Ostrander Road

Just about every Sunday, I watch CBS Sunday Morning. I don’t watch much television, and even though I PVR this program every week, if I don’t watch it at some point on Sunday, I end up deleting it unwatched. There’s something wrong, for me, about watching it on Tuesday night.

This week’s program was as outstanding as they usually are, with pieces on the Preservation Hall Band in New Orleans and Elaine Stritch. My mother and I saw her in LA when she was on her At Liberty tour. It was a raw, funny, unusual show, if you could call it that. It felt more as though she was sitting in her living room, and we had the rare opportunity to listen to her talk about her life, honestly. I laughed and cried and cheered that night. It was over ten years ago, and I still remember much of it in detail. Particularly her heartbreak.

Back to the Preservation Hall Band. It made me yearn to go to New Orleans again, and take Frank. As much as we love seeing music together, it seems natural that we would take that trip someday soon.

This week's episode ended somewhere in Pennsylvania, with a montage of cardinals and woodpeckers. And this was the piece that moved me the most.

If I close my eyes and block out everything going on around me, I can take myself back to a summer day, waking up in my bedroom on Ostrander Road. My room was on the second story of the house, and in the summer, I often slept with the windows open. A typical teenager, I stayed up until two or three in the morning, and then slept until almost noon. Then there were other days, that I would be up before dawn, wanting to be out on the road when the sun rose, taking the walk that led me along Buffalo Creek, over to Porterville and back up Hemstreet Road. 

What I remembered most this morning, was the sound of birdsong on those mornings. When my grandfather built the house, he did so on the eastern most border of his property. The dining room, with windows on two sides, looked out onto several bird feeders, a rock garden, big trees and the hill. The dining room table sat right up against the windows and on the windowsill sat bird books and binoculars.

I learned so much about birds at the table. I learned that the males were much prettier than the females. I learned about the changes in our environment, as through the years, certain species, once abundant, we no longer saw as often. The sighting of certain types of birds brought excited whispers of "Heather, quick, come look . . ."

I suppose most of us remember parts of our childhood as being idyllic. For me, the years I spent on Ostrander Road, and at our camp on Canada Lake, are as perfect memories as there could be. 

I realized this morning how much I love birds, how interested I am in seeing different species, yet not enough to ever consider becoming a birdwatcher. I wonder if it is something I will develop more interest in when I am older. I would probably only be happy doing it if I was sitting in that same dining room, looking out that same window, on Ostrander Road.