This was my grandfather’s. He was up before the birds every morning of his life, and he knew every one of them by its song. At night he put this record on, turned down low, and fell asleep to it. My grandmother said it was the only way he got through the winters.
On the inside sleeve there’s a list of every bird on the record. He wrote a date beside each one the first spring he heard it in his own yard. There was one he never heard there, a canyon wren, and the line beside it stayed empty for forty years.
I moved out here eleven years ago. Last April I was on my back step with my coffee, and there it was, the same song, coming down the hill. I wrote the date in, in blue pen, so you can tell which one is mine. Some nights I still play it. It sounds like his house in January.
Mae
Told at the table · Night No. 2 · Paper Sleeve Records