If Sweet William were human he’d be a teenage punk rocker. He’s happiest in cacophony and rages against authority -- no request is accepted without question or incentive. If he were forming words (that he understood the meaning of) I’m positive he’d curse like a sailor in labor.
“Turn that music down, son, and clean up your room.” He defiantly bobs his head up and down. No response. “I said,” unsuccessfully yelling over The Dead Kennedys, ‘California uber alles, California uber alles….’ (I would hope he’d have more eclectic taste than the DK’s, but he’s never been an eclectus, and I guess conures follow the flock. Besides, what is punk except conformity to a set of rules that calls itself individualism?) Raising my voice as loud as possible, “I said, clean up your damn room! It’s a pig sty in there, young man.” “It’s my fucking room, why do you care? All you do is try to make me do shit – I’m not your fucking maid.” Then I scream more, and he screams more. We both scream.
I walk over to his boombox and turn it off altogether. He shuts up and glares at me, hair short and spiky, jeans ripped down the thigh and held together with safety pins. I know this is the payback I get for doing pretty much the same thing to my folks, except I didn’t curse around them and we had a housekeeper, so, like so many of my crowd I was just mad they made me clean the pool.
He grabs his skateboard, “Eat asphalt, asshole” scrawled in black sharpie on the bottom, the ‘o’ embellished with the symbol for anarchy, and storms out of the house. I know he’ll skate for hours, taking flight off curbs and buzzing lightening fast through parking ramps. I have to confess it sounds amazing and if I could, I’d probably do it too. But I worry.
I look through his room and find he’s ripped every other page out of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” I’d given it to him as a present, thinking he’d identify with Holden Caulfield, but I guess he was becoming quite the critic. I know he read at least some of it because, if nothing else, he’d gleaned the new swear word ‘asswipe.’ I have to grin. When I read it, I too, was pleased with the addition to my vocabulary.
When he returns, having gone who knows where and torn up who knows what, he slumps down in front of the tv and turns on an Everybody Loves Raymond rerun, mostly, I suspect, because he knows the inane show makes me want to puke. He glowers, filled with more angst than anger. I poke my head in the living room, “Hey, how’s the mayor of the Island of Dr. Morose?” I get the eye roll.
“I made walnut loaf, topped with sesame seeds. Mangoes and grapes for dessert.”
He can’t help himself. Although he longs to break free, to skim over trees and to bask in the real sunshine and cool wind, he’s lured in by the temptation of his favorite food and the comfort of his home. Once fed and happy he cuddles up, ready to be loved.
Sir Sweet William. My little brat. I’d love it if he’d behave himself, stop screaming so much, stop ripping up everything from Jane Eyre to junk mail, but he has no choice, really. It’s who he is. He’s a wild animal contained by a quirk of fate. I can either love and accept him for that or lock him in a cage and neglect him. (Social services would really frown on that approach if he were human, but as it is he’s a bird and there’s no law against that kind of cruelty, even though there ought to be.)
As well as tearing shit up and shitting wherever he pleases, he wants to play and talk and snuggle. When he sits on my shoulder, bobs his head up and down fast and then laughs when I do, I fall in love every time. I do my best to keep him happy: I play loud music, give him seed balls and make sure he never runs out of things to destroy. And that's the best a parent can do.
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