, of course, we also paid some attention to the more advanced fifth-grade lessons. I developed an ability to dash off my fourth grade assignments in order to attend to the fifth grade lessons until my neighbor, Paul D, lent me a baseball card and showed me how to flip it. That began a contest. I won cards from Paul, and paid him back the one he had loaned me. It was seductive and addictive. I wanted to win more cards.

Paul let me into the boys’ lunchtime games at the far corner of the school. I had 300+ cards and was winning phenomenally. I was a card flipping champ! Then along came Sister Daniel who busted me for flipping cards with the boys, banished me from ever playing on the boys’ section of the school yard, and confiscated my 300+ cards that might have financed my graduate education. She bestowed this treasure that I had accumulated upon one Kathy W of the third grade.

Banished from the boys, I joined in with the rope-skipping games the girls played in the driveway near the rectory. The next year, someone, we never knew who, presented the nuns with an adorable black cocker spaniel. They named him Buttons. He spent lunch hour tied to a tree outside the rectory near where we did double dutch. We were only allowed to play with him under strict nun supervision. We loved him.

My mom was high school buddies with Sister Miriam who was now Principal. Mom took her shopping at the A & P every week. My sister and I went along of course, religiously. And someone, also anonymous, presented the nuns with a green parakeet named Happy.

When summer came, both Buttons and Happy needed to be fostered. Buttons went to Kathy W’s family. We got Happy. I never knew why Kathy W got such favoritism. Maybe they were the ones who had given Buttons to the nuns in the first place. Who knew? She was not smart or outstanding in any way. Anyway, she got the dog and my baseball cards, and we got Happy, the parakeet.

My mother had a strange habit of taking our pets around the house and introducing them to rooms and their contents. One day she took Happy outside in her hand to introduce him to the neighborhood and he fought free from her hand and flew away over the woods. Happy was gone.

What to do? Mom took us to the Woolworth’s in Ridgewood, NJ where we found, among many green parakeets, one that we thought might pass as Happy. And he grew up happy in our home imitating Cousin Brucie announcing the hits of the week and imitating all of us asking our puppy Ginger if she wanted to go out. Poor Ginger. When September came and the nuns returned, Sister Miriam told us that we could keep Happy. So we did. Happy lived a long and happy life with us, teasing Ginger and announcing the hits of the week.

The day JFK was assassinated was the day my grandmother died. I was in college and everybody was a wreck. It was all too much. I wanted to go to DC. My parents said that if I was going to any funeral it would be my grandmother’s. I was grief-stricken, angry, and irrational. But I went to the wake.

My aunt’s dear friend, Mrs. G was there. No one was paying attention to her. I thought it was nice of her to show up, so I went to sit with her. She and my aunt belonged to the Audubon Society. Knowing nothing else to talk about with her, I told her the story of losing the original Happy. Then, OMG, she told me about finding an exhausted parakeet in the willow tree at the bottom of her property that same year. She found Happy! He was only a block from the A & P and a few blocks from the convent!

Mrs. G brought him in and he lived a lovely life in her home. I cried. There was so much to cry about that weekend. Maybe she told me a fairy tale knowing I was so distraught. But maybe she told me the truth.

Years later, the mother of a friend needed to travel to Miami where one of her parents was in some kind of medical crisis. She had a parakeet. She needed me to look after her dear little bird who was recently diagnosed with pneumonia. It was a lovely little blue parakeet. Oh my! I had a five-month old kitten. But she had no one else to trust. Both of her sons were estranged. So I took the parakeet whose name I cannot remember.

Norma was gone three or four weeks. I kept the birdcage on top of the fridge because I knew the kitten could not get up there (yet) so I figured it was the safest spot.

When Norma came home, I brought her little bird back to her. A few days later, she called. “What did you do?’ she asked. I didn’t understand. What did she mean? All signs of pneumonia were gone! I didn’t do anything special. I kept him on top of the fridge — away from the kitten.

Well holy moly! The dry air that rose from the refrigerator motor had helped clear his little birdie lungs.

A miracle had happened.

Disclosure: I was far from successful when a neighbor gave a baby parakeet to my parents many years later. My parents loved that little baby bird, but it turned out we didn’t have any idea how to care for a parakeet so young. I have a cousin who is an expert in parakeets. She was not nearby at the time, and I didn’t even know about her expertise until after that poor little bird succumbed.