Low diatribe

Ajax flew out the door yesterday.

A barrel-roll, diving through the closing door Indiana Jones-style, and he was gone. I went after him immediately — out the door, around the yard, whistling. No sign of him. I knew the drill then. Valya had done this, while she was with us. Put a cage on the porch. Pull the window screens. Set out food. Wait.

With Valya, she was gone until sundown. I kept telling myself that. Until sundown. It was the only thing I had to hold onto.

But Ajax was gone, my bird, gone. And the math was different this time. Over four months I had watched him grow from a helpless fledgling — eyes just opened, beak gaping, entirely dependent — into a strong and capable bird. Physically, he was ready for the outside world. What he didn't have was fear. Not of dogs. Not of cats. Not of anything, because nothing in his world had ever given him reason to be afraid. Animals outside the house don't know our rules. They don't know he's mine, nor would they respect my authority if they did. They don't know anything except that he's small and curious and unafraid, which is the worst possible combination.

And underneath that: the quieter fear. That he might simply not come back. Not taken — just gone. Choosing the world. I've read the anecdotal evidence — starling rescuers who try to release them back to the wild and can't, birds who've imprinted so completely that the outside world doesn't take. But Ajax is Ajax. If he ever chose to leave and never return, I hope he would be happy. I just wasn't ready for that to be yesterday.

I felt the loss anyway. Intellectually I was okay with it — I knew the odds, I knew the drill, I kept repeating the thing about sundown. But devastation doesn't consult your intellect. It just arrives, the way feelings do, and sits beside you while you wait. I felt a little silly about it. I felt it anyway.

He came back well before sundown.

Flew in through the open door and landed on my head as if nothing was amiss. No drama. No acknowledgment of the preceding hours. Just Ajax, back on his perch in the world, completely certain this was exactly right.

Ajax shrugged.

I had been holding up the sky. He had been having an adventure.

The grief that arrived with the loss didn't entirely leave when he returned. It just settled. Became something quieter. A reminder that I already know how this ends, eventually. Not yesterday, not today, but someday. He is a starling. I am not. The statistics are not in his favor for outlasting me, and I've known that since the beginning.

Nothing stays forever. The impermanence of all things is not a philosophy — it's just the weather, ambient and constant, and pretending otherwise is a way of not paying attention.

Yesterday was also a reminder of something simpler: he is here. Right now, today, he is here. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, everything.

He didn't leave forever. Only for a handful of hours.

He came back expecting a bath.

Two days before his outdoor adventure, something shifted.

I've been playing him R2-D2 sounds since his first day in the house — it started with Valya, and carried forward. Ajax has been patterning after them for weeks, the way a child babbles before speech arrives: the sounds are there, the intention is there, but the syntax hasn't clicked yet.

It was like a switch flipped in his brain — the way first language acquisition works in toddlers, that moment when babbling becomes structured phrases, when the sounds stop being imitation and start being speech. He's talking R2-D2 now. Not approximating it. Doing it. Specific notes, specific sequences, the little warbling runs that mean something in astromech even if I can't always parse what.

I'm starting to pick up a little astromech too. I find myself answering him. He answers back. I don't know exactly what we're saying to each other, but I think I'm getting the gist.

He won't be here forever. I know that. The anticipatory grief that arrived when he flew out the door was real, and it will be real again someday, and that day will be harder than yesterday was.

When Mr. Hooper died, Big Bird struggled to come to terms that he wasn't coming back. Olivia tells him they would still have their memories. Big Bird's response: We can remember, and remember, and remember. As much as we want to.

The past is permanent. What has already happened cannot be taken away. The astromech conversations are already real. The baths are already real. The head-landing, the shoulder-perching, the tick he picked out of my grandson's hair — all of it already happened, already mine, regardless of what comes next.

That's not consolation. That's just true.

I spent this morning with him. Listening to his warbling chatter. Catching flies for him as a treat.

He complains that I can only catch one at a time. I point out that he can't catch them yet, and he's considerably faster than me, so I deserve some grace. He is unmoved by this argument. He greedily eats the fly anyway, impatiently demanding another in a fury of clicking burrs and whistles emphasized by flapping wings.

He's here now. Landing on my shoulder, pecking at my beard or tugging on my ear. Teaching me his language, one warbling run at a time. Standing under the faucet with the particular joy of a creature who knows exactly what he wants and has no patience for the side of the sink.

I am revelling in his wonder. I know it while I am in it — that this is sacred, that this is rare, that not everyone gets this. I am paying attention. Every moment becomes a memory I already own. And when he isn't here, I will remember, and remember, and remember.

It's worth it. Every time.