The Cardboard Bird
By Rebecca Moran
@rebecca_m_writes
My father was seated in “his chair” at our small dining room table after dinner one night when I was eight. The table was round, but his strong presence—the advice he doled out, his loud laugh, and the barks he emitted when my brother and I pushed his buttons, combined with his towering six-foot, three-inch frame—made his seat the unrefuted head of the table. This particular night, after hearing me complain about having to clean up my toys, he began one of his famous soliloquies with his trademark, “You know, Beck, when I was a kid …”
I’m sure I sighed, bracing myself for a lengthy lecture. But instead, he said matter-of-factly, “I didn’t have any stuffed animals. I slept with a cardboard bird.”
I gasped, then laughed, sure this couldn’t possibly be a true story but rather the beginning of one of those parables adults used to teach children lessons.
“I’m serious!” he said, smiling. “I was about your age. We had one of those orange Hartz bird seed boxes, and it had a yellow parakeet on the front. I cut it out and put it near my pillow so I could snuggle with it at night.”
My eyes grew wide.
“You should be grateful you have stuffed animals to clean up,” he continued. “I would have loved a stuffed animal to clean up.”
I couldn’t imagine life without my cuddly, plush friends, who kept me warm while I slept and provided comfort when I needed it. Still unsure whether my dad had made up this tale, I looked at my mom, who has a terrible poker face. She nodded.
“Grandma and Grandpa called them dust collectors,” he continued. “You know how they are—everything in their house had to be spotless. Christ, Grandpa used to put on a white glove and run his finger along the furniture to check for dust when he got home from work,” he said matter-of-factly. “He thought he was still in the Navy.”
“Dad, that’s so sad!” I leaned toward him with empathy, envisioning my big, unmovable father as a lonely, sad child.
My dad laughed and shrugged. “Hey, I made do with what I had. You do what you gotta do.” He picked up his fork and resumed eating—a sign the conversation was over.
Through the years, I learned my father “made do” with a lot as a child.
My grandpa was a wonderful man in many ways: he loved to tell jokes, teach us inappropriate songs for our age, and lead singalongs with his harmonica. He rarely showed emotion, but could never contain his childlike excitement when the Christmas season arrived. Whether he was listening to a carol on the radio, watching a holiday classic, or gazing at his Christmas tree, he wore a broad smile on his face throughout every December.
But he was a World War II veteran, a child of the Great Depression, and suffered from severe anxiety that many in my family suspected was obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was demanding, expecting dinner on the table and a spotless home every night when he returned from work at the local tool factory.
The white-glove inspection was just one of the many trials my grandfather put my grandmother through. She tried to leave him twice, but with no education, job, or driver’s license, she had few options. As the years passed, my grandfather wore her down, and she became more like him—a stoic perfectionist.
When I was five, I proudly presented my grandmother with a picture I had colored for her. She held up the coloring book page to inspect it and shook her head.
“You know, Becky, you’re supposed to stay inside the lines.”
My smile faded, and I nodded, fighting back tears. My parents remained quiet, and I wondered if they agreed with her. Shame replaced my pride, and I noticed for the first time the smudges of color crossing the thick black lines.
As I grew older, I realized my parents’ silence said more about their unwillingness to engage in unproductive conflict than it did about my messy coloring. In both my grandparents’ and parents’ homes, so much more was choked down than said. It’s how my grandmother, and then my father, survived.
My father’s stories around the table were how he opened up to us kids and gave us a rare glimpse into his emotions as both a child and adult.
Through these stories, I learned my grandmother suffered a “nervous breakdown” in her early twenties, a few years after my dad’s older brother was born. She was briefly institutionalized and underwent electric shock therapy, then became part of the 1960s housewife Valium generation. Focused on keeping the house perfect and battling her own demons, she was largely absent in my father’s life as he grew up, rarely engaging with him or showing affection.
Many years later, my dad and I sat with my two kids at my own kitchen table. After listening to the kids rave about the sports they were playing that season, my father began to talk about his own experience playing baseball. I knew he played as a kid, but was surprised to learn he’d played for ten years, all throughout his childhood and teen years.
“I’m surprised Grandma and Grandpa let you play, given how uninvolved they were,” I said.
“Well, they only ever came to one game,” he said, shaking his head. “I rode my bike to and from practice and games. They weren’t inconvenienced, so they didn’t care.”
I thought about how my son would feel if I didn’t cheer him on from the bleachers as he dribbled a basketball down the court, or my daughter’s face if I missed the first time she nailed a handstand during gymnastics class. I struggled to imagine it, though, because all I knew was the opposite: how excited I felt every time I spotted my father at one of my activities. Despite working twelve-hour night shifts and getting four hours of sleep, he showed up to support my brother and I at school awards ceremonies, Girl and Boy Scouts events, band concerts, and my softball games. Decades later, following in my dad’s footsteps, I block my calendar, shift personal appointments, and reschedule work meetings so I can do the same for my kids.
The stories my father has told me help me better understand his perfectionism, anxiety, and rare displays of emotion. They also make the fact that he is affectionate, generous, outgoing, and funny seem somewhat miraculous.
He once told me he makes a conscious decision every day to learn from his parents’ mistakes and not repeat them. He taught my brother and me to do the same. When we’d mess up, my father would sit us down to talk it through. “What have you learned?” he’d ask, then would wrap up the conversation with, “Okay, let’s move on.”
I, too, have chosen to avoid repeating history and build on my father’s legacy of breaking generational cycles. I’m adventurous, communicate openly with friends and family, and accept my home will never be pristine with two kids and three dogs on the loose. Instead of staying silent to keep the peace, I make sure my kids know they have me on their side; speaking up without hesitation when an aunt called my assertive daughter “bossy” and a kid said my (much younger) son was “dumb” for failing to know the in’s and out’s of Pokémon.
But my father’s lessons have also defined much of who I am today.
I suspect this is the reason we’ve all grown to love the story of the cardboard bird as much as my dad does. The bird has become our unofficial family mascot, a symbol of both what my father purposefully left behind in his childhood home and the incredible resilience and resourcefulness he passed on to my brother and me.
That I hope to pass on to my children as well.
I’m at the kitchen table, planning my week, when my son shuffles over. “Mom, I’m bored,” he whines.
“How can you be bored? You have a whole playroom of toys!” I retort, just as I have many times before.
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I put down my pen and guide him into his crowded playroom, which he surveys half heartedly before looking up at me as if to say, “See? Nothing to do.”
Then, I find myself continuing, “You know, Jaxon, when Grandpa was a kid, he didn’t have any stuffed animals to play with …”
Guest essay written by Rebecca Moran. Rebecca is a mother, editor, writer, and semi-recovering shoe addict. She lives with her husband, twin daughter and son, and three feisty dogs outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications and sites including Glamour, Connecticut magazine, Gawker, PR Daily, and Scary Mommy. When she isn't writing and doing all the mom things, she's likely curled up with a book and coffee, running, or practicing beginner hand lettering. You can connect with her on Instagram.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.