Singing You Home This Evening...

by Birdie Jaworski

I will read from my Avon Lady memoir tonight at Tome on the Range!

I live with two birds. Ramses the African Grey is a free-range parrot. He thinks he's a dog. He follows my dog Sissy around the house, perches on one leg at the edge of her dog bed, grooms her long white hair, shares kibble and milk bones under the kitchen table. My other bird is a perky sun conure named Sunny. She's a free range parrot, too, but follows my young boys through the house on some kind of Bird Planet intelligence mission, takes notes under lifted wing, looks like she sends secret messages home.

I don't clip my birds' wings. I rescued both of them, gave them good food and water, large cages to call their own, let their feathers molt and grow, spread and lift. They spend most afternoons singing back and forth, chewing, watching  crows steal trash from the neighbor's open bin. A good life for a bird. They don't try to fly away. My home is the only real life they know.

One afternoon I took a shower and put on my good pink dress. I sang sea shanties in the bathroom, applied mascara and dark cherry lipstick to match my chipped nail polish. I was making a kissy face at the mirror when it happened. My young son, Marty, screamed bloody murder, howled in pain and fright. I dropped my lipstick to the floor, kicked off my heels, ran barefoot outside in a pink tornado whirl of satin, saw Marty clutching his heart, staring at the sky, the front door open, only one grey parrot inside.

"Sunny! Sunny!" I grabbed my heart too, scanned the sky, didn't stop to ask what happened, started screaming for my spy bird at the top of my lungs. I stuck to that spot, kept calling, yelling, scanning, saw her resting at the top of a tall pine across the street. She looked tiny, a smudge of yellow against the blue heat of the sky, beak pointed west. She flitted down, soared toward the sky again, landed on another tree even further away. She's gone, I thought. She's heard the rumble feather call of the wild. She's gone. I turned around, took Marty in my arms, both of us crying, my mascara running from my cheeks to Marty's head.

"It's okay. It's okay. It's okay." I kept whispering nothing words over and over, wanted to calm Marty, to calm myself. "Hey, let's sing our birdie bedtime song, ok? Can you sing it with me? Maybe Sunny will hear it and come back. Ok, sweetie? Let's sing."

So Marty and I stood, arm in arm, staring at the sky, at the last tree where Sunny perched, stared and sang our hearts out in the one song we sang every night together, the Good Night song I learned many years ago while watching Lawrence Welk with my Gramma.

Good night, good night
And pleasant dreams to you
Here's a wish and a prayer
That every dream comes true

And now, till we meet again ...
Adios, au revoir, auf weidersehen ... Good night!

We sang that song a hundred times, kept standing and staring, singing until my voice grew hoarse, until the sun began to fall into the mountains, singing to the tree, to all the birds of the world. Marty took a deep breath and broke the circle.

"She's not going to come back. Sunny's gone forever." His body shook in grief, and I knew he was right, knew our bird friend would never return. But I took his hand again and held it tight.

"No way, man, no way. She's coming back. We have to believe it. She belongs to our flock, just like Ramses and Sissy, ok? Just like me. Just like your brother. Your dad. We're her family. And she'll come back. We have to sing her back to her bed. Let's sing it again. Just one more time, okay?"

That last time my voice nearly gave up, cracked with all kinds of pain, but I kept singing, soft and low, imagined champagne bubbles floating behind us, me in my pink tutu, my boy all wistful brown-eyed wonder like some Little Rascal, and as we completed the final "good night" we heard a familiar sound. Sunny. Perched near us, perched on top of the porch. She climbed to the edge, waited for me to walk to her, to stick out my finger so she could step up, and Marty and I carried her, sang her inside the house, to her cage where she snuggled next to her yellow blanket.

This Saturday night, let me sing you home. I will be telling stories of my life, of Las Vegas, at Tome on the Range. I will read from my Pushcart Prize-nominated memoir, "Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady!" as well as from a new book, "Sleep is for the Weak." And I will read an original story I wrote about Las Vegas, about the places and people that make my heart soar as high as Sunny's jailbreak joyride. Many of you are named in my story, and in my heart. I love Las Vegas. Please join me in celebrating the love.

An Evening with Birdie Jaworski at Tome on the Range, Saturday, September 13, 6 p.m.