Just a Sunbird
OUR IRIDESCENT, HOVERING redeemer is just a sunbird, a very small passerine flyer of nectar-gathering propensities. It levitates at my son’s window at dawn and at dusk. I think it is crepuscular.
Tamsen giggles whenever that tiny critter appears at his sill. He lets out a laugh that belies his eleven years. When our fluttering apparition appears, my son sounds five or six, his deepening voice becoming a small child’s giggle and his vocal pitch morphing into that of a preschooler’s. What’s more, Tamsen repeatedly claps and waves at the bird until he slumps so much that Nora has to pull him back up in his chair.
Afternoons, when he is returned to us by the adaptive school bus, Nora wheels him back into his room, where he insists on scouting his window. Most often, his patie
