The Nature of Small Birds Read online

  Mom lifted her camera to her face and I held my diploma like one of Barker’s Beauties showing off a fabulous prize on The Price Is Right.

  But then Mr. Shepherd made a coughing sound in my direction, and I remembered that I was supposed to move off the stage so I wouldn’t hold everything up.

  In the next five minutes all of us high school seniors would move the black-and-yellow tassels from one side of our hats to the other and we would be announced as the graduating class of 1988. The band played “Pomp and Circumstance” again, and it was over.

  As I walked back down the aisle, arms linked with Nick Minnaar, I suddenly felt way too young to be almost on my own.

  My plan was to go out with my friends after graduation. Pizza Hut and mini-golf and then a bonfire at Alissa Durrow’s house. It was supposed to be one last party with everybody together.

  But my family had something else in mind.

  “You’re only going to miss the pizza,” Mom said. “You can meet up with everybody for golf.”

  “It’s mini-golf,” I said, pouting in the back of her station wagon, my bundled-up gown on the seat between Mindy and me.

  “Grammy’s been cooking all day.” She looked back at me. “You can go as soon as we’re done eating.”

  “Linda, if she wants to be with her friends, I think we should let her,” Dad said, inching forward in the line of cars waiting to leave the school parking lot. “She’s an adult now.”

  “But your mother . . .”

  “My mother should have asked before making plans for everyone,” he said, interrupting her. He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “If you really want, we can drop you off at Pizza Hut.”

  “Why do you get to make that decision?” Mom threw her hands up.

  “I’m not,” Dad said. “We’re letting Sonny make it.”

  “Do you know who your mother will blame if she’s not there?” Mom pointed at herself. “Me, Bruce. I’m always the one she blames.”

  “Come on, that’s not true.”

  I glanced at Mindy. She had her eyes closed as she breathed in and out slowly.

  “I’ll go to Grammy’s,” I said. “Just stop fighting.”

  Dad glanced at me again. I looked away.

  “We aren’t fighting,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’re just disagreeing.”

  “Well, could you please disagree without yelling? You’re stressing me out.”

  I picked up the graduation program, flipping through it and feeling sufficiently sorry for myself.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Mom said, half turning in her seat to look at me. She reached back for my hand, the way she did when I was little.

  I ignore her and pretended to read the list of my classmates.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mindy lift her hand to Mom’s so as to not leave her hanging.

  It was no fair, making me feel guilty right after my high school graduation.

  Not only did I miss out on pizza, I was so late for mini-golf that all my friends were on the seventeenth hole by the time I got there. It was enough to make me want to cry my eyes out.

  I didn’t, of course. Instead, I faked excitement when Amelia got a hole-in-one on the last green and went with her to get her free fountain drink that she’d won.

  “Mike asked where you were,” she said, waiting for the kid behind the counter to get her pop.

  “He did?” I asked. “That’s weird.”

  “He asked, like, a hundred times.” She rolled her eyes. “It was annoying. And cute.”

  “Annoying and cute,” I said. “The perfect words for Mike.”

  “Uh, I need to tell you something.” She looked over my shoulder. “He’s coming. But you have something in your teeth.”

  I panicked and tried to feel for it with my tongue. “Did I get it?”

  “It’s right there. Yeah.” She cringed. “Almost.”

  “Is it gone?”

  “Just stick your fingernail in there.” She pointed at her own mouth. “Okay. Okay! You got it.”

  And just in time.

  “Hey, where were you?” Mike asked, leaning into me and nudging me with his shoulder.

  “At my grandma’s,” I said.

  “Oh. Cool.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Did you drive here?”

  I shook my head. “My dad dropped me off.”

  “I could give you a ride to the bonfire.” He lifted his eyebrows.

  “Well, I was going to ride over with Amelia . . .”

  “Nope. Sorry. I just remembered,” Amelia said, grabbing her Coke from the counter and jabbing a straw through the lid. “I’ve got the Jennies and one of the Kellies already riding with me. I won’t have space.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “No. I won’t.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Ride with Mike.”

  And, with that, she walked away, leaving me and Mike alone with the kid behind the counter. He looked between us, arms straight on either side of him.

  “Ready?” Mike asked, pulling the keys out of his pocket.

  “I guess so.”

  It was a fifteen-minute drive to Alissa’s house and, about halfway there, Mike reached over and held my hand.

  CHAPTER

  Thirteen

  Bruce, 2013

  It’s a lazy Saturday morning. The kind where you move slower, take smaller sips of coffee, and by eleven o’clock wonder where the day went. It’s the kind of morning I get very little done and don’t feel the least bit sorry about it.

  I’m stepping into the house from the garage, feeling good about at least raking up a pile of leaves and filling all the bird feeders, when I hear music. After making quick work of washing my hands and grabbing a cup of coffee, I head to the living room to see who’s playing the piano.

  Linda and Mindy share the bench. Linda’s got the middle and bottom notes and Mindy’s playing the top melody with her right hand. They both nod their heads along with the rhythm, laughing whenever they hit a wrong note.

  Even when they mess up, they don’t get derailed. They just keep right on playing.

  When it’s over, Linda wraps her arms around Mindy and kisses her cheek.

  Such joy, I almost can’t take it.

  “Not too shabby,” Linda says. “Gosh, we haven’t played that one in, what, thirty years?”

  “You’re making me feel old, Mom,” Mindy says.

  They don’t know I’m standing here, watching them. That’s fine by me.

  “Let’s do it again,” Mindy says, setting her fingers on the keys.

  I pull the phone out of my pants pocket and snap a picture just as Linda turns to beam at our girl.

  After lunch Mindy and I take off for a hike on the trail nearby. This afternoon the sun shines just bright enough. The air’s crisp, but not biting. The sun’s bright, but not blinding. And the busiest crowds in the woods are of the feathered variety.

  We take an easy pace, neither of us having anywhere to go or anything pressing we’ve got to do. Every once in a while we stop to identify a bird call or to wonder over some sort of animal track.

  Of my three, Mindy’s the only one who ever really enjoyed hiking. Sonny was more inclined toward the water and Holly, well, Holly enjoyed nature only in doses she got while walking around a city. The bigger the better.

  I won’t be surprised if she moves away, swapping small-town comfort for busy streets and tall buildings. Holly likes to go a hundred miles an hour, which is hard when Bear Run has a speed limit of thirty-five at the fastest.

  Mindy, though, always loved being surrounded by trees with a trail ahead of her and lots of time to explore.

  We’ve hiked this one so many times over the years that we don’t have to think too hard about which way to go or when there’s going to be a turn in the path. Still, somehow, it never gets boring.

  “You know, I used to bring you out here when you were little,” I say. “Just the two of us.”

  “I remember,” Mindy answers.<
br />
  “If you were having a rough day, I’d get you out of the house and we’d take a little walk.” I breathe in the fresh smells of the woods. “Even in the winter. I’d just bundle you up so you wouldn’t get too cold.”

  “It’s settling out here,” she says. “There’s something special about it.”

  A squirrel scampers up the trunk of a spruce, stopping on a branch just above our heads, his tail twitching. He chatters at us so we know of his great displeasure.

  “It’s all right, fella,” I say. “We’ll be outta your hair soon.”

  As we go, we hear the laugh of a nuthatch, the cheep-cheep of a chickadee, a couple of screeching starlings. The leaves clap against each other in the breeze and the ancient tree branches creak as they sway.

  I almost say something about how all of creation calls out songs to the Creator, but from the way Mindy has her head tilted back, smile on her face, I can tell she’s got thoughts of her own about this good place, and I don’t want to interrupt them with my own.

  We reach a fork in the trail and stop.

  “Which way?” I ask.

  “You pick,” she says.

  I nod to the path on the left, knowing from years of hiking how it has a few more turns in the trail and roots and rocks to hazard. It is, without a doubt, the one less traveled of the two.

  The trail’s tough, but the view it supplies over the apple orchard—especially with its changing leaves this time of year—is well worth every effort.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she says.

  “Sure thing,” I say, holding a branch out of her way.

  “What made you and Mom decide to adopt me?” She adjusts the strap of her pack on her shoulder. “I know you guys wanted a baby boy, so I must have been a little outside the plan.”

  “Who told you we wanted a baby boy?”

  “Sonny.” She rolled her eyes. “It was when we were kids. She was mad at me about something and told me.”

  “She didn’t always fight fair, huh?” I step over a root.

  Mindy shrugs and smiles. “I got my digs in too now and then.”

  We walk in silence for a minute or so while I let the memories loose in my mind. That day, the first day we ever heard about Mindy, is a vivid one. I can remember the crunch of the gravel driveway under the wheels of Sonny’s bicycle and the way Linda’s eyes glistened with tears when she told me about the little girl from Vietnam. The mug of coffee warmed my cupped hands as we sat at the table to hash it all out.

  Strongest of all is the memory of how scared I was at the idea of adopting Minh. It had more to do with my insecurities than anything, even if I couldn’t admit it back then.

  “I know we haven’t talked about this much.” She clears her throat. “And I’m sorry if you feel blindsided. We can just drop it if you want.”

  “I don’t mind talking about it.” I stop in the middle of the trail so I can face her. “Mindy, I’m not sure if you know this about me or not, but I was a bit of a hippie.”

  She laughs and nods. “Everybody knows that, Dad.”

  “They do?”

  “Have you seen the pictures of you from the sixties?”

  “Fair enough.” I start walking again. “Your mom and I spent a lot of our early twenties protesting the war. We even marched in Washington, if you can believe it.”

  “I bet Grammy loved that,” she says.

  “Oh no. She didn’t.” I chuckle. “My dad didn’t like it much himself. But I think he understood my reasons for doing it.”

  “Which were?”

  “Well, it’s complicated. On one hand, I wanted our boys home.” I stop again and take in a good breath. “Every day we’d hear about the death count of American GIs on the news and it drove me nuts to think they all could’ve been spared.”

  “Especially Uncle Dale?” she asks.

  “Yep.” I blow out a stream of breath that turns to steam in front of me. “More than that, though, were the kids over there who were getting caught in the crossfire.”

  I shove my hand into my pocket, pulling out my hanky and rubbing under my nose.

  “At the time we were getting lots of pictures from the war,” I go on. “On the news, in the papers, magazines. Some of those images were impossible to shake.”

  One picture in particular is still as clear in my mind’s eye as it was the day I saw it for the first time. A man holds the body of a very small boy after a firefight between US troops and Vietcong guerillas. There was no story written up about the lives of the man and child, no clue as to which side they were on in the war. It little mattered.

  It was a glimpse into tragedy, and it woke up something inside me that I couldn’t ignore.

  “I guess I protested out of some idealistic notion that I could help make the world a better and safer place,” I say. “Your mom and I marched for the kids over in Vietnam.”

  I nod toward the trail so she knows I’m ready to walk again.

  “Well, eventually the fire cooled and we gave up hope of making any kind of difference,” I go on. “We settled down and had Sonny and sort of forgot about why we protested.”

  “But then you got the phone call.”

  “Yup.” I blink against a sting of tears. “It was scary, I have to admit. But once we made the decision, there was no turning back.”

  We round a bend that leads to a clearing. There’s a small lake here with a dock that was built years ago as part of a boy’s Eagle Scout project. It’s got some loose boards, and termites have taken up residence in the bench. Still, it’s a good place to stand and try to catch sight of a heron or to be quiet to hear the bloop, bloop of fish surfacing to eat a water bug.

  Mindy rests her head on my shoulder. “I’m glad you said yes to being my dad.”

  “Me too, Mindy,” I say. “What I want you to understand, though, is that adopting you wasn’t some act of resistance or altruism. We didn’t adopt you to protest the war. It was nothing like that.”

  I pause for a beat or two, resting a hand on the rough wooden slat of the deck.

  “Back in my marching days I was absolutely sure it was a good thing I was doing,” I go on. “But when you came along, everything changed. I realized that none of it was about me or what I was doing after all. The moment I saw you, I realized that the only thing that I could do that made a lick of a difference was to love you and Sonny and your mom. And to let you three love me back. Getting the chance to be your dad is one of the best things in my life. I hope you know that.”

  “You’re going to make me cry,” Mindy says.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “It’s okay.” She turns her body to face me, leaning one hip against the deck. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you ever think about me looking for my birth mom?”

  “Is that something you want to do?” I ask.

  She nods.

  I look at my feet, trying to think of how to say exactly what’s on my mind. When I was a younger man I might have just blurted it out. But now I’m older and know the weight of words. I measure them a minute or two before opening my mouth.

  The fact is, before we called the agency to let them know we were willing to adopt Minh, Linda and I made an agreement. We said that if ever Minh wanted to reunite with her family in Vietnam, we’d put up no fight. We would give our blessing and help in any way we could.

  When we shook on it, it seemed an easy thing to do. A no-brainer.

  But then, over time we forgot about our agreement. Eventually, I even stopped expecting that Mindy would ever want to learn about her life before us.

  I’d gotten selfish with her, wanting to hold her close. For years I convinced myself that it was because I wanted so badly to shield her from anything that could hurt her. That may have been part of it, I guess. But another share of it was the fear that if I let her go, I’d lose her.

  Turns out that small birds are going to fly whether we like it or not. I
t’s no different for our kids.

  And, whether I’m always aware of it or not, it’s the nature of God to see every dip and dive and lift, to glory at the triumphs and grieve when they fall.

  It’s time I loosen my grip.

  I’ve held her so tight for so long, it hurts to let her go.

  “Listen,” I say. “If you want to look for your birth mom, you’ve got my blessing. If you want to fly to Vietnam, I’ll help pay for the plane ticket.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” she says.

  “And no matter what, we’re always here for you, your mom and me.”

  We come to a steep incline on the trail, one that I used to be able to climb without a thought. These days it takes a little more effort, and I hope Mindy doesn’t notice my huffing and puffing.

  At the top of the hill is a view that’s more than worth it, and when I reach the peak, I’m glad we picked this less traveled path. Looking out over the tops of trees at their most vibrant color is something I’ll never grow tired of.

  CHAPTER

  Fourteen

  Linda, 1975

  Hilda made her coffee strong and served it without cream or sugar. She was of the mind that if someone wanted to drink coffee, they should have it as it was. Anyone who doctored it up didn’t really like the flavor of it and was, therefore, unworthy to drink it.

  I, on the other hand, was the kind who liked her coffee more on the beige side and sweet enough to count as dessert. But for all the years since meeting Hilda, I never told her my preference because I thought it might make her think less of me.

  So, at Hilda’s house, I drank my coffee black and tried my very hardest not to grimace with each swallow.

  That day she poured four cups, one for each of us, and told us that we’d drink it in the parlor.

  As soon as Hilda turned her back, Ivan cracked open a cupboard and reached his hand in, pulling out a fistful of sugar cubes that he dumped into his coffee. When he noticed me watching him, he froze like a little boy caught doing something naughty.

  I lifted my cup and raised my eyebrows. “I won’t tell if you let me have a few,” I whispered.