Daydreaming while walking around Thurston Pond last Sunday, I realized I was feeling quite chipper. It’s always great to walk around the pond, but what in particular was giving me such a lift? Then a bird sang, “Babalu.*” Ahhh. The red-winged blackbirds are back. Spring will come.
When we were in elementary school, we learned that robins are harbingers of spring, and they were, back then.** Our robins don’t necessarily bother to migrate anymore. Red-winged blackbirds still do. They’re among the first birds to come back, as winter wanes, ready to claim territories, build nests, raise babies, and generally get on with life. In my world view, they are harbingers of spring.
More than that, their calls were the soundtrack of carefree days at the lake when we were kids. There was a marsh behind our cottage, and the red-winged blackbird population there was dense. For us, babalu meant all was right with the world.
Turkeys were the birds of interest yesterday. We stopped at what is probably the busiest gas station in town, to find that three tom turkeys*** had taken possession of the sidewalk just outside the door of the associated mini-mart. They weren’t doing anything in particular, just standing around, but they’re big birds and had parked themselves squarely in the pedestrian traffic pattern.
The first customer to come out of the store may or may not have known about the birds before opening the door. She kept the door between her and the birds as much as possible, then hustled off to her car. The next person to run the gauntlet was a robust young man who paused mid-swagger when he saw the turkeys. He decided to approach the door with confidence and hope for the best. It worked.
Next up was a slender, petite woman, who consulted with the young man on his way out. He told her what he’d done, and she gave it a shot. Even lacking his confidence, she slipped into and out of the store without incident.
Complicating the situation, of course, was the fact that the turkeys shifted positions from time to time, kind of like curling stones that moved by themselves. Customers planning their routes through them seemed to concentrate every bit as hard as Olympic curlers.
Our wedding anniversary was this week, and we observed it in our usual way: we dined with another happily married couple. This time, we did that twice. We started with lunch the day before with Rodger, late of Rodger and Anne. Anne died almost ten years ago, and we miss her. She and Rodger had a good marriage, and the two of them were our good friends.
He was perfectly amenable to meeting us for lunch, but he’d forgotten that our tradition was to break bread with other happily married people. He got quite misty when the matter arose in conversation. He’s a fine human being.
On the evening of our anniversary, we celebrated with Cory and Tanya, our delightful neighbors and friends. We went to Cardamom, an Indian restaurant, and Tanya tried something that featured lychee in the name. When she ordered it, the server repeated the name, pronouncing the word lychee as lie-chee instead of the way Tanya pronounced it: lee-chee.
There followed a conversation on the matter. We all agreed we thought the word was pronounced with a long e rather than a long i. It had never occurred to any of us there might be an alternative pronunciation. Then we all realized that lychee was one of those words that we may never have heard pronounced, as it doesn’t often arise in conversation. Lee-chee or lie-chee, Tanya enjoyed her order.
We all enjoyed our orders. The food was delicious and beautiful. Most of all, we enjoyed each other’s company–in curiosity, reminiscence and looking to the future. My sweetheart and I pushed the reset button to start another round of our lives together. We’ve reached forty-eight years and counting. Life in tandem is sweet.
6 March 2026
*Ornithologists tend to describe the calls of red-winged blackbirds as sounding like chirree, which is perfectly reasonable. My ears just don’t hear them that way. No doubt due to the early influence of Desi Arnaz, the babalu rhythm will always supersede the chirree vowel sounds in my head.
**Although it seemed to me that, for our more southerly neighbors, robins were just as legitimately harbingers of autumn. After all, showing up there for fall and winter is what made them harbingers of spring in the North.
***There are various ways to tell male turkeys from female turkeys. In this case, all the toms sported excellent beards.