My Cardinal

As I am sitting here on the computer, avoiding my to-do list which is as long as my arm--much of it preparation for Sunday's open house being held by our realtor--I am listening to the cardinal sing his pretty song.

As I pack some things (not prematurely I hope, please sell, house!!), as I prepare to leave--I wait for that sad feeling, sentimental feeling (as I am a girl that emotes as often as I breathe), but it doesn't come. Instead, I am excited. As I pack my flannel pajamas, I feel giggly to think that next time I wear them I will be in my new home.

But then I hear the cardinal, the sound that greeted me when I moved in, and has been such a part of living here. We are in the city, we don't get many more birds than sparrows. Some robins. My neighbor has a huge tree, one of the largest in the area. It shades our tall roof in the summer. And it houses a cardinal family. It can't be the same one, can it? Nearly a decade and a half later? But the generations have always been here for us. They watch us from the electric lines--one male at a time. Except for the strange summer when we were sitting in our back yard, and about five males--must've been frisky nestlings showing their stuff--swooped at us, back and forth, landing on the fence, making another swoop to the other side of the yard. It was both funny and a bit too similar to a certain horror movie we are all familiar with. But they were pretty cardinals, so who couldn't be delighted while ducking from their strange swoops?

My son, barely able to talk, would point out the pretty song and say, "card-nal." Now he and his sister and I all excitedly point him out. We hear him and try to spot him, who can first?

I hear my neighbors on the other side of me say to their two-year-old twin boys, "There is the red bird!"

As accustomed as we are to them, seeing them nearly every day, they are still a special surprise, a treat, a thing of beauty.

They have just been here, singing, all this time. Something I have taken for granted for this many years. Such a small thing, but yes--something I will really miss.

Yet it makes me excited to wonder--will there be cardinals settled by my new house? Or something else? What is ahead? Eagerly I await.