Bird-Watching and Birds-Who-Watch

My grandmother passed away 10 years ago.  I really can't believe it's been that long.  I loved her so much and my heart's been broken ever since she passed.  She was cool, beautiful, eccentric, a real neat gal. 

She was an ice cream scooper at Crescent Park in Rhode Island as a teen in the 1930s, she met my grandpa when he was on shore leave during WWII and won a jitterbug contest one time.  She had a laugh that would make your belly tickle on the inside until it gave in, no matter what sort of mood you were in.  She loved wearing silly hats and working in her garden, enhanced every holiday to the last detail and made clothing and all sorts of swell crafts.  She saved pencils and rubber bands until the former was sharpened down to the ferrule and the latter was petrified.  And she loved to watch birds. 

She wasn't a member of the audubon society or anything but she would bird-watch for hours by the pool in the backyard.  She had a thing for cardinals and there was a little stained glass one suctioned to the sliding glass door that overlooked the porch where we all napped in the summer heat, the pool where we swam until our skin pruned and the garden she tended.  After she passed on and the house was sold, the bird was left on the door.  I have no idea if the widow who bought the house kept it there but I hope she did.  It just didn't seem right to remove it. 

I'm sure I'm anthropomorphizing a little but every now and then I'll see a red cardinal - in a tree or perched on something or flying somewhere and I think of my grandmother.  All of her quirks and characteristics, every birthday, every Christmas, every Easter egg hunt, every single experience, her smell, her voice, her laugh, it all flashes in a matter of seconds.  And it's usually when I need to remember that there was once someone who I loved so unconditionally and who loved me back even more. 

This morning I went into the kitchen to make some coffee and caught a glimpse of red out of my big kitchen window.  There was a little, vibrantly-bright-red cardinal hopping up and down the path to my front door from the stairs that go up to the parking lot, along the edge of my kitchen garden.  I stood there and watched her hop up-and-down and back-and-forth for a few minutes and then she just hopped off into the woods to join some other birds, I presumed.  And I kinda felt like my grandmother was just dropping in to say hi.