The song played from the overhead speaker.
“Ohhhh I know this one, but I can’t think of what it’s called. Shelton do you know?” Charlotte was thinking hard.
Shelton paused and affirmed what his sister had stated. He knew it too but couldn’t remember the name.
Almost simultaneously, “Shazam it!” And then the song faded and was gone.
I was walking alongside them when I stated a fact,
“I have Shazam for birds!”
Again simultaneously, they rolled their eyes and the older and darker of the unlikely and unbioligical twins, said
“We know mom. You remind us all the time and it’s not Shazam, it’s some other app, you just call it that.”
Shazam is an app that can hear a part of a song, identify it and let the listener know to whom and what they are listening to. The three Martins all have the app and use it with regularity to identify song titles and artists.
The Shazam for birds to which I was referring is an app that a couple of years ago a dear friend introduced me to. It was a hot summer afternoon, we were taking a popsicle break in the shade and the only sounds that could be heard were the birds.
The app has a real name I can never remember but it identifies birds based on their sounds. It highlights the bird as it sings. I was telling someone about it once and she said, “You have Shazam for birds!” I’ve called it that ever since.
There used to be a time when I couldn’t have cared less for birds, or their songs. I was apathetic towards the fowl of the earth, the class aves. Birds grossed me out. I didn’t love birds but like a lot of things in my life, times have changed for me. I see something in them I didn’t before.
I think that my new found bird-brained intel started long about three years ago when the very atmosphere of my life began to dramatically shift.
I was looking out the window and I saw a bird, the only bird I could identify. A “Robin Red Breast” the only bird possessing the power of time travel and nostalgia. Not really, they just made me feel that way.
I was about nine, it had been a tumultuous time. I was learning to navigate life with corrected vision. Swimming was my favorite pastime, I loved reading and writing stories. Kellie was my constant companion. My Mama’s sister had died the previous July and as to be expected Mama wasn’t okay, none of us were really I suppose. I had no way of knowing it then but things would be okay, never the same, but okay.
When Mama wasn’t at home she was working and while she worked Kellie and I stayed with our grandmother, Mam-Maw.
Mam-Maw loved birds and she loved nicknames.
If you were born Debbie you’d be dubbed “Bean”, born Brian you would earn the moniker “Tapsly” shortened to “Taps”, born Amy you’d be given the name, “Mamie.” A term of endearment that to this day I still carry and only the closest call me.
One warm spring day, much like this one, Mamie sat next to her Mam-maw, they swung in a porch swing. That’s what they did, Mamie and Mam-Maw they swung and they were mostly quiet. Perhaps Mam-maw was doing her own kind of brain dump as she processed in quiet the loss of her child and husband and who knows what else. Maybe the Alzheimer’s was taking its early hold.
Suddenly a Robin came into view. She sang and she flittered about, she tugged a fat juicy earthworm from the ground and she sang. Mam-Maw pointed a slightly crooked finger and whispered,
“Mame, that there is a Robin Red Breast and whenever I see one I think of you because they are like you. Unusual and unique.” Unusual had only three syllables when she said it rather than the standard four.
I studied the Robin and I committed her to memory, when I would see one I would be reminded of what Mam-Maw had said that day long about 1988.
She said I was unusual and unique. I held onto her declaration as I’ve navigated life, remembered her observations of me and the association she made with a bird.
I didn’t know it then and wouldn’t for quite some time, that the American Robin, like most everyone else in her world, had a nickname and that’s what she had taught me, and they are unique but that is contingent on the season they are in.
They are in actuality one of the most common birds in America.
They are typically the first birds of spring, so in that season they are rare until their other bird counterparts begin to make their appearances.
Robins flitter about on the ground, they are dumpy little fellas and gals, they are hearty eaters, kind of particular like, eating worms in the morning and fruits in afternoons and in the fall. They’ve got a bad habit of getting intoxicated from Honeysuckle berries in the spring.
The ladies like to nap.
I reviewed these bird-brained characteristics and I chuckled…forty plus years ago my Mam-maw looked into the future and she saw an accurate representation of her granddaughter as a forty plus year old woman.
This afternoon I took to the back porch for a little Vitamin D and thinking time.
My own bird-brain has been filled to capacity and I needed to empty it out.
I’ve learned a few techniques to assist with the brain dump. I’ve been told it is called “self care” and “processing.”
Call it whatever you like. But for me it is taking time to be quiet, reduced screen time, throwing Dottie her ball and wrestling it back when she brings it to me. It is thinking and talking to Jesus, making myself sit with the hurt and the questions and circling back to there are some things I just can’t understand. It’s having a snack and allowing myself just to be still so that I can know Who is in charge and trust He will make right all the broken things, especially my crushed to bits heart.
About the time my brain was settling down I felt the cool steady breeze, heard the wind chimes ring below me and the birds chirping above me. The truth is they had probably been doing it the whole time I was outside, but my mind was so noisy I couldn’t discern the sounds of peace or feel the breath of Heaven.
I smiled and wondered what bird friends I was hearing.
Maybe the Tufted Titmouse or the Cardinal that’s been making frequent appearances and tweeting the same phrase over and over. He sounds as if he is telling me “Birdie, Birdie, pretty pretty Birdie” he kind of gets on my nerves with his boastfulness but he is correct, he is pretty.
I grabbed my phone, opened my app and let it do its thing, and there I was, or the bird representation of me, the Bird of the Day, along with quite an ensemble this fine sunny spring afternoon. There was a new friend, Yellow-rumped Warbler. “At least I’m not him” I thought.
The Robin signifies change and better days are on the horizon, she is resilient and pudgy and when she is in community with her other bird friends she is indeed unique and at her red breast, I mean her best. She will be okay and she will persevere and maybe in that she is indeed unique and unusual.
