Monday, April 4, 2011
One of my favorite memories of Mom is the time she brought home a baby robin that had fallen out of its nest one summer. Mom, my brothers and I made a warm "house" out of a box lined with a blanket for the little bird, which didn't have many feathers yet. We shone a lamp on it to keep it warm, and kept him upstairs, where Dad was building out our new bedrooms.
Mom made a great bird foster mother. She'd stand in the backyard, running the hose to lure the earthworms out of the ground. After we collected a bunch, we'd run upstairs and feed them to Gussie (short for Augustus). Until we brought him his dinner, he would cheep VERY loudly to let us know it was time to eat.
Eventually he was big enough to hop around outside of his box and explore the whole room. After a few weeks, when he was an adorable, speckled bundle of feathers and fluff, we brought him out into the backyard, where Mom helped Gussie find his own worms. And after a couple days of that, he made his first flight to the top of our picket fence. Gussie flew off to find his own tree soon after that, but he came back to visit now and again for a few weeks afterward.
What I love about this memory is how it highlights Mom's nature-loving, practical, nurturing personality--and how it modeled the behavior of kindness to animals to me and my brothers. I still smile and think of Mom whenever I see or hear a robin, and her love for animals definitely lives on in me. Thanks, Mom!
