“Blue Nests” by Sarah Trautwein

Bluebirds make me think about cancer. Blue delicate and lively birds make me think about an aggressive recurring disease. Make me think about my mom and my Mawmaw. Make me think about home and time, about time running out. I have a hard time not thinking about cancer because my Mawmaw is gone and my mom just got diagnosed. Not just—it was over a year ago and she’s in remission now, but do you ever get over cancer, or are you always a person waiting for it to return?

My mom had or has cancer and I can’t talk about it, so I think about bluebirds. My Mawmaw told me they were special. She used to stay at our house in the summer time and anytime she came, she stayed in my room. I don’t remember how old I was but I remember I was making the bed for her, changing my cotton sheets to the linen set she liked, when she looked out my window and exclaimed, “Why, there’s a bluebird, you hardly ever see them.”

She set her cream-colored makeup bag down on my window seat and smiled.

“You know, I always wanted to paint a bluebird, a real good, close bluebird because my Mom told me they were special. Didn’t want to paint from a picture though, I wanted to watch the birds,” she said.

I don’t know if I said anything back when she mentioned the bluebird or if we ever talked about it again, but I never forgot what she said and I started looking for the birds year after year. They must have liked the maple outside my window and it meant so much to me they chose that tree out of the world to nest in and be.

I never even thought about collecting bluebirds; never connected that moment to the small flighted objects I have scattered around until I found the first bird— bright baby blue in a dimly lit, overpacked antique store.

I snatched up the bird; this is fenton glass! My mom had the same kind of fenton glass bluebird. It sits on a white painted ledge in her office today, but growing up it was in the kitchen, perched among small ceramic and glass objects she arranged together. I always liked that bluebird, liked that mom told me it was fenton glass which seemed important to know.

One became two.

My second bluebird came from a botanic garden in Pittsburgh. He is a larger ceramic bird with swirls etched on his wings. The third from Nashville, more green than blue, this bird reminds me of a painting. The fourth was from a store I can’t remember now but I think she’s supposed to be a planter, if only I could keep anything alive. The fifth was from Mississippi— a little tiny thing— deep rich blue. The rest I forget at the moment.

My collection of bluebirds was just a collection but then mom got cancer. I knew she had a spot the doctors were worried about. Knew when her appointment was and that “it’s probably nothing.”

But then she called.

Then I saw the first bluebird, my little fenton glass friend.

They caught it early, she was doing so well, it wasn’t like Mawmaw’s. These were the things I kept telling myself. Cancer didn’t have to mean cancer forever, but Mawmaw was gone and we weren’t ready.

So bluebirds have become symbols of my Mawmaw who is gone and my mom I can’t let go. I can’t let go, and not just in the way most people don’t want to watch their mother die. I don’t want to let go at all. I want that room with the bluebirds outside to still be mine in some ways. I want to be there with her when that’s not where I am. Because cancer or not she might fly off like Mawmaw— might become a person my future, my family, might never know.

 I think the writer in me doesn’t help the comparison I’ve made of bluebirds with cancer. I keep thinking of ways our life stages can be poetically likened with birds. How we nest and leave nests, how we come and we go.

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