Mike's birthday

We went down to London today for Larry’s brother Michael’s 60th birthday. Michael has nice friends. They’re Londoners.

So am I. I didn’t realize it until now but I think I’ve always been in Londoner denial. Londoners are so conservative, plain, ordinary. Surrounding London is farm land. London is called the forest city. Because it has plenty of trees. What makes London and Londoners so plain and ordinary?

But Michael’s friends are nice. Maybe being a Londoner isn't such a bad way to be.

Last winter Larry’s brother moved from South London to the Pond Mills area.

As a child, Pond Mills held a mystique for me. I think it’s because for some reason all my teachers through grade school were always talking about Pond Mills. They just couldn’t get enough of talking about the particular geological feature of London that was the ponds of Pond Mills.

Readying to get off the 401 we needed to call ahead to get directions because, even though we’d already been there a few times, we still weren’t sure how to get to Mike’s new place.

Eli was on his cell phone calling ahead. He was describing to Michael where we were. He was looking at the street sign and telling Mike we were on Port Mills. I wanted to scream, you idiot, it’s not Port Mills, it’s Pond Mills!

I think only a Londoner would get so upset, even if it was just inside my head, at this minor little word misreading.

Later in the day, near the end of Jacob taking Larry and me on a walk through a swampy forest area with these cute little wooden walking bridges behind Mike’s and the other people in his subdivision’s houses, an elderly lady called to us from the backyard of one of the houses. Because she could see that Larry was tall and she wanted him to help her get a bird that was stuck in her eaves trough out. You’d never believe; this poor bird had its head stuck in her eaves trough. It was a sparrow.

The lady had one of those square shaped clothes lines with the pole in the middle holding it up going neatly into plain white concrete patio. She had noticed the bird when she was taking her laundry down. But there wasn't any evidence of her laundry having ever been there anymore: like a laundry hamper with white bed sheets folded neatly in it. When I was a little girl growing up in London in another subdivision our square shaped clothes line didn’t go into patio concrete. It just went into regular ground with grass growing out of it.

She brought out this kind of a step ladder I’d never seen before that was shorter than a usual step ladder and with a wheel on one side for Larry to use to get at the bird. Maybe you would call it a half step ladder. But once it was set up for climbing on, the wheel part was no longer functional so you didn’t have to worry Larry was going to roll away.

I was holding the ladder steady anyway, Larry on the top step, but just for the regular reason of holding any ladder steady for the person climbing it. Larry was struggling getting the bird’s head out. He would tug on the bird’s body and the bird would make this loud squawking sound that sounded like what the bird meant by it was, please don’t rip my head off my body.

The lady was saying maybe Larry needed a taller ladder and I was saying the same, because with the short step ladder Larry had to reach up to help the bird and maybe if he got higher he could see better how to get the bird out.

She brought out another step ladder, a regular one, that was taller and without the wheel. Both of them were silver metal.

But then Larry got the bird out without needing to switch ladders. It flew away to a bush at the lady’s neighbour’s house next door. Larry said what he realized was that where the roof met the eaves trough wasn’t firm. So he pulled the eaves trough down and pulled the roof up which allowed the bird to get its head out.

Jacob walked over to where the bird had flown to in the bush and it flew away some more. Larry said the softness of the bird’s feathers felt just like fur, like the soft pet fur of our two new pet kittens which surprised him. He didn’t know bird feathers were going to feel like that.