Bye, Bye Birdie!
October 12, 2009 at 12:55 pm Leave a comment
For my grandmother’s 85th birthday, my sister and I bought her a little bird. We’d first considered a fish, but those things never live too long. Not the right sentiment.
She teared up as we handed it to her in its white cage. My late grandfather used to love birds and they kept some in their old house in Hadath. She loved the bird even more for this reason.
It was a peculiar little thing with dark brown feathers and a yellow underbelly. I can’t pronounce the type, but it looks like a mini, mini eagle. For a while it remained nameless. It was just “the bird”, but one day while my grandmother was describing its sound as “Tsee-Tsee” a light bulb went off. And so, that became its name.
A few days ago, the little thing chirped its last. My heart went to my granny who’d enjoyed watching it and listening to it jump in its cage. (I am illustrating a short story about caged birds, inspired by this) Sometimes the chirping would start at 3am, just as my granny was waking up and I was going to bed.
I had the strangest dream a few days ago that a yellow canary flew onto our balcony just as I was opening Tsee-Tsee’s cage. It jumped towards me and let me grab it to put it into the cage. It was singing all along, accepting its fate. Guess that’s a sign to get another bird to fill the empty cage. RIP Tsee-Tsee.
Entry filed under: Floating. Tags: bird, chirping, grandmother.
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed