Mourning Doves always remind me of my grandmother. My paternal grandmother, my dad’s mother, did
not really like people much. She preferred
animals and kept a variety of them in large quantities in her home all of the
time I knew her. On the balcony off her
bedroom (which was later converted to a room for her literal hundreds of mice) was
a cage of mourning doves, and the sound of them calling always makes me think
of her, makes me feel like I might be six years old and in awe of everything
again. I feel light shining through
dirty glass windows, I feel warm and that magical nothing-can-be-that-wrong
feeling you only have when you are very young and innocent.
It took me a long time to realize that they are mourning
doves, not morning doves, and I actually like that so much better.
Sitting now, in my father's house, as he and I both age and with my grandmother long gone, I listen for the sound of my little boy, listen for him stirring from his afternoon nap. I hear the doves calling in through the windows, and it strikes me suddenly, that they sound just like my little boy when he first wakes up, when he's entertaining himself and speaking garbled half words to himself. He sounds like summer light shining through glass, like the magical innocence of youth and possibility.
He sounds like love.
