Mamabird Builds a Nest

My husband, Greg, and I are both from Cincinnati but have been living in Washington, D.C. for the past five years. We tend to take advantage of the holidays as an opportunity to return to our hometown, to see our families, and to eat our favorite local grub (it’s usually impossible for us to get enough Skyline Chili into our bellies). 

When we go home, like we did a few weeks ago for Easter, we stay at the house my mother built. She didn’t really build it, not from the ground up anyway, but she took the bones of an old home, polished them, painted them, and made them new again. My mother, the architect, sculpted this home into her likeness so that whenever I walk through the door, it’s like I’ve stepped into her skin. 

Coming home—and it will always be home—is both comforting (like an old, holey sweater) and difficult (like parting with that old, holey sweater). She had designed it for parties and loud voices; for her kids and grandkids to move in and out of the back sliding doors in summertime; for the kitchen, the wide-open kitchen, to be filled with the scent of her cooking. 

When we come home—and it will always be home—when I push that front door open, it’s the quiet, the sound of a home unused and untouched, that breaks my heart. 

So on our recent visit, I asked Greg if we could host his family at my parent’s house for Easter this year. I wanted a chance to give back to his brother and sisters, who have always been so generous with their time and their homes during the holidays, welcoming my family through their front doors as if they’d known us forever. 

I didn’t cook. But I over-ordered food, a ham, sides and appetizers and snacks. We spread it all out on the island in the kitchen, the island my mother designed based on how large a slab of unbroken, seamless granite she could bring through the door (or, in the actual case, by crane, through the yet-to-be-built roof). 

We hid plastic eggs out back filled with jelly beans and chocolate for my two, sweet, blond-haired nieces. My mom always wanted a blond grandbaby—we’ll see whose genes, my swarthy Lebanese ancestry, or Greg’s fair-haired, fair skinned heritage, win out. The girls, in their matching green Easter dresses, moved in and out of the back sliding doors, in and out of a perfect Spring day, giggling, looking for all 36 plastic eggs, placing them in a cream-colored basket. 

A day before this Easter lunch, Greg was standing in the laundry room at the front of the house looking out the window.

“Hey, Yaz, did you see the mamabird?”

“What mamabird?” I asked, making my way to where he stood. 

I peered over his 6’5” frame. A bird, gray and black, had built a nest just outside the window, her body covering what we suspected were her eggs. Mamabird was watching over brood. 

The day of the Easter lunch, I called out to my nieces. 

“Hey, girlies! Did you see the mamabird?” 

They scampered over, their feet hitting the hardwood floor, their voices filling the room. 

Mamabird was still there, poised and frozen over her nest. 

Watching the girls watch the bird, I thought of my mom and the home she had built. 

Mamabird, poised and still, watching over us all as we used her home as she would have wanted it used, breaking the stillness with voices and footsteps, too much food, slammed sliding doors, and bubbly, infectious, giggly, bird-watching, Easter egg-hunting laughter.

-Yaz