Just outside the front door at Mom and Dad’s is a wooden signpost that Dad erected many years ago. It’s at least five feet tall and has several cup hooks where he hangs a suet cake and seed bird feeder each morning. He used to leave them out overnight until a bear mangled it. Now he brings them in each evening and refills and replaces them in the morning.
Mom has always loved to watch the birds. She used to know their names and how many pairs and about their nesting habits. Now they are “little birds” or “red birds.” She doesn’t enjoy them any less for not being able to articulate scientific names. In fact, it seems she takes more joy in them than before – a child-like effervescence in watching them eat and fly.
Since Mom’s latest fall where she broke her arm, she’s been pretty grounded. She is unable to rise from her chair without assistance and has done very little walking. With her dominant arm out of commission, she is literally scared stiff of falling and has only moved from her lift chair to the wheelchair or toilet. Recent therapy has helped her to walk again, haltingly at first, but she’s getting stronger every day.
Today we were able to walk to the front door. It took us some time but she walked on her own! I assisted her with standing but she took steps with me holding her hand. After what we have been through in the last month, this was a wonderful event. I enticed her with the offer to watch the birds and she was determined to walk down the hall.
The birds that visit the feeder are the usual suspects for this area of the country: titmouse, house wren, mockingbird, mourning dove, nuthatch, chickadee, and cardinal. There is a pileated woodpecker that occasionally makes an appearance. We hear him more often than we see him. He’s often at work on one of the trees down in the woods. Mom gets so excited when she sees him. Although he wasn’t around today, she looked for him, even whistled for him to come. It’s amazing to me that she remembers him but doesn’t always know the people around her.
When I spend the night with them, the room where I sleep must have several bird nests in the trees. The birds wake me with the sun with their cries. They are so loud in the morning – perhaps because the rest of the world is still – they sound amplified. Because Mom and Dad live in the woods away from the road, birds and the occasional “moo” from the cows across the road are the only environmental sounds. It’s quite peaceful there, except in the dawn of a new day when there is a cacophony of morning greetings of the birds!
Many of my friends are avid birdwatchers, too. They post pictures of their backyard visitors or guests in their birdhouses on Facebook. Mom doesn’t understand the pictures or videos when I try to show them to her. She can’t quite understand the concept of computer photographs. They don’t make sense to her. But she loves to watch birds in her yard as they flit around her azalea or the feeders. Guess we’ll have to go watch them again later this afternoon!
