Tiny wings of blue and white, her beak a dark gray, I call her Millie Bird. Millie was my grandmother's name, so I suppose it was just a name I was familiar and keen to. She landed on my windowsill as I baked, every morning, ten a.m. on the dot! I swear she knew the time. As though she carried a little sportswatch like the one my son used to own when he was smaller. And every morning she kept me company, pecking at seeds I'd laid out for her, and at the tiny dish of water. She was never scared, even when I came so close I could feel the flutter of tiny silk feathers on the tip of my nose.

My husband died several years ago when he was forty-two, God only takes the good ones. I was forty-one. The shock and pain of losing him led me to think I would follow shortly after. I thought that if his life were over then so were mine. My only son was in the Airforce at the time, I hadn't wanted him to go. But children, they never listen. He left anyway, and I stayed up day and night, wringing my hands together in fear that he'd never come home again. My husband died instead. I think he took his place. I recall the same week, getting a letter in the mail, a breathy and frantic scrawl of a near encounter with death, a bullet past his face, his plane shot down, just barely evacuating by parachute in time, debris flying by his head, a piece of metal through his shoulder, barely missing his heart. Hardly four days later, my husband was hit by a car that had flipped off the side of the road. He had been pulling weeds in our yard.

My boy came home safely to me three years later. I think his father would've been proud. It made sense then. But alone in that house, wondering every day whether or not he'd live or die, whether or not he'd leave me too, I could hardly take it.

Millie bird was pink a lump of skin when I found her. Lying below the nest in dead grass. I was startled by the thought that I could've stepped on her and been none the wiser. I tried to put her back in, but found her in the same place the next morning. Only later did I read that mother's may reject the weak ones, or that once they've been touched by a human, they'll never take their baby back. I still don't know if I believe that completely. Tales of boys raised by wolves leads me to think that maternal instinct is a variable depending on the individual, same with humans. Some know only the joys of motherhood while others know only the bills of abortion. Nothing is ever for certain in this world, not even life.

I kept her in my home then, reading up on birds to see how to care for her. I made her a bed of soft things and made sure it was warm for her. I fed her smashed berries and worms, the worms I admit were a little harder to deal with. When she was old enough she tried flying and failed. Instead, she skipped around on her two feet, a bundle of fluff and feathers now, sitting on the window sill and gazing up intently at the sky. She learned on her own eventually, and would fly circles around the house, stopping only to eat and look up at me, beady eyes, and head cocked to the side.

My sweet Millie bird, she gave me purpose for the years I waited for my son to come home. In the winter I kept her inside, letting her fly about the place, making it smell of bird feces and wet animal. Birds can be dirty creatures. They're dusty and leave behind loads of dandruff and feathers and well, goopy poop, but they're adorable and majestical when you're not cleaning up after them. The year my son came home, she flew away, escaped through an open window in his room, my poor son felt terrible but didn't know any better. I was torn between the grief of losing Millie Bird, that had given me a temporary sense of purpose until I could be whole again, and knowing that I already was whole again, my son was home. I was whole. I didn't need that temporary purpose anymore, but that didn't mean I didn't want Millie back.

She came back the next spring. To my happy surprise.

And to this day she stops at my window sill every morning, head cocked to the side and looks up at me with those beady eyes.