#writingday

We lived in Los Angeles. During the week, I worked. She stayed at home and baked bread and tended to the garden and tended to the parrots she'd bought at a small specialty pet shop two weeks before. Wild parrots live in Pasadena. The drift in the sky in flocks from sunup to sundown and squawk. Watching the wild parrots gave her the idea that she'd like to have a bird of her own. Now that she has two, and the sight of them dozing in their cage only seems to depress her. "What should happen if I set them free? Just wait until some large group of birds was passing by, and just fling them up into the air and hope the wind catches them." "Their wings are clipped," I replied, pulling the casserole out of the oven. We'd had this same conversation almost every night for the past week, but she was fond of the topic and I liked to talk about anything other than my work. Loaves of nearly stale bread littered the kitchen counter and dining table. Bread was all she liked to make, so I cooked dinner. She took a sip of wine, and walked over to her nameless birds. From a dish on the cabinet next to the cage, she picked up several sunflower seeds, and dropped them into the expectant beaks. The parrots began to squawk. I sliced the casserole into squares and put a piece for each of us onto plates. "How about driving to the beach tomorrow?" I said. She spun away from the cage and looked at me. I could tell she was excited. We hadn't drove up the coast in weeks. I'd been too tired. "It'll have to be early," she said, sitting down at the table. I set a plate down in front of her, and kissed her. "It'll be early," I promised. She loved Los Angeles, the birds and the trees, but hated the people and hated the traffic and only liked to go out very early, when the city was empty and misty and blue. During our drive the next morning, as we moved smoothly south on the 110 freeway, she turned to me and she said, "Isn't it wonderful to see the city like this, and imagine it filled with wonderful people. Actors and writers, maybe in the 1930's when cars didn't drive so fast or look so ugly. I probably would've hated it then too, the city filled with people. But it's wonderful to imagine. Everything's so much more wonderful when you only imagine it in your head." I agreed, and she turned away again to smile at the passing view.