Mockingbird

A mockingbird loves to sit at the top of a tree just outside my bedroom window. I’ve noticed more recently when I go for a run that there are multiple other tall trees around the neighborhood on which mockingbirds like to perch as well. I know it’s probably not always the same bird, but I sometimes imagine it following me around the neighborhood, a little buddy hanging around to keep me company. Llama likes to listen to all their sounds and says they’re talking to her, cheering her on. My favorite mockingbird sounds are the sharp hawk-like cry (they’re so daring to imitate their own predator—I wonder if that scares off the real hawks or dangerously draws their attention) and the frog-like ribbits. Mockingbirds can have more than two hundred individual sounds, some mimicked and some original, all strung together one right after another in their own composition.

One of my favorite pre-pandemic (I say pre-pandemic because we haven’t done it since then, but I’m sure we’ll start again someday) activities was to wander a bookstore or library with Llama. Usually Powell’s. It’s one of my favorite places in the Portland area. She would plop down on the floor in front of an appealing shelf and read and read and read, book after book. By the end of our time there, she’d settle on one or two to add to her wish list or buy, or if it’s the library it would be a massive stack to borrow. But while she sat there busy visiting far off worlds and meeting new literary friends, I would browse the nearby shelves—close enough to keep an eye on her or so I could hear if she wanted to share something interesting, but not hovering over her shoulder so she felt like she needed to hurry up.

You know that scene in “You’ve Got Mail” where Meg Ryan is sitting in Fox Books, thinking about her own little bookstore and wondering what her future will look like, when a woman asks an employee about the shoe books but he isn’t really able to help, and Meg Ryan speaks up with the author’s name and lists the books and recommends her favorite to start with. That. That’s what I love to do in bookstores as I sit and wait for Llama. I love that she’s cultivating this love of reading, and I love to help people who are trying to inspire the kids in their lives do that, too. My favorites are the challenging ones—a mom who seems to be at the end of her patience, walking the aisles with a kid who doesn’t have any favorite books to use as a starting point or only wants to look at the graphic novels. The girl who says she hates princesses and ponies and magical fairies and doesn’t want to read anything that mom or dad pulls from the shelf. I love to offer suggestions, and thanks to my own and my kid’s prolific and diverse reading habits, there’s always at least one or two that come to mind that feel like perfect fits. There’s not really any way to follow up and see if they enjoyed my suggestions, but I like to imagine that my small effort might help spark a new and growing love of reading in those kids.

I love to read because I love seeing how other people make meaning with strings of words, how they take a lifetime of experience and shape new worlds or characters or speak in ways that deepen my understanding of life by offering different perspectives I haven’t considered before. I read like a sponge absorbs water—soaking in different authors’ words and assimilating the ones that resonate with me into my being and the way I live life. It’s like how the mockingbird learns so many calls by listening to the birds or car alarms or insects around it. I love to learn from other people’s experiences and see how they approach the complexities of life, searching for ways their experiences can help me with my own.

I saw someone say on social media a while ago something like, “My love language is when someone says, ‘I read that book you recommended.’” So true! Frequently I think of the books I read in terms of people they remind me of, and I think of people in terms of books I think they would enjoy. I feel a little bad sometimes about how often I suggest books to people—I don’t want to overwhelm them by throwing an avalanche of books at them, but there are so many good ones I know they would just love and learn from!

As I’ve listened to the mockingbird morning after morning, I feel a tug of resonance—feel like that little mockingbird, bringing together all these other people’s words and ideas, letting them swirl around with my own inspired yet original ones, then pushing them back out into the world, hoping to add more light and beautiful song to the world. Sometimes, that’s when I write. Sometimes, that’s when I paint or draw or play. Sometimes, that’s when I recommend a book. That mockingbird is there every day to sing for the joy of the song itself—to make something new that couldn’t exist without it first listening and then opening its mouth. So I’ll keep opening my mouth, too. Who knows what will come out next!