Birdsong

Often, those who prefer the cover and darkness of night are called “night owls”. Like real owls, they are awake long after most have retired. But not me. I’ve always been a morning person; I rise with the sun. Sometimes, if I wake early enough I am lucky enough to be the audience for a well-known but rarely appreciated choir. The dawn chorus greets the day each morning; its musicians are the birds. My grandmother used to tell me to spend my mornings in silence so that I wouldn’t miss their sound. My favorite musician in the dawn choir is, of course, the mourning dove. My grandmother called me her little dove, named for the gentle creatures that hopped around her backyard. If you listen to the mourning dove when they fly, you can hear their wings make a whooshing noise. Because of this, many people incorrectly think that the sound of their wings early in the morning is the call of owls as they finish their night-time hunts. I never correct them. I’ve always thought that this meant mourning doves and the night owls had a special connection. A bond, or funny link. They were an unlikely duo. Like us.

I know that I’m a mourning dove in the same way that I know you are a night owl. I happen to know this because every Saturday morning, I wake up on the right side of your bed and you are still asleep. I wake to the daylight streaming through your open blinds and the smell of coffee brewing downstairs. My fellow early birds settle in the branches that grow near your window. It seems the world takes a collective, careful breath so as not to disturb the aptly named dawn chorus as they prepare for their morning performance. You always seem to miss out on their music, too deep asleep to hear. I’m always the first one awake after our Friday night sleepovers. You love to tease me for my inability to stay awake during our late night movies, but I never could fight sleep the way you do.

The morning after a sleepover is always warm and comforting. The lazy atmosphere is gladly welcomed after spending all night giggling together under the blankets. And even though you are sound asleep beside me, I am quite content to wait for you to wake. And wait I will, because while I am energized by the dawn of a new day, you are powered by the dark quiet of the moon. It will be hours before we see each other again.

I could go downstairs to your mother and watch the daily news with her. Maybe she would pour me some of her coffee, even though I don’t like it black like she does. My stomach grumbles but I will stay here because all too soon, my mother will pull into your driveway and take me home. Even when you’re unconscious, I want to spend my last few hours with you. After this morning, I won’t see you until we sit in class together Monday. I had better make use of the time we have left.

As I slowly come into awareness, I notice the remains of the mess we made last night. On your tiny tv, the DVD menu is playing quietly on repeat. Though you are no light sleeper, I’m afraid you may wake up. The last thing I want is to wake you up. You’ll be grumpy but worse will be the fact that you will leave bed and greet the day before I am ready to leave this nest we have made.. This will ruin the careful peace I am ready to sink into. I begin my search. Through the tangle of blankets and candy wrappers in your bed, I am grabbing for the tv remote. I’m careful not to move too much and bother you so I am surprised when it is you and not me who shifts in your sleep. It's then that I register that your leg is on top of mine.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before. As soon as I register it, it is like a bolt of lightning strikes me. I suddenly feel a lot of uncomfortable things all at once: 1- I know that if I move my world will end because this closeness to you feels nothing if not right. 2- At the same time, I know that if I don’t move right now, I might be sick. I am tingly, hot under the thick blankets, and very confused.

My peace is suddenly ruined. I might throw up and while I am on fire, you are still asleep. I wish I were too. Though, if I was asleep, I might not have noticed your soft skin on mine. It’s a weird thing to notice because you’re my best friend. We touch all the time: we hug, we slap, we do each other’s hair. We sleep in the same bed every Friday night. But this time feels different.

Not in a weird way! I mentally reassure you as well as myself: it just feels warm. And safe. Comforting. Like our friendship. Just like our Saturday mornings. So even though it feels like the ground disappeared from underneath me and there is still a strong possibility of me being sick, I cannot move. I will not move. To move will both disturb you and lose your soft touch. I lay there and try to ignore my leg burning a hole in your mattress.

We lay like this, legs entwined for no more than maybe ten minutes. It’s a miracle my leg does not catch fire. Eventually, your mom yells at you to wake from downstairs. I watch you groggily try to shake off your sleepiness. As predicted, you are grumpy and swing your legs off the bed and away from me. At your sudden lack of warmth, I feel relief but also confusion. Your face doesn’t show any of the absolute chaos I am barely able to contain. I realize then that you didn’t notice my leg underneath yours. At least, not the way I did. You didn’t notice the way your pajama pants had hiked up just a little. You didn’t feel the soft hem as it dragged across my knee. Even in your sleep, you didn’t feel the fire or the lightning that struck. You didn’t feel me at all. Hours later, I was left alone in the back of my mother’s van to wonder why something so small felt so scary. I wondered the whole drive home and did not find an answer.

A few years later, I still remember that feeling. After that morning, something changed between us. Not that you noticed. I got used to the feeling of fire: you making my heart beat when our hands brushed or the sound of your laughter at my stupid jokes. You’d think that all your flames would make me melt away but I never did. I just burned on. Eventually the flame changed from something I carried within me to simply part of me. Nothing else changed. We were still a duo. I was the morning bird to your night owl, the other half missing. Except now, you spend your nights without me. Not just without me, but with someone else. And I’m happy for you; really, I am. We’re still best friends. I want you to be happy and I know you are. So… I’m happy. For a time.

When I think back to the moment we changed, I can’t pin it on just one moment. There were too many moments, small pin pricks under my skin. These didn’t feel like our fire. That was comfort and excitement and warmth. This was painful and cold. The shift was slow. So slow, I didn’t realize that you were drifting away from me. Suddenly, you were too busy to call me back. We never saw movies anymore because you had already seen them with someone else. It felt weird to visit your house and be treated as a friend and not family. I felt alien in a house I’d grown up in. But I knew without a doubt that “we” were finished when you stopped inviting me over on Friday nights. That was when I learned the hard way that morning doves, my favorite musician in the chorus, don’t actually stand for “morning” the way I’d always believed. I had been misspelling, misunderstanding my entire life. Morning doves are not spelled m-o-r-n but instead m-o-u-r-n. They don’t stand for mornings as in the warmth of daylight streaming through your blinds and the buzz from your old basement tv and the smell of the coffee your mom says she can’t live without. I was wrong. They stand for heartbreak. As in grieving, as in loss. What a difference one letter can make. Mourning doves and night owls don’t have any special connection. They’re just birds.

Since then, I no longer hear the whooshing of wings I used to strain to hear in the morning. Without you, mornings are no longer a familiar sanctuary. When I wake up, I hear silence instead of birdsong.

Still, I’m glad that you have found someone who will stay up late into the night with you. I never could.