FUNSTUFF 20 1

A Tribute to Morning Birds

The day I heard my grandmother's deep, precious laugh—so powerful it made my stomach quiver—I was sitting at the edge of the kitchen table, staring out the window as the sun blazed against the glass. The morning was hot, with a typical southern humidity from Georgia’s summer, and the wind scattered papers across the table. Just moments earlier, I poured coffee into my dinner mug, set it on the table, and raised the windows slightly to let the warm breeze in. Ten minutes later, the red mug from the bookstore sat empty, its warmth filling me. I closed my eyes, took three long breaths in, and then three long breaths out.

And then I heard the birds.

Lately, I’ve made it a habit to open the windows in the morning, welcoming their song. The chirping, sharp and swift, echoing from one bird to another. I pause for a few seconds, gazing up at the trees swaying in the distance, watching the green grass below. In those brief moments, I notice how each bird takes its turn, not interrupting the others, each one singing its own song, one after another. My grandmother once told me that when birds sing, if you listen closely, you’ll hear that their melodies aren’t long and drawn out. It doesn’t take much to be heard, I suppose. In a single sound, through the window, their presence is felt in my world. No pressure. No stage. No timeline. Just a small creature doing what it’s meant to do, reminding me that, like them, I too take up space, and whatever space I claim in this world is enough to make someone pause and listen.

This reminds me of Sundays as children. For us, children of the Black rural South, Sunday mornings felt much like Friday nights around town. On Friday, when the town shut down for high school football games in the fall, everything felt still. As the players moved onto the field, there was something sacred in the way they performed under the bright lights—public failure required deliberate presence. The same way we sat in church on Sundays, experiencing the powerful silence that surrounded us. It felt like a baptism of sorts. Those moments left an impression on me, and I ran on the field and in the church, just like them.

I don’t know the age of birds, or if, from their perspective, they sing the same songs repeatedly. But every morning, when I raise the windows, I’m reminded how precious it is to be alive together.

A few days ago, I called my grandmother to ask if she remembered a moment when she sat on the porch, telling me about finding solace in silence. Like me, or maybe like her, she starts her mornings with coffee, prayer, reading her Bible, and sitting on the porch. “Do you think, or just sit?” I asked, wondering how much we really shared. “I just sit,” she replied. “I remember how, as kids, we’d sit on the porch and listen to the birds.” I asked her if she still does this. “Oh yes,” she said. “I love it.”

A few months ago, after years of sitting on the porch with my granddaddy, sharing laughter and coffee along with the sound of birds and the gentle South Carolina breeze, grandma said her final goodbyes to him. That moment, too, was wrapped in silence. Granddaddy had dementia. In his final years, he would tell the same stories over and over. But I’d learned to tell them for him. “There was El Paso, Texas,” I’d say. “And the poetry,” I’d add. “And then… Let me see…” At that point, he’d laugh, tap my chest three times with his hand, and then give me a big, heartfelt hug. “You on the good foot?” he’d ask, mimicking James Brown. “Of course, granddaddy,” I’d say. “You already know.”

That morning, the morning the coronavirus sped up his heartbeat and ultimately took him from us, grandma could only look at his body from behind a glass barrier. She couldn’t touch him, kiss him, or hold him. The next time she would touch him was at his funeral. I’ll never forget that moment or the image of her rough hands gently touching him, sitting still like the trees surrounding their house. I’ll never forget it.

I won’t forget the afternoon, either, when the house smelled of perfume, chicken, sweet potato pie, and grief. Grandma and I sat together on the porch, not saying much. We just sat. The cars passed on the dirt road, voices faint in the background. Her hands rested in her lap, and she still wore the two-piece suit she had on for the funeral—blue with a white blouse, a pink flower on her left side.

The dawn chorus, they say, is the song of blackbirds, robins, Eurasian wrens, and chaffinches. It marks the magical beginning of a new day. It’s said that this burst of life, echoing from the Earth, makes the heart leap. It’s said that whether you’re in the city or the country, you can hear this sound. It’s said to be most noticeable in spring.

Grandma told me that now, when she sits on the porch each morning, she hears fewer birds. I think she meant that with granddaddy gone, the birds feel less cheerful, like the air around her is a little quieter. Maybe, like Toni Morrison’s Shalimar in Song of Solomon, granddaddy has learned how to fly and has found his rest. She also talked about the changing climate, and I think she was reminding me that we need to care for the Earth, to notice the things that matter before they disappear. She was telling me, in her way, that like the birds, we’ve survived so much, and still, we greet each other in the morning with something that softens the heart. Maybe she didn’t mean it that way, but that’s what I heard. She was showing me the power of presence in grief: it connects what we’ve lost with what we remember and reminds us that love remains.

The birds of the morning turn a song into a memory, an ordinary porch into an altar. What else can we offer each other in moments of sorrow but something that assures us there are two of us here? What else can we give but the reminder that stories don’t end just because something bad happens?

This morning, the birds greeted me. My windows were open. Grandma sat on the por

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