Crowded House (Don't Dream It's Over), and: Remembering Our Birds

Abstract

Crowded House (Don't Dream It's Over), and: Remembering Our Birds Safia Jama (bio) Crowded House (Don't Dream It's Over) Nonsensical beauty. All the plateshe broke on accident rememberhappier days. Honey, it's overbut let's still dream of the early days. That first Christmas in Ireland.That was something. Tinsel walls,hors d'oeuvres I would somedaymake at parties our friends would come to miss. Reminiscentof 1966. My parents' dream kitchen.Pots and pans float and fade. Moreplates explode. One, you broke on purpose, and I now whisper intothe drummer's ear: "Cameras arerolling. Smile." Near the end,Darrell filmed in our living room. Still together, still hanging on,though oatmeal stood hardeningon the stove. Future rocks we'dthrow at one another. 1986 was a good year, maybe the lastgood year for some time. Nowthe lead singer is vacuumingand soon the bassist will play [End Page 137] an organ solo wearing his matadorjacket. Mix and match like thrift storesand flea markets and you and me.Crowded House has not forgotten a single detail, poring over photoalbums. A candelabra lights a corner.I watched this video every night for days—then weeks, until, at last, I walked across greengrass did greet me. Remembering Our Birds I watch sunrise on square windowsthat remind me of those reflective aviator glassespeople sometimes wear— I bought a pair that first spring you visited me,and I wore them without irony,just as I used to wear everything. I left my wardrobe at our old apartmentyou kept like a museum, not moving a singlepillow for a year. Your main design contribution, two Australian zebra finches, purchased that April,our first big rumble. I left, and you replaced my absencewith caged birds. When I returned in the fall, I learned to accept our new pets, the vestige of my leaving, the symbolof our ongoing troubles. When we fought, the birds fought. When we loved, the birds preened and on the afternoonI packed to go to my mother's, you picked a newly [End Page 138] hatched chick off the kitchen floor and placed itin the palm of my hand. You have to keep it warm or it will die!My heart had fled the coup, I didn't care,only I didn't want that warmth to leave,and we named the chick Baby. I went to my mother's for a week, and Baby grew bigger,and the parents raised Baby until she became full grownand belligerent. I had no idea what it meant to save a lifethat would eventually turn around and attack,but then again, I'm not a parent. This morning, I watched the sun rise across the windowswhere I have been nesting here these nine days. Olive, the finch that I chose from the pet store, died last year.You said when you looked into her eyes, she looked backand called in tears when Olive was ill. You took that $15bird to the vet and spent $400. She didn't make it,but I was glad you tried, and so were you. That's when you found Emily, the small white birdmeant to replace Olive. Pip never took to Emily, though,so you kept her in a studio apartment nearby and you told meshe enjoys her solitude and spends her timecontemplating poetry. Last Thanksgiving, our second year apart,you were out all night, and when you came home,Emily had drowned herself in the fish tank,her white feathers bobbing among the Amazon weeds,Sir Claude, your prized fish, looking on perplexed. I said it was a very literary death, and felt disturbed and sorryand fascinated. We were out walking in the snow and youwere trying hard to be kind. [End Page 139] I felt something new,something akin to the frozen snow—the winter sun burning the bare treestouched a pain I needed to feel, to knowthat I am still here and alive. Those first birds, the vestiges of our...