Seventy-Nine

SEVENTY-NINE

WHEN HE'S GONE AND I am finally and blessedly asleep, I dream again about my mother.

She is happy, surrounded by a whole flock of her hummingbirds. And I awaken smiling, a rare occurrence these days, the image of her and the birds still vivid as I make myself a cup of coffee and go down into my basement, which I keep almost pathetically neat, and find the box containing the hummingbird feeder my father once made for her.

The birds keep showing up in my dreams.

When I was little, before she got sick, she taught me all about her birds, the best way to feed them, the perfect placement for the feeder in the quietest place on the property. How to make the perfect mixture of water and sugar that kept bringing the birds back.

"Think about it," she told me. "Refined white sugar and water. Four parts water, one part sugar. And that's all it takes to make a miracle."

"You think that birds coming back is a real miracle?" I'd asked her.

"Is there any other kind?"

Then she drummed into me how cleaning the feeder often was essential, to prevent mold growth.

"Too much information?" she said one time.

"Never when it comes from you."

Now I felt as if I knew as much about the birds as she once did, remembering without trying, whether I wanted to or not. The miracle wasn't just that they came back, they migrated to Mexico and then returned. How they could chirp and whistle and squeak and buzz, even though I could never get close enough to hear. I just took it on trust, the way I took it on trust that they would keep coming back.

After buying my house, I hung the feeder on a pole in view of my kitchen window, greasing the bottom of the pole with vegetable oil to keep ants from getting at the sugary water I mixed myself. I never bought it premade at the hardware store.

Eventually, my birds found the feeder and then stayed with me for a long time.

I came to love them just as much as my mother had loved her birds.

But then the cancer that had come for my mother came for me. The once happy memories of the birds became associated with death and dying.

Representing Rob Jacobson in court, I kept forgetting to mix the water, letting the feeder go dry for days at a time. I was too sick and too busy to give the process the care it demanded. The birds who once depended on me gave up, probably because they thought I had given up on them.

Finally, reluctantly, I took the feeder down and packed it away, leaving the empty pole in the backyard.

Now I brought the feeder upstairs to my sink, used a small brush to clean the sucker within an inch of its life. A few minutes of honest work made me feel good, cleared my mind of worries about Licata and what he did to Martin, about Eric Jacobson and all those lines pointing to his father, about the pretrial motions I need to file before I start chemo next week.

Mixing fresh sugar water makes me feel just as good. Once I've perfected the proportions, I rehang the feeder in the same quiet place. Through my kitchen window, I stare at it for a long time, still smiling, hoping the birds will find me again.

In a world that keeps getting meaner and more complicated and more dangerous, the feeder looks beautiful to me.

The way the feeder always looks, gleaming and freshly painted, in my dreams about my mother.

I tell myself that if the birds find their way back, it will be a sign.

I could use one.