11 Comments

Jessica, I’m sending this to Trish! I interviewed her last Friday for Matters of Kinship.

I love your work. Thanks for the mention.🌱🌿💚

Expand full comment

Thank you! I saw that you were going to be interviewing her 😊 Appreciate the read and share so much!

Expand full comment

Love this post, and yes to unintentionally becoming a bird lady!

Expand full comment

Thank you for reading and for being open-winged! 🕊️

Expand full comment

This is lovely friend. Birds breathe from their bones! I didn’t know. Does our breath also perhaps have an ancient memory of this bone breath? Fascinating.

Have you played the bird-horse-muffin game? http://folklore.usc.edu/bird-horse-muffin/

I still often unconsciously use it when I meet someone new. I’m a muffin. You have always seemed to me a bird.

A book I just listened to when driving through the Southwest this year called Sonorous Desert by Kim Haines-Eitzen touches on how bird sounds call one to a sense of home. I think you would love this beautiful book.

A common story of those who have lost loved ones is that they are visited by those same souls in the form of birds. My father was a Blue Jay.

Expand full comment

Bird Horse Muffin!!! That’s new to me. I love it. I feel like that maybe just changed my life. Thank you for reading and for your comment. I already put the book recommendation on hold — thank you!

Expand full comment

So beautiful!

Expand full comment

Beautiful, Jessica!

I discovered the joy of bird watching when dear friends visited me in Alaska on a birding trip. I find casual bird watching has given me an extra avenue for seeing and appreciating the unique magic in places as I travel through them, and it’s a pleasure your Dad now fully shares and that has become a regular part of our wandering. One of my most joyous life memories is watching and listening every summer evening to tiny Swainson Thrushes silhouetted against the Alaskan sunset at midnight, pouring out their souls in a rising, souring celebration of life. Theirs is the most beautiful birdsong I have ever heard, and it will always be to me the sound of summer, and evening, of wilderness, of life and always, finally , of joy and peace.

Expand full comment

Lovely story, beautifully written. Glad you have those memories of Kay and Mel. And I recommend A Place to Come To by Kentucky’s man of letters Robert Penn Warren. He is part of your Kentucky roots.

Expand full comment

I love the “shake up the blubber” term. I’m goin to remember that one. What a fun happy story!

Expand full comment

Thank you! This one meant a lot to me in the writing. I love sitting with those memories of my grandparents, such dear ones.

Expand full comment