A Carolina Chickadee sat at the bird feeder, unable to see through the one-way glass. Though I was unseen on the other side, I would hold my breath anyway. Papa received magazines every month for arbitrary gardening and home tools, and for my granny’s birthday, she specifically asked for a special window bird feeder and a soft toilet lid with carpeted flowers on it. My great-uncle, Kit, had nearly broken the window to get it in, but somehow managed to rig the feeder into place. Papa held his breath, too, as his burly, broad frame hunched over to brush the last of the pink over my little fingernails.
“Hold still,” he whispered, glancing at the bird stabbing at the sunflower seed and then back to my dancing fingers as he brushed the last of the purplish-pink onto my pinky fingernail. He took both of my wrists in his large ones and raised them with the backs of my hands facing him. I was sitting cross-legged on the ever-sticky kitchen table. I flexed my fingers, and he gently blew on the polish. After a lifetime split between the Navy and a manufacturing job for a tire company, he had very calloused hands and the beginnings of arthritis in his knuckles, but they delicately and completely engulfed my eight-year-old hands in warmth.
Step-great-grandfather sounds much more technical and distant than what my Papa was to me. For my entire childhood through elementary school, he was my best friend. Every day after school, he would pick me up and take me to his house until my mom got off work. On the car rides home, he would talk to a little green rubber frog that I had given to him in kindergarten, and he would sing the most awful country songs to make me laugh. Once we arrived home, I would run to the back den and hug Granny, and she, in that half-awake, half-asleep state, would be watching the news. I’d then rush back to the kitchen and Papa would be pouring me a cup of coffee with lots of sugar and milk and scooping me a cone of lime sherbet ice cream. Then I’d sit at the table and do my homework or watch Wizards of Waverly Place and watch the birds.
Papa put a finger over his lips and nodded mouthing the word “five,” still searching for any missing spots on my fingernails as his cheeks inflated. I couldn’t suppress the small shriek that bubbled its way up from my heart to my diaphragm to my mouth. The bird skipped off, beating its wings furiously.
“How many days?” I tried to keep my voice low, but the excitement overwhelmed me. The bird was startled and froze, trying to find the source of this new threat past the mirror. Papa put a finger over his lips and nodded mouthing the word “five,” still searching for any missing spots on my fingernails as his cheeks inflated. I couldn’t suppress the small shriek that bubbled its way up from my heart to my diaphragm to my mouth. The bird skipped off, beating its wings furiously.
I loved Halloween as a kid. I loved candy and dressing up in costumes, and going through the lines at our church’s Trunk-or-Treat with my cousins.
“What are you going to be this year?” he asked looking down at the dainty pink fingernails he had just painted. He stood up to put the fingernail polish back in the fridge. I stared at a brave squirrel that had replaced the little bird and was greedily munching on the black seeds. Papa soon came back over to hit the glass and scare it away.
The only thing my Papa and I never saw exactly eye-to-eye on was our view of squirrels. I was a squirrel advocate, but he was staunchly against them because Granny was against them. At one point, she even kept a huge steak knife beside the feeder and would try to stab through the top of it if they jumped up. Thank God she never stabbed one, but she did catch the tail of one with a trash picker once.
“Just a ladybug,” I replied, staring at the spot I had already accidentally gashed through my sticky polish despite my best efforts. I glanced back at a beautiful, ruby-red cardinal that assumed the vacated spot. Its orange beak sifted through the casings of the seeds that the squirrel left behind. I always tried to pet the birds, and of course that never worked, but I began inching over to the feeder anyways. I lifted the top as silently as I could, and reached ever so slowly down to the poor cardinal. It sensed my hand, and flew away just as my index finger was lowering itself down to its peaked crown feathers.
“You are a little bug,” he laughed. He pulled down two mugs, filling both about a third of the way with coffee and the rest with milk and sugar to drink as we watched the birds.
Just then my granny made her way into the kitchen. She had terrible arthritis in her knees, so she often walked with her legs bent and hands bracing either side of the narrow hallway into the kitchen. She was a petite little lady, but her personality and voice far surpassed any assumptions a person could make on her frail frame. She was never afraid to tell a person exactly what she thought. For instance, just shy of a couple of hours after my aunt had given birth to her first child, Granny came in and announced that my little newborn cousin was an “ugly baby.” She often reminded said cousin what she had once thought and remarked that she was happy she had “grown into a prettier girl.” She was snappy, but just as she was overwhelmingly generous in her tongue, she was also generous with quite literally everything else. She would have given or done anything possible for her family.
“What are y’all doing in here?” she asked. She was always a jealous person, and wanted Papa’s attention at every moment. A flock of crows soared down into the backyard to pick through the grass.
It wasn’t at all strange to hear her shriek “ED!” down the hallway only for her to ask “what are you doing?” After her passing, one of my uncles made the joke that God had let Papa pass first for a bit of rest before my Granny’s time came. At her funeral, someone even said they knew the first thing Granny would do when she got to heaven, and that would be to call for Ed. I can see my Papa’s eyes rolling now.
It was around this time that some concoction of dementia and a pain-killer addiction would begin to fray the edges of Granny’s mind. She often called me by my mother’s name. She had been a very thorny, yet sweet woman when she was alive, but she was in a constant battle with her own mind at this time. No one truly realized how much my Papa went through, from staying up all hours of the night to sitting by her side in her hot little den to care for her, because he never once complained. I’ve yet to see anyone love anyone as much as he did her.
“Just Halloween,” I said as Granny sat down beside me. Papa had just sat down when she entered, but immediately popped back up to bring her a little mug filled to the brim with hot, black coffee she would in all probability spill on herself.
“Mmmm,” she hummed, looking up at Papa.
Halloween also happened to be the day after her birthday. We would often park at their house, and go trick-or-treating up the street and bring her birthday present on the same day. Papa and Granny also had a tradition for every holiday. Rather than buying cards or presents for one another, Papa would drive Granny to Food Lion or CVS and they would show each other the cards they would have gotten one another had they bought them. Papa would usually throw in some circus peanuts for Granny.
“She’s going to be a ladybug, Bern,” he said. Her upper lip immediately lifted and her nose scrunched up.
“A bug?” she repeated. “Why would you want to be a nasty old bug?” she asked. It was a well known fact that Granny hated bugs, and any of her grandchildren or great-grandchildren were liable to be threatened with the never-used switch that sat on the top of the microwave if they brought any kind of bug in. I learned this the hard way every summer when I would try to bring caterpillars in the house. I just shrugged at her.
He would always whisper in my ear that I was his “number one.” With all of our family crying around him, he pulled me down and whispered it again. It was the last thing he said to me other than “I love you” when we left.
“She’s my number one little bug,” he said. He would always whisper in my ear that I was his “number one.” The last time I spoke to him, I let him read a letter I wrote about him and what he meant to me. He had just been diagnosed with liver cancer a month or two prior, and he was gone in a snap. With all of our family crying around him, he pulled me down and whispered it again. It was the last thing he said to me other than “I love you” when we left.
“Your number one? She’s gonna leave you just like Charity,” she grumbled before taking a shaky sip of her coffee and drenching her white, fleece shirt’s neckline with the brown liquid. Charity is another of my cousins that spent a large part of her childhood at Papa and Granny’s. She and Papa had been close as well. Papa was never able to have children of his own with his previous wife. The only thing he’d ever say to me was that his pregnant wife had passed away in a car crash. They lost the baby as well, and he’d always say that the little boy had had “the prettiest head of hair.”
“Nuh-uh, she ain’t never gonna leave me,” Papa said with a cheeky grin. I shook my head fiercely as well. A gorgeous American Goldfinch flew down to the feeder. Papa loved the little Chickadees and Goldfinches the most. Sometimes, we would go outside and I’d climb a little dogwood in the front yard and he’d sit in the lawn chairs. He’d make the coo of the Mourning Dove and hear them call back to him. I was never able to replicate it like him, but he did teach me how to make a whistle with a blade of grass.
After elementary school, I went to a middle school that was much farther away. At that point, my father was able to pick me up after school, and I visited Papa and Granny less and less frequently. I always said that when I was able to drive, I would go over more often, but Papa passed away before I got my license. I still think about him every single day. Every time I look at the birds. Every Halloween. Every Christmas.
Whenever I hear those distinct calls of the Cardinal, I’m always taken back to summers I spent in their little house, early in the morning swinging with sparkling dew on the grass and the birds singing as Papa would look out to the tree tops and sit with his permanently bent fingers holding mine. I’m always taken back to that small little kitchen with its oversized table. They always wanted to make sure they had enough chairs for visitors.
My mom burst through the door, hurrying me because I needed to make it to soccer practice and she got out of work late. After a quick hug, and “I love yous” bounced around the room, we rushed home. It’s funny thinking back to a time when I would frequently call Granny and Papa’s “home” by accident. Quick moments like that rush by in an instant but I wish I had collected them all.
I see the love for my Papa scattered among the birds and in their sweet, short songs. I see the final twitches of his pain as he lay on his bed in his last days in the call of those doves. His face was contorted into something I’d never seen, and his pain had taken him completely out of consciousness. I held my breath at every mumble he whispered out, hoping that he might say something. One last “I love you” or one last “you’re my baby girl.” But I got so much more than that. I got the little trill of a Robin and the cheery little call of the Chickadee and and the shearing shriek of a Red Tailed Hawk and the persistent peck of a Red Bellied Woodpecker hammering in each little memory and each little bit of love.
