Cockatoos are affectionately known in the world of parrot pet owners as love sponges. With a cutthroat squawk, these needy birds will happily soak up their owner’s attention 24/7 if possible.
My husband and I started our family with a pair of cockatoos and built them a cage, fitting it into a three-sided space in our home’s guest bedroom, originally meant to function as a desk. We stretched a wired panel, inserted climbing rods at even intervals, and strung these rods with toys for the two birds to jingle and twist.
The cockatoos were gifted away, and the cage dismantled a few months later due to my newly discovered allergy to these birds. Less than two years later, my son was born, and I was thankful the birds were gone since, altogether, the birds and my son would have conjured up a monstrous vocal competition. All these tiny bodies full of lung.
Now I only had one love sponge to deal with. He woke me at 2, 4, and 6 AM, and often in between, to suck the living life out of me. It took us a couple weeks to realize I wasn’t making enough milk as he lost weight too quickly and began to cry through the night, inconsolable until my husband rode into town for a jar of powdered infant formula. He rocked our son to sleep that night after the love sponge consumed four ounces, the last few drops lingering in the corners of his downturned mouth.
My husband let me sleep and rest my sore gummed breasts. And he didn’t wake me the next morning. He didn’t go to work. He spent all day feeding and rocking, listening to our son’s soundless coos.
I caught them in their act of worship around 4PM, after my husband had already vacuumed the living room, cleaned the kitchen, washed two loads of laundry, and watched a half dozen re-runs on TV Land. Still tired, I crumbled onto our yellow couch and drifted into an episode of Bewitched as everything went blurry again.
I loved that couch. It had a low back that ended before the seat cushion did, trailing off an extra foot, somewhat like the body of a chaise. It also had a large, slanted arm that could double as a headrest when lying down, and tapered wood legs with brass tips. My husband christened it about a year into our marriage, his drunken body hanging over the side vomiting into a bucket mumbling I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. He’d been gone half the night leaving me to worry, waking the next afternoon with a hangover on our couch.
I woke with a backache from sitting on my knees—seven months pregnant—making sure his tortured soul didn’t get bile on the carpet. I knew less what to do with fact #1 He is drunk out of his mind, a little what to do with fact #2 He was sorry, and more what to do with fact #3 I’m pregnant.
I did what I imagine most young, impoverished women do at times like this: hope for the best because there are no other options. This wouldn’t be the last time he went missing while I cycled between waking, watching TV, cooking, cleaning, and sleeping. In the spring of the new millennia, my newborn son would take the whole of my attention. Those days, I was all future planning, fitting bars to various cupboards and hallways; dressing windows, mattresses, cushions, and floors; stringing stuffed animals and rattles and monitors and my mom’s homemade needlepoint opus all over the place. Always calculating risk, possibilities, and consequences to keep my offspring healthy and safe.
One day, before we got rid of the cockatoos, my husband had come home with a small whicker enclosure for their cage, explaining to me that the female was actively stock piling filament to create a nest, so he bought her one. But he didn’t plan to let her hatch the babies, he explained. He would steal her eggs and destroy them, he said.
Nevertheless, he added—with soft practicality—she needs to do this. She needs to nest. And she did.
