Perhaps even worse than his track record of half-finished undertakings is my father's habit of caving to his children's most ridiculous whims...several months after they have forgotten them. When I was 16 I visited a pet store and decided that I wanted a pet bird. I fantasized about it flying around my room and perching itself on my finger, softly serenading me as I awoke each morning. We would be the best of friends my bird and I. But my parents weren't so keen on the idea. They weren't going to pay for it and insisted that I was not responsible enough to care for yet another pet. I reasoned with them (begged) and then sulked for about a week until I got over it.
One Saturday morning, maybe 4 months after I had lost sight of my dream of owning a bird and had moved on to something else equally frivolous, my father arrived at home with a birdcage. He had found it at a yard sale for only $10 and excitedly handed it to me exclaiming that I could now get that bird I wanted. That bird I wanted 4 months ago! When I hesitantly informed him that my desire for a pet bird had long since subsided he broke out in a fit of anger. Immediately he began shaking his finger in my face, screaming about what a "goddamn ungrateful, spoiled brat" I was, as saliva flew every which way from his mouth. After he had gone to all the trouble of happening upon a super cheap birdcage, this is the thanks he got?! He ended his long-winded scolding with an ultimatum: either I go buy myself a goddamn bird, or I reimburse him for the cost of the cage and find something to do with it. I foolishly opted for the first choice. A few days later I went to Petco and picked out a lovely blue parakeet. It turned out nothing like my fantasy - that bird was a bastard! Every time I opened the cage door and gently attempted to coax him onto my finger he would bite me and then retreat to the furthest corner of the cage. He slept all day and then would make a terrible racket fluttering about as I tried to sleep each night. Worst of all were the terrible odor emitting from his cage and the constant whirl of sawdust flying about my room. After just a couple of months I had had it and promptly moved the birdcage outside to hang from a hook on our front porch. This way he could get some sunshine and I could rid my room of that awful bird smell. Now, I'm quite forgetful and irresponsible, and was even more so at the age of 16. By moving it from my room to the communal area of the front porch I felt I had been relinquished of all responsibility for the bird and quickly forgot that I ever owned such a creature. The fact that I did, however, was precipitously brought to my attention one morning by the screams of my mother, who had found the neglected bird lying, cold and hard, on its side in the middle of the cage. Its water bowl was completely dry and its food dish empty. How long had the poor thing been deprived of nourishment? Hadn't I been feeding him?! He was after all, my bird!
***
After returning home from a brief stint in New York I spent the spring broke and unemployed. To entertain myself I took up projects around the house. I single-handedly transformed the concrete swamp in our backyard back into a crystal clear swimming pool in just a few short weeks. In addition, I took to tending the family garden, picking ripe vegetables every so often for my mom to incorporate into our family dinners. The majority of my days were spent sunbathing and enjoying the pool I had worked so hard to transform. Spending so much time outdoors made me yearn for a beautiful, botanic backyard. i decided that a surefire way to get the yard looking more like a garden and less like a lumber yard would be with the addition of a pond. When I informed my parents of my desire to build a pond in our backyard they questioned my sanity. Did I know how much work it is to keep up a pond? And I was gonna build it myself?! No way! I must be crazy! I tried to paint for them the picturesque ambiance it would provide for our backyard picnics and barbecues - which we'd surely adopt once we had a proper setting; but they weren't having it. When I explained that a small lagoon would prove a lovely new home for the water turtles currently trapped in the small aquarium in my sister's room, they countered with the high probability that said turtles would make a lovely meal for local cats and birds. I assured them that I'd find a way to ensure the animals' safety and proceeded to show them the step-by-step pond building instructions I had found on the Internet. I could build it no problem if they'd only buy the materials. They didn't. I moved on.
Long after I'd forgotten my pond-building inclinations, my father randomly brought home a pond shell. I wasn't even living with them anymore! I had come over to visit one day when he called me out to the backyard, he had something to show me. I walked outside to discover my dad holding a large, awkwardly shaped, black plastic basin. Perplexed, I asked, "what the heck is that?" "Its a pond shell!" he explained. "One of my customers was getting rid of it and I remembered that you girls wanted to build a pond, so I took it." He smiled, proud of his gesture. Flabbergasted by this presentation of something that I once again did not remember I had wanted, I responded, "uh...thanks...but that was nearly a year ago..." Once again he was left astonished and angry, and I was lectured. To this day the pond shell remains in the garage, housing the pool cleaning equipment. It sits just next to the birdcage that was once home to the blue parakeet I killed, serving as a reminder of the caprice of both my father and I.
