The Prettybirds @ Home

Across the way, one flight down next to an airconditioning unit, a pigeon has made a nest. She has sat for several days now. She is so still I didn't notice her at first. Then a larger pigeon came close to my window observing her from the fire escape railing. I called to him, "Hi, Mr. Prettybird! Coo, coo, coo." Unafraid, he turned to examine me which he has done every time we meet. I named the family, The Prettybirds. Then, I added Lester and Lena. There is one egg in the nest as far as I can tell. I'm giving it the name Abe and Abbie if it turns out to be a double yoker.  Why Abe? Perhaps it is because on Memorial Day, WQXR played a theme used by Ken Burns in his Civil War documentary. Oh how it haunts me! Naming has been a longtime hobby. I love the way Native Americans name themselves: Runs Fast as the Wind or Heals Like a Willow. Action names. And how descriptive the ancient Chinese were: August Heaven. Can't you smell the perfume of late summer flowers and hayricks? An ancestor of mine had several children of which my favorite was, "Garden Valley." An early memory is hearing a missionary reading a Bible story in which Adam's job was naming the animals in the Garden. I wanted that job! Very few friends have gone Unrenamed. There is something "chosen" about giving a friend a pet name. At the latest hourly quick-check, Abe and or Abbie have not arrived. I wait patiently to see the little eyes and for the day he will become Flies Like a Messenger or she will become Sings with the Sparrows.

...may the company of beasts large and small be yours...

Since You Asked

My grandson asked, "If you were to pick a day in history you remember well, which would it be?" I thought over my choices: the Cuban Crisis; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the inauguration of the first Catholic president. His assassination was certainly a staggering event as I was on the Judah streetcar in San Francisco on the way to a pre-natal visit when I heard the news. On a brighter side, the first words uttered on the moon thrilled me. However, none of these compared to one day in May. 
   My father had been assigned earlier in the year of 1945 to Jerusalem. Our family was staying temporarily at the American School of Oriental Research, overlooking the Mount of Olives. Dr. Nelson Glueck, an archaeologist and friend, came to the door one day and whispered to my mother, "The war is over." And then he left. She turned to me, her eyes wide, "The war is over!!" I knew what that meant as for the two years previous my dad had been assigned by the U.S. State Dept. to Angra do Heroismo, a city in the Azores where the Army and Navy soldiers made our house their, "Home away from home." I had overheard many a conversation about the "European Theater," the losses of people we had known and I had once slipped onto a plane full of wounded soldiers on their way back to the States. The horrors of war were branded in my mind and remain vivid all these decades later. Being only six, I didn't register the date or time but I remember clearly the sudden optimism, the feeling that now things would be "all better." I remember it was the month of May because that was my mother's birthday month and somehow the celebration became mixed with the personal joy we had. My mother often remarked that Rabbi Glueck's reaction to the news was vastly different from people dancing and shouting in the streets but I felt the same way--
stunned.  There have been momentous days in my life but none have compared to that very quiet announcement by a man who would years later give the benediction at the swearing in ceremony of President John F. Kennedy.

...may the blessings of good memories 

and learned lessons be yours...

Sketch by Halit