THE BIRD

   Our New House 

I THOUGHT ABOUT HOW A BIRD MOVED INTO THE VENT above our master bath that spring the pandemic hit, when I went to work in the ER. I’d arrived late but the rules around things were more focused on masking and safety than nit-picking the staff who showed up to work. 

   We’d just bought the house finally in December for our tenth anniversary, and I loved almost everything about it: cove ceilings, wood floors, red door, built-ins, recessed lighting, and hurried vinyl siding in a slate gray with bright white clip on mouldings, which were tolerable. My mother thought it was one of those “flipper” houses, but I liked the wainscoting and fixtures they threw in, and the window of good credit, and a Live Baltimore trolley tour lottery grant for ten grand lined up so we took it. 

They must have forgotten a plastic cover on the venting. The bird would flit in-and-out, nesting in the eaves, and then, one morning I heard tiny chirps.

     I had read that a bird flying away was a symbol of a relationship ending, and a bird flying towards something was a symbol of coming home. But a bird living in the vent, having babies, and year after year coming back to nest in the bathroom, was productive, maybe erotic, or at least symbolic of renewal.  

Really the vent needed a cover. We needed a lot of things: I wanted a fireplace. I wanted fencing, landscaping with riverstones that implied a river, a patio and firepit. I mentioned the vent covers, but secretly loved the bird choosing to nest above our bathroom. 

   Each time I heard the rustling, I felt like being somewhere to come home to was deeply meaningful. Something like the secret between myself and the world grew.

IT HAD BEEN A FRESH BEGINNING. We needed it. Keys, champagne on the granite counter. Smiles. But reality hit. The landscaping didn’t happen, the fence didn’t happen, the bluestone patio didn’t happen. We got a fireplace built that winter with Hepa filters and plastic drop walls though. It was not a Swedish Kakelugn stove, but we picked out black glass tiles with minimalist gold leaf diamonds, a gas insert with beaten matte bars and faux logs that glowed and sparkled, and it was truly beautiful when it was finished

My mother did not appreciate remote control fire, but years of logs, mauls, splitters, wedges, the five boys out swinging axes in the cold, tramping in mud and logs, fussing over fires, had made me only want the fire without that part. Boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-boy-girl. Five boys out of nine, and I’d send the younger ones out on the coldest night to get wood from ice under that one incandescent light from the batten board porch when no parents were home and I had to feed them and keep them warm.  Call me crazy, but it really was too many years of that to count, and I liked pressing a button for once.

     That spring I heard the bird move in, there was a restless feeling that I couldn’t explain that had moved into me. I stopped caring about patios and fences, dusting, baseboards and paint. I signed up to run a marathon. 

                                        The Julio Effect

   I TEXTED THE GUY AT WORK that had a running group looking for motivation. Julio was convincing, and talkative. I figured he would make good company. I was not wrong. 

    It was the best, and worst decision I ever made, as he was not flakey. He showed up immediately, completely, in his larger-than-life personality with an immediate yes.“I’m going tonight, if you want to come,” he said over instant messenger, and that is how the new bird brought Julio into my life. “ Tonight??! Okay!” I responded, and I ran in my blue scrub pants and a little gray tank top. From then on I came more prepared. 

 A RAGS TO RICHES STORY I UNDERSTAND is seeing omens like a bird appearing, where once there were none. I also include as wealth, besides instant fire-on-demand, is not seeing cockroaches waggling antennae in my baseboards. Roach infestations were a problem in my childhood, not Julio’s. 

The bugs terrified me. There were big, black shiny ones in Baltimore the size of man’s bloodbruised thumb, and little brown ones in New York. I promised myself a better life.

I had a nice house, finally. I could have my whole box of Lucky Charms cereal to myself now. Still, I was waiting. Waiting to know ‘it’ was finally over, and I could relax. 

   I had gotten here looking for meaning in signs, using augury to read the sky, placing hidden alters made around the house on compass angles, considering flower petals as he loves-me, he-loves-me-nots, manifesting on new moons, and collecting the full moons’ energy with bowls of water under the silver light. I’d watch birds fly in flocks, or in twos, or threes to read the people below. I’d appreciate the placement, and reach, or hug of trees to tell the story of the land they grew on and while standing out staring into the sky i’d feel storms like statements about the present tense but also rainbows, stones, stars, sounds, found objects, and the world’s synchronicities spoke to me like a kitchen-witch seer that saw what the world said. Becoming normal and rich was reading the fine print of the world quietly, then living in the language of the souls of today: brunches, baked goods, gel nails, hand towels, and kitschy decor like ‘Believe in the good you wish to see.’ Magical thinking had a placebo effect.

WHEN I MET JULIO THINGS CHANGED. He didn’t even know what incense was. Everything about him was antithetical to believing in augeries and that meanings were in everything. Not only did it not matter, he negated the entire realm of the mysteries. 

     I’d pull up and park next to him to go running and he would step out of his giant truck, strap on a gun, and place cash and his ID in a waterproof bag into a pocket prior to running. He had his own methods which I studied anthropologically like I stumbled on a new civilization. He was anti-matter to my universe of ideas and imagination. He was facts and figures only with a hint of driftwood on the dashboard. “Don’t touch that!” He said when I reached over and touched the smooth scrap. He was all business with a dark hint of passionate control. Something surreal in me relaxed around his limits. It had to.