The Bird In My Wall

Barns, Birds and Mistaken Identities

Small story for you.

For about a year, early in the pandemic, I lived alone in a barn. I’d lived in Brooklyn for 20 years and then I rented a regular (very cozy) apartment set into a corner of this cavernous, 3000-square-foot 18th century barn. I was on my own on a big, beautiful property.

My bed was up against the external barn wall, so I slept right next to the rest of the world— all that grass and quiet. The quiet felt kind of strange, because I’d been falling asleep to traffic and neighbors’ parties for 20 years.

And then in the early spring, I made a friend.

For a few weeks running, I started getting up at 6:30am, and about an hour later I would hear this very sweet bird tweeting right outside my bedroom, clear as day.

In my alone-ness, I pretty much talked to everything, so I got in the habit of saying out loud, "good morning, tweety bird.” I was pleased that the tweety bird and I got up around the same time. He felt like my morning buddy. He would tweet for about an hour and then stop. I presumed he flew off to have his day.

I wondered if the bird had made his nest in my external wall. I also thought curiously about the internal clocks of birds-- am I waking up the bird when I get up? Or does a bird just "know" to get up?

It wasn't until one morning, when I slept in, that I discovered:

There was no bird, my friends.

IT WAS MY ALARM CLOCK.

3 weeks earlier I’d set an alarm for 7:30am, and apparently chose "bird sounds,” and then IMMEDIATELY forgot about it. And so the next morning I heard that sound, coming from my bedroom, and decided that I lived with a friendly, very punctual bird. I’d been singing good morning to my own alarm clock like a damned Disney princess for 3 weeks.

When I figured this out, I couldn’t stop laughing at myself. But you know what? I didn’t turn off the alarm! I was kind of attached to my tweety bird. And three years later, I live in a city, I have actual neighbors who do in fact have parties, but I still have the bird sound set on my alarm clock.

I think I’d miss him otherwise.

The barn in question.

There’s no moral to this story, when I tell it. It’s usually just to show how absentminded I can be.

But if I dig around in there, I also start to think: maybe it’s a story about loneliness. About being a lifelong city dweller on my own in the country, finding friends however I can.

Then again, it could also be about finding joy and absurdity in a very tough moment. Or about how my imagination goes for the story every time, rather than the straightforward explanation.

Honestly, it’s all of those.

Sometimes a story doesn’t have to start with a Deeper Meaning (TM) to be worth telling— it’s just fun to tell, and we might find meaning in the telling. And a story doesn’t have One True Meaning (TM). Depends where you tell it, and to whom, and why.

And sometimes it’s just a bird in your wall.

What stories do you like to tell, “meaningful” or not? What do those stories tell you about yourself, and how you see the world?