I was at my home desk in my bedroom last Monday, when my son walked in and said: “Dad, uh, I think you’re going to want to see something in the living room.” I gave him the do-I-really? look, because usually when he wants me to see something, it’s something he’s watching on television that I hardly ever want to see. But he persisted—and what he showed me was remarkable.
It turned out that we had a visitor: a beautiful yellow-breasted bird who flapped around our apartment before settling on our couch.
It was a confusing, exciting, wondrous moment. Where did the bird come from? A few of the living room windows were open a tiny bit, but their openings were covered by screens. Plus, the bird really didn’t seem like it was from the wild (or even the wilds of the Upper East). A Facebook friend suggested, smartly, that it might be a neighbor’s pet; which meant that the bird somehow came in from the hallway when our front door was open.
The next question was what to do with our new friend. We already have a dog that we don’t give as much attention to as we would like, and my wife was not keen on adding a new pet to the family. I was thinking less practically. To me, this bird’s arrival was a portent and a challenge, something I’d read about in a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. As another Facebook friend put it to me: “If a beautiful bird like that magically shows up in your home, I believe it’s meant to be yours! It’s a gift!” I related but relented.
We put the bird in a shoebox, which we aerated with holes, and gave it to our super for a few hours in case a neighbor came to claim it. If not, I was planning to bring the bird to the Avian Hospital on the Upper West Side, which I’ve learned from a friend often plays matchmaker between stray birds and would-be bird owners.
But when it came time to take our guest to the bird hospital, my super said: “Oh, you’ll be really happy, I took the bird to the park and set it free.” Ugh. We had somehow miscommunicated. I wasn’t happy at all. Given that it probably was a pet bird, I couldn’t imagine it surviving too long out there by itself. But who knows?
Our days are so full of routines and anxieties—of keeping the machinery of family life churning forward—that I still have a sinking feeling, not only of loss, but of a lost chance, like we were offered a part in a fairytale and didn’t have the wisdom to accept it.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. You can reach him at [email protected].
