OCTOBER 15
Because of her, he had learned to look for the birds—the
darting flight of wild canaries (yellow sun on yellow wings),
the chesty preening of redbirds and bluebirds, the blackbird
with the red-tipped wings like startling epaulets.
—TERRY KAYHow much we have learned from them—those dear ones
we have lost! And how their gifts stay with us.
The sharp vignettes surface from our memory again and
again. Scenes we scarcely gave a second thought to when
our loved one was alive emerge as scenes from a family al-
bum—doubly cherished now that our loved one is gone.
I see my mother cutting long, thin triangles from a brightly
colored page from a magazine, spreading them with flour
paste and, starting at the wide end, rolling these strips
around a needle—another bead for the necklaces she was
making for her two young daughters. I’ve never seen this
craft described (some kind of forerunner of papier-mâché,
I suppose) and I have no idea what became of the necklaces.
It was decades ago, and I don’t know that I thought of it
again while she was alive. But I think of it now with warmth
and gratitude—my sister and I and our mother, gathered
around the table in this project of scissors and paste and
those wondrous beads!
Our loved ones live on in the vivid memories of the things they
taught us.