father Tim's special day

A special brunch awaited father Tim in the backyard today - freshly picked raspberries from our garden, red grapes, baguette with cream cheese and smoked wild salmon, mimosas and coffee. Almost everything, except for the coffee and the salmon, was organic. Jonah ate along with us, seated right at the table behind the house in his high chair. No wasps, which was truly a treat.

I had told Tim a couple of weeks ago that on Father's Day I was taking him and Jonah somewhere and that "somewhere" was a surprise. In fact, the place was a bit of a surprise to me as well since I had only read about it.

After brunch, Jonah napped and we got ready. At two I had scheduled us a tour of the Macaw Landing Wildlife Refuge, located right in Portland, just a twenty-minute drive from our house. The Macaw Landing Foundation is a conservation organization dedicated to the preservation of Macaws, wildlife, and to environmental education. The macaws that have a home at the foundation were placed there by their previous owners who believe that macaws should not be kept as pets and that their birds would be more contented living in the company of other macaws. One of the macaws at the refuge represents a species of which there are only twenty-four alive in the wild!

The refuge houses more than ninety macaws in a public viewing space and is also home to a donkey (which I completely fell in love with), pygmy goats, geese, turtles, snakes, frogs, as well as deer, coyotes, raccoons, beaver, turtles, rabbits. We got to see a list of these creatures. Too bad we forgot our camera!

Tim didn't let me forget that once in my yester years I had the role of a parrot in a college play, directed by one of the drama professors. I took the role because I thought it would look fabulous on a resume. Little did I know that I would get to be a parrot on a stage in New York City!!! In order to prepare for the role, I studied parrots and when my mom would get mad at me, I utilized the cold stare and jerky head motions I had learned from parrots to further irk her.

But back to Father's Day. Jonah thought all the birds were amusing and strange at the same time. He didn't seem to know what to quite think of them. When he saw one by itself sitting on a perch without the distraction of dozens of others shrieking and flapping their wings for attention, he demanded to touch it, but we didn't dare let the two of them make each other's acquaintance.

Since my role as a parrot, I have come to love these birds. Until then, I didn't know that parrots were so smart and could be so loving. When I was pregnant with Jonah, I fell in love with an African grey parrot that was for sale at the pet store where we get our pet food. This bird would bend its head to get it scratched every time I would come by. He seemed to remember me. I cried, feeling terrible for the bird trapped in a cage and tried to convince Tim to let me buy him. $1,500? We can do it, can't we? I insisted. But Tim had barely anything to say about this. His silence discouraged my need to constantly bug him about this poor bird. Pretty soon my emotions cooled. But I still feel terrible for birds that have to live in tiny cages.

In the spirit of working towards wild habitat preservation, the Macaw foundation is affiliated with an ecotourism travel agency called Tropical Nature Travel, whose website and brochures are tantalizing to say the least. Perhaps some day our little family will travel to South America and stay at one of their wilderness lodges in the jungle of Peru or Brazil.

Now that we are home, I miss the birds, but mainly Spekles, the donkey. Maybe I was meant to be an animal care taker. Hopefully I will get to see Speckles and the birds again.

For dinner I cooked steamed vegetable mushroom buns I got an Asian market with teriyaki-style dipping sause I made, steamed broccolli, and fried rice. For dessert there was still some raspberry rhubarb crumble I made from fruit from our garden! After Jonah fell asleep, we made a fire in our garden and finished off the champaigne from the morning.

A Father's Day well-spent, if I may say so myself.