I had a lovely Mother’s Day and I hope you did, too. I got many treats over the weekend and this morning was served breakfast in bed. Luke came in carrying my oatmeal. He was followed by Milo holding out an apple and then Levi who came bearing fruit snacks.

We visited Luke’s parents this morning and attended their church. In his sermon, my father-in-law referred to mothers as warriors. I loved that- so affirming and apt. The thing that surprised me the most about being a mom is the bravery that is required. That much love and responsibility puts you in a very vulnerable position. You have to be very brave to survive having your heart walk around outside your body for the rest of your life.

This morning as I was digging in the front landscaping bed, Levi called out to me. I walked around the corner of the house and found him near the front porch, bent at the waist, studying the form of a small bird. It had beautiful blue feathers. It was dead.

There were no apparent injuries but I still got a shiver from the sight. Normally, I would have left it alone and just waited for Lucas to return and take care of it. However, the boys were quite intrigued and the bird was right where I was going to be working next. I screwed up my courage and declared that we would bury it. I suggested that Levi dig the hole. If there are two things Levi loves, it’s digging and being useful.  He readily agreed to my idea.

Levi showing off his special tulip. He had found the bulb and unbeknownst to me, planted it.

As I tried my best to keep from appearing squeamish, we used a shovel to nudge the bird into a paper bag. Milo murmured, “Poor Birdie.” Levi buried it and said something about heaven. Milo asked, “Where’s heaven?” Levi answered matter-of-factly, “It’s where you go when you die.” That answer was apparently sufficient. There were no follow-up questions.

He was so excited when it started to come up and then was even more excited when it bloomed.

Later, after washing up and having a snack, we came back outside. Levi said, “Maybe we should put a sign here where we found it so we can remember.” He went on to say, “I feel kind of like we should pray for the bird.” Levi has never been to a funeral so I was surprised that his spontaneous response was to have a graveside service. While I certainly didn’t want a sign that said, “DEAD BIRD” next to our front porch, I was very happy that his first inclination was to pray.

Unfortunately, he had planted it right next to the sidewalk. we convinced him to transplant it to a pot. It seems quite happy there.

After a second spent asking myself, “How, in fact, does one pray for a dead bird?” I fought the urge to overthink it and said, “Dear Jesus, thank you for making such a beautiful bird. Thank you that we got to help take care of it. Amen.” Levi said, “That was a good prayer to say.” What a sweet boy and what a lovely way to say an ‘Amen.’
Part of me was feeling as if I should give a ‘Circle of Life’ lecture of sorts but before I could start one, the boys ran off to get their scooters.  I was glad that I had kept my mouth shut. They seemed to have a handle on the situation just fine.  Then I congratulated myself for being so incredibly brave as to bury a dead bird and got back to work on the landscaping.

Learning to talk has been a little tricky for Milo but he has made up a lot of ground in the past year. I’m so happy to hear him participate in conversations now even though he is still working out the kinks of speaking.

He often omits letters saying ‘pider’ for ‘spider’ and mixes up some consonants, saying ‘tar’ instead of ‘car’ and ‘dere’ for ‘there’. Milo also has lately become efficient and creative with prounouns. For instance, ‘you’, ‘your’, and ‘you’re’ are all the same word: ‘yous’. For ‘my’ and ‘mine’ he says, “My’s.” ‘I’ is “I’s’, etc.
Heard from him today:
“Yous give me dem toys, Mommy?”
“My’s sammich on da floor. I’s drop it.”
“Dose yous shoes? I like dem.”

All in all, he basically sounds like a Chicago mobster. He even prolongs the ‘s’ at the end of words. It’s adorable

“I’s tree yearssss old!”

My hometown is 55 miles south of Chicago’s loop. It is still insulated from the metro by an ever shrinking band of soybean acreage. Even though I grew up visiting often, watching Chicago news, reading the Trib, and living in a house with high property taxes due to our proximity, Chicago felt separate. The feeling was mutual: Chicagoans consider anything outside of the city proper to be ‘Downstate.’

Imagine my surprise to find, after I had moved away, that I had a minor accent. In my mind, a Chicago accent was Mayor Daley or my great aunts and uncles that live in the city (who sound like a only slightly less exaggerated SNL Super Fans sketch). I moved here and found myself having a protracted and confused conversation with someone who thought I was saying ‘black walls’ when I was actually saying, ‘block walls.’ Then there was the poor child at vacation bible school who asked me why I prayed to ‘Gad’ and everyone else prayed to God.

I also started to notice that people here did not feel the need to add in extra prepositions. Back home, it’s “Where are you at?” or “It’s over by there” versus “Where are you” and “It’s over there.” Think of the time everyone in Chicagoland could save if we streamlined!

My kids are growing up in Kansas, the land of No Accent. They will speak neutrally. But until Milo has figured speech out, I’m going to continue to get a kick out my three year old who sounds like a union rep from the South Side.