Low diatribeLearning to live outside the box
I don't know how this ends. I'm writing it down while it's still in high resolution — documenting the process as it happens, not after.
Day 0 — The vanishing act
Ajax is gone.
Day 1 — The box is closed
As recounted in The box is closed.
Day 2 — Two boxes
I heard a strange noise from the basement.
It sounded enough like Ajax's call that hope arrived immediately.
The hope came with fear and guilt.
If Ajax was trapped somewhere, every hour mattered. If he had been there the whole time, maybe I hadn't searched hard enough.
I searched again.
Nothing.
The signal was false. The hope wasn't.
The possibility of him being trapped creates causality where there may be none. Ajax is trapped. I should have found him. I didn't search hard enough. His condition is getting worse. I am responsible.
The unknown immediately creates something I could still fix and something I could have failed to do.
The cage is still open.
Yesterday it was primarily an invitation. A practical thing. A way home.
Today it is beginning to look a little more like a memorial.
It can apparently mean two things at once.
Come home.
You were here.
The memorial began before the invitation ended.
I pulled Ajax's food from the refrigerator to put out fresh food. Just in case. I did not take another portion from the freezer.
Putting out fresh food says: he might come home.
Not taking another portion from the freezer says: I'm beginning to believe he won't.
My behavior may be getting slightly ahead of what I'm ready to say.
I made breakfast.
I called out the open window.
"Ajax, I made waffles!"
Ajax loved waffles. He sometimes preferred if I held it for him while he tore bites off. Mostly he liked to steal pieces, many too big for him to eat. His very efficient solution was to bash the waffle against the floor in this thrashing, twisting motion until it broke into smaller pieces. He ate what he could. Henri got the rest.
I laughed remembering it.
The window is still open.
I still call for him.
What if I had taken the meeting upstairs? What if I had invited him downstairs with me?
There are versions of that morning where I do those things and Ajax doesn't disappear.
Those are not should haves.
I had gone downstairs for meetings for months. Ajax stayed upstairs. Nothing happened. There was no information that morning that should have made this meeting different.
I can wish I had done something differently without believing I did something wrong.
Regret isn't responsibility.
While filling the dogs' water bowl, I remembered Ajax splashing around in it.
I smiled.
For almost a minute.
Then the tears came.
But the smile came first.
For that minute Ajax wasn't the bird who disappeared. He was Ajax being ridiculous in the water.
The memory was funny before it was sad.
I don't know what happened to Ajax. That's the fact. Everything after that is a story.
My mind is going to make stories whether I want it to or not. The worst ones aren't more true because they hurt more.
So if I don't know, and my mind is going to make it all up anyway: I might as well make it nice.
Ajax found a flock. Ajax discovered he was perfectly capable of being a starling. Ajax met a girl. Ajax is teaching wild birds to speak astromech.
I don't believe it because I need it to be true. I let myself imagine it because I don't know that it isn't.
The box is still closed. I don't get to decide what's inside. And it may never open.
I caught a fly.
For months, catching a fly meant I had something for Ajax.
My hands remembered before I did.
There was no one to give it to.
So I let it go.
I opened a jar while making supper.
Once Ajax's food was thawed, I kept it in canning jars in the refrigerator. It didn't really matter which jar. Opening any jar would incite a happy riot of wings and "It's food time!" chirps. As far as Ajax was concerned, there was always a chance whatever I was opening was for him.
No wings.
No chirps.
Just the jar opening.
I still notice every little movement in the house. My eyes go to it automatically, expecting to land on black and white feathers.
For a fraction of a second, every movement could be Ajax.
Then it isn't.
One box contains what I cannot know. Is Ajax alive? Is he safe? Did he find a flock? Did something happen? Is he coming home? Thinking harder cannot open that box.
But there's another box that contains what I already know. The joke. The baths. Astromech. Peanut butter. Flies. The tick. My shoulder. The water bowl.
Nothing eventually discovered in the closed box can change what is already in the memory box.
The cage seems to be moving between them.
Come home.
You were here.
Day 3 — I still have all of it
My wife's phone rang while we were on a walk.
I immediately heard Ajax's alarm noise. A week or so earlier I had noticed that he had added her ringtone to his orations.
We saw a few dozen swallows on the overhead wires up ahead. Swooping and darting. They flew off as a flock when we got near.
That made another possibility feel a little easier to imagine. The teenage asshole who perhaps heard a bunch of starlings outside and thought: Holy shit. Girls.
That version still sucks for me. It could be wonderful for Ajax.
Both can be true.
I found a little jumping spider on my laundry. I let him onto my hand to move him to a plant in the dining room.
It reminded me of Ajax.
When he lost a mealworm in the cracks of the wood floor, he did a happy little jump dance around the place he'd last seen it. A dozen rapid turning hops. Like his tail was one hand of a fast-moving clock with his head in the center. One way. Then the other. Pause. Head tilt. Re-evaluate. Again. Punctuated by lightning-quick beak jabs whenever he thought he had a good angle.
Most of the time he was successful in retrieving his treat.
Ajax spent almost as much time walking around on the floor. Tiny little hops and jumps and actual walking.
When I saw him walking and hopping around, we joked that he was pretending to be us.
"I am hooman. I have job and anxiety."
Hop hop hop.
I was changing Matilda's water.
I remembered how Ajax would get into her terrarium and hunt for earthworms in the mud. He was remarkably good at plucking them out.
He didn't like earthworms.
He'd pull one out, taste it, decide again that he didn't care for it, and leave it for Matilda. Then he'd go looking for another.
He was like a character in a video game, constantly probing the environment for the secret food.
Maybe this one. Nope. Maybe this one. Nope.
It didn't matter that the last five earthworms hadn't paid out. There might be something hidden in the next one.
Matilda didn't mind the extra snacks.
I went into the basement library and found our copy of Mozart's Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. My wife read it when Valya was with us. I had only read sections.
Sometimes Ajax followed me downstairs. Coming back up had three options: a ride on my shoulder or head, a short solo flight, or jumping up the stairs one at a time.
I carried the book upstairs thinking: hop hop hop, all the way up.
I washed all his bowls.
I left the towel. It hadn't been long since I'd changed it. The cage still smells like a place where a bird lived, and I'm not ready to lose that yet.
Tonight there was no bath in the sink.
I brushed my teeth. Washed my face. The cage door remained open. The cover remained untouched on top of the cage.
Still sad, but able to hold it easier.
We're all only here for a window of time. My time with him was shorter than I would have liked. That's sad and frustrating.
But I still have all of it.
Day 4 — More reasons
I woke early and got ready in the dark.
Then I remembered that I don't have to keep the lights off until a certain time anymore.
I turned on the lights and continued with my day.
I was wearing my big red terrycloth robe. It has a hood.
My wife once said I looked like a wizard when Ajax perched on my shoulder.
I had been doing mostly okay. Just a lingering background sadness.
That memory made me ugly cry.
I made waffles again.
I had already rehearsed what breakfast would be like.
No flurry of activity. No stolen bites. No waffle held out for Ajax. No thrashing. No scavenged scraps for Henri.
Just waffles.
It played out exactly as predicted.
"You've Got a Friend" kept running through my head. The part about calling and a friend being there.
For months, calling actually worked.
"Ajax. Chup chup."
squark
A hand held out. And he'd come investigate.
The simplest way I know to say what hurts: I miss my friend.
It rained. Henri, being a diva, snuck downstairs to poop in the laundry room rather than get wet.
Normally that would annoy me.
Today I appreciated the annoyance. I wasn't cherishing the poop. I was giving my annoyance a hug.
Gravity never goes outside. She stood and sniffed at the open window. I told her it was raining and she had zero survival skills. When I got up and approached, she bolted for the basement.
I wasn't ready for her to have an adventure. I don't think she was either.
What I wanted most was to go back to bed.
Instead I got dressed. Took the meetings. Put on the beard net. Made pizzas.
More responsibilities. More reasons to keep participating in my life while I am.
I came home late from the kitchen.
Most of the house was asleep. Sonja and Henri both woke to greet me. Jojen came over and said "Meeeer" and pushed his head into my hand.
I let Henri out. While I waited, I rested my forehead against the bar across the front-door window.
I put the bar up originally for Valya. Took it down for a while. Then put it back up for Ajax.
I suppose that it will have to come down again.
Eventually.
Back in the robe. While loading the washer, I pulled out one of my track jackets. It's still new. I've had it less than two weeks.
There was poop on the shoulders.
All the poop on my clothes came from him spending time on me. Perched on my shoulder. Riding around with me. Just being with me.
Still plenty of evidence of how much he was here.
Day 5 — Evidence and memory
I was lying in bed reading. Jojen was sleeping next to me, softly snoring.
He had a little sister once. During the pandemic, I found a very dirty, very young kitten under the camper. Eyes barely open. I took her in, cleaned her up, bottle fed her. Named her Princess Henrietta Rootbeer Float.
About a year later, she was hit by a car.
Now, a handful of years later, I wish I had told more stories about Princess while she was here. The memories soften. I can reconstruct the big things. The little things will take more work.
Ajax is still in high resolution.
I want to record the ordinary while I can still see it clearly.
I looked at the mirror and noticed all the little specks.
Ajax.
After a bath, he liked to sit on top of the desk fan in front of the mirror to preen. Sometimes he faced the mirror. Sometimes he faced the room. Mostly he just sang.
I have dozens of videos of him singing from that spot. His own very small table concerts.
The mirror still has the little specks from wet feathers and preening. The fan was the stage. I have the concerts on my phone.
Standing at the side door in my robe, watching a hummingbird at the feeder.
Missing a tiny black and white tyrant on my shoulder, sticking his beak in my ear.
My shoulder expects him. My ear expects the beak.
The towel. The track jacket. The mirror. The floor beneath the cricket shelf. The videos.
Not just evidence that Ajax existed. Evidence of habits. Places he chose. Time spent on me, with me. The physical record of an ordinary life scattered around the house.
He really did get everywhere.
I closed the window.
I left the screen pulled out. That isn't hurting anything.
Yesterday: open window. Uncovered cage.
Today, one of those changed. No declaration. No ceremony. The window had been open for days. I closed it.
The screen can wait.
I went to refill one of the cat bowls. All that was left in the bottom were the broken pieces of kibble that the cats won't eat unless they're really desperate.
Ajax liked catfood but had trouble with full sized pieces. He loved those little bits.
I remembered how much as I actively chose to not save them.
I had to remember him in order to make the choice.
It's our eldest son's birthday. He and his seven year old daughter came over for supper and spent the night.
The last time they were here, I had been running a quiet background process the whole visit — keeping track of where Ajax was, what he might get into, whether he was annoying them, whether he was safe. There were just enough incidental scenarios to make me nervous. Ajax had very little sense of self-preservation.
This time I didn't have to run that process.
Not relief that Ajax is gone. The absence of one particular responsibility that existed because he was here.
Day 6 — Back to normal with no resolution
I thought I was doing okay until I closed the door of the cage.
The sight of the closed cage made my heart hurt.
I opened it again.
Like the screens, it's not hurting anything.
Someday I may close the cage and discover that it's just closing a cage.
Today wasn't that day.
I know that the probability decreases as we move away from the event. I am not being naively hopeful.
I'm starting to accept that back to normal with no resolution is the outcome.
I don't know what happened to Ajax. I may never know.
There is a difference between accepting that he probably isn't coming back and deciding what happened to him. I can increasingly live according to the first without ever acquiring the information necessary for the second.
Back to normal with no resolution means the box never opens and I stop waiting for it to.
My wife, our youngest, and I were downstairs watching The Mandalorian & Grogu. We all heard that same weird noise from the basement — the one I'd heard a few days earlier.
We paused the movie. My wife investigated. Found nothing. "It's a frog."
The first time I heard the noise, hope arrived immediately. Then fear. Then guilt. Then responsibility. Then a search.
This time we paused. We checked. There was nothing to find.
We finished the movie.
Day 7 — Sad doesn't stop me
I don't think I'm done being sad.
But I am done letting sad stop me.
There is a difference between sadness being present and sadness being in charge. I don't have to stop missing Ajax before I participate in my life. Moving forward doesn't require leaving him behind.
Ajax can come with me.
There's enough room in my head for all my memories.
They can all live.
I had an absurd thought.
It's like I've been playing a massive immersive video game.
Congratulations! You made it 5 months into Starling Rescue. Good job! Your next rescue will spawn after the current round finishes.
It made me laugh.
Apparently rounds don't have a clear ending condition. I don't know whether there will ever be another starling. I don't know that I need there to be.
But maybe this isn't necessarily the end of that part of me. Maybe somewhere, someday, another ridiculous little bird is going to need somebody who is good at catching flies.
I'd step to that responsibility and cost in a heartbeat.
I only just now remembered the AJAX protocol.
It made me chuckle. I had always associated his name with the Greek hero and Dutch football. I spent so much of my formative years coding with AJAX that I felt a little silly it hadn't occurred to me until now.
Seven days after he disappeared.
Oh. AJAX.
Of course.
There is an accidental joke in the technical meaning too. Asynchronous. Send something out. Continue doing other things. Wait for a response that may arrive later.
I don't need to make it a grand metaphor. It just took the programmer in my head seven days to notice.
I notice that I prefer working on the couch in the living room to working at the desk in my bedroom today.
Normally I like my usual cave.
But today all the windows and skylights feel good.
Surrounded by Sonja and Henri and Jojen and Matilda and Blackbeard.
I'm not done being sad.
My attention is widening again.
There's life outside the box.
Silvaris. Strength in quiet. Quiet as revolution.
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