family of foxes

Charlie, what do you think? You outlasted frostbite and followed every beast. Can you sing? Can you love? Because if you can’t by now it don’t look good for us.

I had thought my mulberries would go to waste this fall, but a family of foxes moved in. The mom watches me and only walks away when she thinks she’s communicated what she needs me to understand. Her three pups tussle and chase each other not minding me watching on at all.

When you live alone up here, like I do, a family of foxes coming to live with you is as good as any company can be and you’re grateful.

The great rhinoceros died alone, and maybe that’s as good as dying gets, bring it all back and be kind, said the sentimental beast.

I had thought my humanity would go to waste this fall, but I have a friend who stops by on his way to the coast. We sit out back in the rocking chairs, we drink whiskey and talk.

When you live alone up here, like I do, a friend who stops by to see if you need help and sits with you in the rocking chair watching life go by, is as good as any company can be and you’re grateful.

While my friend and I talked, I felt us being watched. I turned, “look,” I whispered to my friend, “there’s momma fox watching us from the fence.” She let him take a picture and till stood there looking on. Momma fox looks at me as she were trying to tell me something. Is she trying to remind me I haven’t been to the underworld in some time? Is she saying I need to go to the underworld because I need to be told something? Her silence is heavy. So much so that I know whenever she’s watching me.

When you live alone up here, like I do, to have a family of foxes eating your mulberries feels so big and special, and you are reminded that your heart still beats and you haven’t lost your sense of wonder about things in this world. That you sing. That you love even if no one’s here, and that we may still have a chance at this life thing. So I watch on, and they let me. Today, the dad taught the pups how to hunt a squirrel and cleanly eat its meat. They left the carcass for me to clean up. My mother asked, “do you think they will live there forever?”

I don’t think so. The mulberries will soon be gone and there will be nothing left for them to eat so they’ll have to move on, but I’ll always remember when I housed a family of foxes.

Charlie, what do you think? You outlasted frostbite and followed every beast. Bring it all back and be kind and tell the story how the foxes ate the carraway seeds.

*lyrics from Max Garcia Conover “Week 73: The End of the Fables”

cavity nesters

Maybe there’s a God above
But, all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

This nesting season, the Western Bluebird nesting boxes were taken over by
European Starlings. It wasn’t my intention to harbor this aggressively invasive
species, but once it happened, what was I to do? Steal the eggs? Kill the
fledglings? Poison the parents?

Last nesting season, exactly one year ago,  my heart was taken over by a secretive, shady motherfucker. It wasn’t my intention to harbor this egotistical liar, but once
it happened, what was I to do? Cut my bleeding heart out? His? Call the passion
police?

So I did the next best thing, I disappeared without a trace, because all
I’ve learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.

The baby starlings will soon fledge. I will clean the nesting box out and
hope for Western Bluebirds someday. 

 

playing at love

In a matter of seconds, I became your wife and gave us a life together.

When I called the hotel housekeeping to see if they had recovered your shirt I accidentally left in the closet, to be your wife seemed much easier than the actual truth. The Housekeeping manager didn’t need to know we are not married, or even together. It seemed superfluous to tell her I hung your button-down shirt in the closet because it was too wrinkled, and you had forbade me from ironing it, and we had planned to be there three nights, not just one, but there had been a thunderstorm, which shut the pool down. It wasn’t for her to know that without the promise of the pool, we didn’t want to be there anymore. We had thought of jumping into the Sacramento River we could see from our room, but that was only in jest, the thunder rolled for hours until it brought in the down pour. I took your hand and we walked out into the rain. I got an Uber and it took us to a nearby dive and we got drunk. The Housekeeping manager didn’t need to know that I have never offered to iron a man’s shirt before, and had you let me do it, I would have not hung it up in the closet and forgotten it, because you would have worn it. The Housekeeping manager didn’t need to know we drank so much, we fell asleep until I Ubered home at three and I let you sleep so the shirt I hung in the closet was the last of your concerns, because I was. You wanted to know if I’d gotten home okay. The Housekeeping manager didn’t need to know that even though you’re not my husband, you give me everything I ask for and want. She also didn’t need to know that because we live a thousand miles apart and have different lives, we can safely play at love with no possibility of breaking each other’s hearts.

So when she answered, “Sheraton Housekeeping.”

I said, “This is Rebeca Jones and my husband and I stayed in room 324 on Wednesday and we left his shirt in the closet. Might you have found it?”

“Yes, Mrs. Jones, we have it. I will leave it for you at the front desk.”

The Housekeeping manager didn’t need to know that you were already long gone, but I was missing you, and your shirt would have to do.

a good fantasy

My lover equates me with the city so I wanted him to see my mountain town for himself. He drove me to the convenient store and the post office to get my mail. The post office doesn’t come here so we’re entitled to a free mail box at the post office off Highway 299. When we pulled up he said, “damn, this is country, girl.”

It is country, and I love my little town of drifters, where population 1,701 seems like pure myth, like some families had forgotten their dead died, because there ain’t but a handful of houses here. And there’s that weird, pretty little elongated cabin along the highway, where the young man and his dog spend their evenings and weekends gardening and burning. While across the street in front of the post office, men occasionally stand holding their thumbs up. This highway is the only way to get to the coast from Redding. Most of the men don’t bother trying to hitch a ride, they just walk the whole stretch of 250 miles, stopping to sleep by the side of the road when night falls or fatigue takes over. On this particular occasion there is a young man with long brown hair, his backpack on the asphalt and he’s holding a sign barely-readable that says, “Redwood Forest.” I wondered what was so urgent in the redwood forest that he needed to get there.

I tell my lover he’s like my genie, with him, I wish, and I get. In a drunken moment I had invited him to come to my house and he hadn’t forgotten, he came. We sat in the backyard in rocking chairs and drank. He told me about trees, I told him about birds. We talked about the fire and how no one ever comes to visit.

When we drove by the lake I said, “I wish we could spend a weekend together someday so we could hang out at the lake.” And I remembered my conversation with the Hurricane: “all I have are my fantasies” and we had laughed because that’s all there is to have in the city or in the country, and with men, that’s really all you can ever hope for, a good fantasy.

fire of another kind

I pull over and my hands are shaking. I didn’t realize it had rattled me that much to accidentally be driving behind the rodeo cowboy for a few miles. I text my therapist. She understands the seriousness of it and says, “are you okay? You want to talk?” I tell her I’m okay, and will wait until we meet next. But seeing him has set me back. When I think of him, again, I can’t breathe. I’m going to drown or I’m missing air, but what I’ m missing is him. Then the tears come. It’s hard to know which part hurts most in this scenario. That I got duped so easy or that my infallible instinct failed me so horribly and had actually thought myself loved back. But I’ll get there. Fast forward a few nesting seasons and I won’t even remember his name but I’ll remember every bird’s.

Living here, in a fire-ravaged landscape, constantly reminds me things do rise from the ashes no matter how severe the fire burned. I’m about to mark my two year anniversary living at the house and I have loved watching the property’s black scars become flowers for the birds. I currently have a couple dozen quail nesting on the property. Two Steller’s Jays are nesting in the neighbor’s oak, but come feed at my yard. There are a few juvenile Black-headed grosbeaks, which are the cutest, and I never knew that Black-headed grosbeaks sang so loud and beautiful. I open up the windows and let their song come in the house before it’s gone again until next nesting season, when my fire-ravaged scars will have become flowers for the birds.

Take me as I am

He first came here for the river and the salmon. He keeps coming back for me. He says he’s never met anyone who likes birds so much. He also says he likes me drunk because my walls come down and I sweet talk. He likes to take care of me and I let him. And the second time we met, we spent three days together. We kissed and kissed and kissed, and I understood we were both affection-starved and healing little by little with every kiss.

While he slept and I stared at myself in the hallway mirror, for the first time in my life, I understood what it was like to have an adult relationship with someone. I once told the rodeo cowboy that a secret lover had texted that he was coming to get me. The rodeo cowboy wondered what I was going to do. I laughed, “what men want with me and what they have the actual balls to do with me, are two entirely different things, darling.” That went for him, too. And that has been my absolute reality with all men, until now. My new friend said he’d come back and he did. He said he’d take me in, and he did. And he is absolutely not afraid of me and what I want, he gives me and more. It is sad to say that in my 47 years, “counting the tears of ten thousand men” with my feet always slipping, I have never had such an adult relationship. There’s always been the secrets, the complications, all odds stacked against them, their fear of me, their inferiority complexes. Is it any wonder they have broken me?

My new friend says he’s got me pegged, and perhaps he does, because when he said, “you only like me because I live 3,000 miles away, don’t you?” I couldn’t lie and I laughed, “If you lived here I would have never given you the time of day”

…because I’m that fucked up. But my new friend takes me as I am, and even loves me for it.

Heartbreak and Birds

Everyone has a bird story as memorable as their first heartbreak, and as such, they want to tell it to who might know about birds or heartbreaks. I happen to know about both. Truth is, no one wants to know about your heartbreak or your birds, that’s why I write this blog. For me. My heartbreak and my birds.

A lady told me how she has Eurasian Collard Doves nesting in her backyard and how mama dove has been guarding her nest day and night, rain or shine. But a couple days ago a gust of wind came and took the nest and her eggs away.

“I know they’re an invasive species and it’s nature, but I was so sad for her. She cared so much about her nest. But I know it’s nature.” The lady said.

She talked on and on about it as if she wanted me to tell her, “it’s okay, it’s nature therefore it doesn’t hurt. Mama dove didn’t care one bit. She’ll just start another nest and lay other eggs.” But I couldn’t because that would be as untrue as telling someone when their heart is broken, “It’s okay, it’s nature.”

“The mother birds very much hurt and mourn for their lost nests. And they can’t lay eggs again until next season. In this one case I was reading about, the mom stayed where the nest was for two days without moving.”

“I thought so,” she said walking away. “Well, thanks for that sad info.”

And perhaps I shouldn’t have bummed her out and lied, or gotten philosophical with her and explained birds don’t hurt the way we do. They don’t grieve the way we do. Pain and grief are closely associated with thinking. And humans do a lot of that, birds don’t. Birds just do.

So when someone came up and asked me, “what it is this bird in my backyard that sings so loud and pretty with an orange belly.”

I said, “American Robin. They have over 100 different songs.” I showed him a picture and he said, “Yes! It’s that one. Thanks.”

It’s Nature and everyday is a struggle, but birds will always sing. At least that’s what I’m trying to make sure of. Life would be unbearable without birdsong.

You can’t have Elvis

I will never understand men and their seasons. Unlike a bird, who diligently sticks to the clock of nature, men’s clock is dictated by pure selfishness. I wish I could say it was dictated purely by the need to want to fuck, damn, wouldn’t that be grand, then we’d all be on the same page, but it’s not. They have needs of every kind, and they don’t give anything in return. So when my secret lover texted last night, I didn’t ask where he’d been. Where was he when I needed him? To them, Sirens already have everything they need.

When I told him I was going to sleep, I tried, but tossed and turned in pain for a good while. I grew so frustrated, then I heard someone say, to me, “what is wrong with you? You’re sitting here suffering as if you had to! Use your medicine to heal yourself. ” I thought, “oh, yeah! Que pendeja. I can absolutely heal myself. Even the most clever witch forgets she can heal herself. So I reached over to my quartz crystal, the one my mother programmed for me so I wouldn’t get Covid, and I held on to it like a crucifix during my last breaths. I immediately fell in the deepest sleep as if I lost consciousness. For hours I was lost to the world and all that I kept seeing were the words, Grass Valley. When I eventually woke up, I was soaked in sweat and panting, but I was healed. I could feel it immediately. I thanked myself, my crystal and my mother. And I surmised that Grass Valley was were the rodeo cowboy had moved to and someone wanted me to know.

In some way my secret lover having texted had been magical and maybe had sent me in the weird trip, and had reinforced the bond we have had all our lives and will continue to have forever if I can forgo his selfishness. He said, “I’ve been listening to this guy. Everyone trips out on him. Let me know what you think.” When I saw what he sent, I thought I was hallucinating. I wrote back, “Shut the fuck up! This has been on repeat for me for days! After all these decades we still have the same taste in obscure music.”

“Roy Orbison meets Elvis.” He said.

“Yes!” I said thinking how I haven’t been able to listen to Elvis since I left the rodeo cowboy. So there and then, I made it clear:

“You had all of me, body, soul and spirit, but you can’t have Elvis!”

What stage of grief is Birdsong?

My therapist says I’m going through all the stages of grieving. Honestly, I don’t know what the stages are, I just deal with things as they come. When I start to cry without warning, I go hide, when I suddenly get angry, I do the same. When I feel haunted, too. Before spring, I felt like I was drowning, so I slept. “You no longer have someone who was very close to you,” she reminded me, “It’s okay to feel like this. I know how much you cared for him.”

To someone as sensitive to birds as I am, the river going from silence to the song of a dozen Yellow-rumped warblers from one day to the other, means something. It pulls you out of the dark hole you’ve been in even if that seems implausible.

What stage of grief is birdsong?

Is birdsong the stage, which allows you to finally, not just accept, but let go completely, and only think of him with mild regret and a parade of fuck words for how shitty a person he was to you? Because when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night in that roadside motel I found myself in, I saw my naked reflection in the mirror and caught myself by surprise. The sleeping stranger in the bed was absolutely right, I am beautiful and who could be so lucky to spend even one night with me during these mating times, with males, all their bravado and their plumage.