Mrs. Hornaday! Mrs. Hornaday!

I have joined most in the compulsion to stay close to the cable news and other outlets for news of the rolling disaster in Haiti.  I have in other venues posted on my angst and frustrations, even transiently on this weblog.  I will continue to do so.

But sanity demands a return to collect and focus on other aspects of  life.  There have been more personal losses. The death of three cousins  in December mixing with the joy of discovery of cousins and friends not known before.

Lord the memories! Just the casual mention of a parrot in a book I am reading recalls Mrs. Hornaday's yellow and green "pirate parrot." It was Mrs. Hornaday that gave my father his first job working in her greenhouses and retail shop. He worked for her intermittently until the move to Tulsa.

This parrot was the frustration of my father and I suspect many others. It flew with abandon through the greenhouses leaving droppings and nibbling on mum and other flower buds.  Losses not easily absorbed in the hard times.

As far as I recall the only thing the bird ever said was "Mrs. Hornaday! Mrs. Hornaday! Usually it would be when anyone entered the shop so there was some benefit.  Of course as a child I loved it.  I didn't need to ponder on how this empty headed pretty face repeating only what others said found such a useful role in the greater Gestalt of things.  But then we didn't have T.V. then.

I recall that my mother late in life ceased to want to remember. I think it isolated her to an ungiving present but I now understand. Even the most joyful of memories are accompanied by the pain of loss.

I still miss that bird.