Sounds of Mother's Day

It is Spring and the sound of the season in Detroit arrives with pheasants. Even now, nine am on a cold Sunday morning, one can hear their rhythmic squawking. It reminds me of an old car horn that beats twice, high pitched and somewhere nearby me.

You cannot see them today. This Spring they’ve been staying in the back alley behind us, sharing space with cracked cement, high grown grass, and other discarded things.

They remind me especially on Mother’s Day of my gradmother’s death. Two years ago, this time, the pheasants stopped squawking. We knew it was near her time, her passing, but I still lived in denial. Every morning that week two pheasants crossed the street and stood beneath my bedroom window squawking. Seven am. Always the same time. Perhaps always the same pair. I woke up each morning to their call.

They stopped visiting us the morning grandma passed. I did not see them again that entire season.

I think of that today as my grandmother, suborn and strong, is now gone two years. The funeral the week of Mother’s Day. I think today of those in grieving, from Covid, or from a past loss rising. To each of us a different song is heard.