Denny O'Neill reached for his cup of tea thick with cream, his accordian set to the side of his chair. He was a heavy set Irishman who had had a good life in Chicago. Annie, his wife and still his Donegal girl after thirty years of marriage and seven children, had placed a matching cup at my hand. We had been practicing for a St. Pat's gig at a Lyons Club event in Skokie. Dennis was reminiscing about a fiddle he had won in a poker game and as he talked, the conversation drifted to a point he often came to in his conversations. A loss from which he never fully recovered. "Ah, my Margeret was the fiddler. We played together all the time. From when she was 10 years old . And even when she was in high school she would often choose to stay home and play music when she could have gone out." He set his cup back into the saucer and added more cream. "We played together all the time until she went away to college..." And here his voice tapered off... "And then she died." I had never asked for any details about this, only listened. And Annie sat down at the table with a heavy sigh. It was a burden they bore together. But for once Dennis continued...
"She went away to college." He said quietly. "And didn't we miss her. Where ever she was, there was music." Annie nodded and sipped her tea. "Then one day we got a call from the college. She was sick and in the hospital. It had happened very suddenly and they wanted us to come right away." His voice was so soft and so low I had to lean forward to catch his words.
"Well it was a four hour drive and by the time we got there, she had already died. We didn't know what to do but a friend of hers was there and she suggested we go to Margaret's room so we went to the dormitory where she was staying."
Now Annie took up the narrative in her lilting voice. "We went in the room and there was a birdcage by the bed. A wild bird had flown into her room and she had caught it and put it in the cage."
I gasped and put my hand over my mouth. "The little bird was dead in the cage," said Annie.
Gooseflesh rose up on my arms. "A wild bird in the house means a death," I said.
Dennis nodded his head. "That's what the nuns said." He sighed. "She didn't know." said Annie.
I thought of my mother. If a bird came into our house, a swallow or a swift down the chimney, or some house finch through an open window, her panic would turn the house upside down until the bird was returned to the outdoors unharmed. But that was nothing compared to the presence of the mourning dove, that wild and gentle bird whose soft calls are part of every summer.
It was 1918 and my mother was 6 years old. Her 8 year old sister Virginia was sick with an earache that had gone on for several days. Pop and Mom had a house and a couple of acres up some dark hollow, a narrow strip of ground enough for a garden, a patch of grass for a cow, and mostly the tangled woods. Since the earache had begun it seemed that the doves had been calling nonstop throughout the day. And now they were gathering on the roof of the house.
My grandmother tried chasing them away but they only came back, adding their calls to the cries of the sick child. My mother said that Grandmother finally ran into the barn and stuffed her apron over her ears to shut out the sound. And then it was over. Virginia died and within minutes of her passing, the doves flew away.
That was it with Ma. She wouldn't even let a canary into the house. My Dad who loved birds had to confine his collecting to chickens and pigeons.