I remember being your age and visiting my mom's house, the house that I mostly grew up in, my home which is no longer there, it's been demolished along with the huge, tall mulberry and palm trees, the huge front and back lawns (our house sat way back from the street) and huge oleander bushes taller than the house framing both sides of the property all the way to the back alley, all gone and paved over with smooth black asphalt for Perini Construction's parking lot. All gone, everything.
I remember having lunch and then lying down on my mom's bed to sleep, mid afternoon, the bedroom dark because of the aluminum foil taped to the large bedroom windows and the floor to ceiling curtains pulled tightly shut. The bed was soft, the pillows too flat, I used to tease mom about her awful flat bed pillows, and her room was as dark as a cave in the heat of the Arizona summer. When I was young it was not unusual to pass by homes where a couple of windows were foiled over to reflect the hot bright sunlight.
I remember lying still and drowsy in the dark, falling asleep in the afternoon half listening to small children playing just on the other side of the oleander hedge, and hearing the mourning doves cooing. Every time I hear that bird call I think of my mom and seeing my two girls asleep in my bed made me think of her, opening her bedroom door, looking in on me.
"The Mourning Dove is the most common and widely occurring game bird in Arizona:
1. My habitat is open woodlands and agricultural fields with trees.
2. I am very common in many backyards.
3. I make a plate-shaped, flimsy nest in trees or on the ground.
4. I walk along the ground picking up seeds and grain that is not harvested.
5. I am 12 inches from head to tail.
6. My wings whistle when I fly.
7. I have a small head and large brown body.
8. I make a "coo, coo" sound.
9. People think of me when they think of love."
-quote from Lesson 2, Twelve Birds of Tumacacori.
Dove Picture from the Arizona Game and Fish Department, www.azgfd.gov
Picture of my mom's house
