A parakeet. Oh yes we did.

About a week ago, we caved. Nelson had been begging for a parakeet for over a year. Then came the fateful night at a new (former) friend’s house when the kids ran off to play.

Nobody move.

It was a new home for them, for all of us. I let my guard down and didn’t ask the right questions. I assumed all was well. The dad was a cop after all. He was the dude I would call if things went wrong.

Turns out in 4 hours, everything changed. When I wasn’t looking, it happened. They had a parakeet. And I never saw it coming.


It was daybreak the next day before Nelson said it was so: “Grace has a bird.” Come Friday, a mere 7 days after that fateful visit, we had Scoops.

Day 1: We reinforce all doors on the cage and I shove the cage once, hard, like a 10-pound cat might upon landing. It stays put. The bird ignores us.

Day 2: The bird climbs on everyone’s finger but mine. The children are in love with this bird. Nelson gets out his raptor glove and gets the bird on his hand. (At last, he is using his eagle stuff!) “Good boy, Chirps!” I say, feeling like the best mom around. Wait, I got his name wrong.

Day 3: I’m working in my home office next door to Scoop’s lair and I hear it for the first time: a chirp! I drop everything and bolt across the house (4 steps).

“Chirps, is that you?”

I am so proud. He says nothing.

Day 4: Time to get the cat thing over with. I can’t stand Scoops cooped up all day with the bedroom door closed except for the times I come running to find him saying nothing. So I open the bedroom door and wait. The cats arrive together.  “Chirps,” I say, “prepare.”

In five minutes, during which the cats purr, rub and paw at the cage, Scoops becomes more animated than I have seen him his whole life here (less than a week). He races across the perch away from the cats. And then back and butts his head against the cage wall where the two cats are biting the thin white bars with caution, in slow motion.

The cats’ whiskers are literally inside the cage. His beak is poking out of the cage trying to touch them. Scoops does the impossible next: He starts chirping! I see it leave his lips. I knew it was him all along. 

Next, he starts flapping his wings. Then back and forth along the perch. I watch in wonder. I’m not sure, but I think he is playing. The cats are in full support of this fun (one-time) game.

Then Scoops starts flying around his cage. Feathers are floating in the air (the tiniest white and green ones you ever saw, I pause a moment to admire). I can’t tell if the game is over or escalating.

“Are you ok, bird?” I holler over the ruckus. The cats are pouring a nice white wine to go with their meal.

The bird flies to the front of his cage and hangs there looking at me. I don’t think this looks fun anymore.

Day 5: Scoops chirps the whole day. I think he is calling for the cats but secretly I hope it’s for me.

I ask Kendall, who has adeptly gotten the bird on his finger since Day 2, to help me bond with this bird. When I put my hand in the cage, he scuttles across his perch. I corner him. “All aboard!”

He sets one spiny foot on my finger and a shiver runs down my spine. I swallow a small yelp. Then, the second talon is on my finger. Victory! We are one! His name is Scoops! I remember now!

Then, he goes bananas and tries to shoot out the cage door that is blocked by my winter-fat arms.

I screech. I drop the cage door and trap him. I run across the room (2 steps) and screech one more time. Kendall talks me down as he puts Scoops on his finger with no effort.

Day 6: Kids, the bird is all yours. I’ll stick with the cats and the white wine.

Delivery man? Hide.

In honor of Mother's Day, we'd like to share one of our favorite traditions with our mom: hiding from the Watkins man.

Every Tuesday, the Watkins man pulled in with his old brown car. And every Tuesday, we had to decide if we would hide.

Mom loved the spices and balms, but we all bristled at the inconvenience of actually placing an order. Don't get us wrong. He was a friendly man but he persisted in long and involved sales visits even if we were standing there in our swimsuits, especially if.

When he pulled in, there was a throwdown over who would answer the door.

When my sister volunteered, she would try to be brisk with him, asking for the standard black pepper in a no-nonsense matter. But he didn’t care, he felt only that she was having a bad day and that, with some work, he could cheer her up.

I tried being extra jolly and ordered a slew of spices from him. But this didn’t send him on his way, as I thought it might, happy to go before I changed my mind. He saw this as only an invite to stay longer and offer preparation advice.

It got worse when our mother set out to “keep it short.” She was part Watkins man herself and the two of them would end up in a long play-by-play of the latest gossip.

So we all took to hiding from him, if, and only if, the pepper shaker was full.

One afternoon, we floated on flimsy air mattresses bought at the Ben Franklin in Interlochen. We were nearly asleep, while mom was doing the unthinkable: using the shallow plastic cupholder. When she wasn’t dumping Diet Coke into the pool, she was reading a book that soaked up and bloated with water.

This is when we heard the rumble of the old beater.

“Oh no, it’s Tuesday!” I said, floating in a perfect moon of sunshine, cutting between the shade trees Dad insisted on planting around the pool. I cried to think of leaving it.

“Let’s get out and hide!” Mom called out. But, with the Diet Coke and the book, she was ensnared.

“We’ll stay put,” I said and lay my head back against the plastic and shut my eyes. I was thin enough (then) and the plastic cheap enough, that I literally floated in the 6 inches of space between the water and the rim of the pool. I was nearly out of sight.

Mom wasn’t so lucky. She instead paddled one-handed to the side of the pool and huddled behind the tree between the house and the pool, clutching the railing with her wet book, her Coke can floating in the middle of the pool. We looked at her over our sunglasses. And the giggles started.

“Shhh! Here he comes!” Mom said. She was, in a real turnabout, mad at us. This only added to the hilarity of the situation.

“HELLO! Ladies?!!” the Watkins man's voice rang out in the garage, a few feet from where we floated, hysterical.

“Hold steady,” Kerry whispered.

But it was not to be. The laughter was too loud and the pressure too much.

We certainly can't remember what we ordered or who did the ordering, but we do remember how much fun those days were. When we were teenagers in the swimming pool, laughing and gossiping with mom and hiding from the Watkins man.

We miss those days. And, as if orchestrated from heaven, the day I wrote this, the Schwan's man came calling. And I was in my workout clothes, on the treadmill and looking, dare I say, nasty.

What should I do? What could I do?

Hide, of course. (Forgive me, Fred.)

As he knocked and waited, I sat huddled in my sweaty clothes and thought fondly of my mother who had taught me best.

Happy Mother's Day to our mom, who taught us when to wait things out and, just as importantly, how to laugh very, very quietly.