Pride and Joy

short fiction

I haven’t written many stories about motherhood. Yet. But this one from the archive might resonate for some of you this Mother’s Day.

A little reminder that there is so much power in caring.

Even when that care goes unnoticed. 💜

Truly yours,

Mom O.

Photo by Chris Slupski on Unsplash

Pride and Joy

originally published August 2025

The thwack of flesh and feathers against the kitchen window snaps Joy out of her dark hypnosis.

She blinks back into the room, scans herself for injury, and takes an intentional breath inward, testing the functionality of her lungs. Her heart is hard at work already.

She releases her grip on the soapy handle of the paring knife and lets it fall into the murky dishwater below. While her mind is suddenly steady, her hands shake with anticipation as she dries them roughly on her thighs and backside.

Eager to bury the bird before the neighbor’s cat disembowels it on her front stoop, she fishes a plastic bag out of the drawer and hurries outside.

She spots the body on the concrete patio. A pristine specimen of … bird.

Joy doesn’t bother identifying birds anymore. She doesn’t see the point. They’re just birds. And cats are just cats. Dogs are just dogs. People are just people. And none of them have ever cared to identify her unique markings or marvel at her plumage or listen to her carefully composed songs. So, there’s little love lost among them.

Joy squats down next to the bird and grits her teeth.

It’s probably diseased. With something deadly.

For someone who thinks fondly about death every day, Joy remains, at her core, stubbornly fearful of its grip. It’s finality.

With her hand covered in plastic she reaches for the bird. At the first hint of pressure from her fingers the creature springs to life with an anguished chirp.

“Jesus!” Joy falls onto her rear end backing away from the feathered demon she resurrected on her patio.

The bird chirps again and flaps its one functional wing, setting itself spinning in a deranged circle in front of her.

“It’s okay,” Joy says softly. “I’ve got you.”

Her stomach feels warm and full at the sight of the bird in need. The feeling unsettles her. As does the rush of warmth to her face and the subtle ache in her heart. The sturdiness in her fingers.

“Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Joy scrambles to her feet and rushes to the garage, scanning the yard for “cat” as she goes.

She fights through decades of weatherworn junk, cursing her parents for leaving her all of their garbage, cursing her children for forgetting their promise to help her clean out the garage after their father moved out. Cursing her husband for not being patient with her. Not being willing to wait while she dealt with all of it. All the garbage. All the death. All the change.

She begins to worry she’s left the bird alone too long. That it’s been devoured. Ripped apart by the world around it. Or that it simply lost hope that Joy would return.

The item she’s searching for appears like a rusted beacon, wedged between a badly beaten guitar case and her ex-husband’s leaf blower.

She wrenches the cage out and coughs over a cloud of mildew dust expelled by the extraction. She moves quicky, still plagued by an insistent warmth under her skin. A pulsing drive to act. To follow through. A simple call.

She is needed.

By a stupid, window-crashing bird, yes. But still. It’s better than not being needed at all.

The bird is still intact when Joy arrives at the patio. Intact but clearly exhausted. His attempts to fly away have failed more times than his fragile body, or his minute spirit, can handle.

“I know,” Joy surprises herself by saying.

The cage is in rough shape. Dented in several places and covered in dried cockatiel shit. Why Joy kept the cage after her bird Pavarotti escaped eight years ago is a mystery. The loss had struck her more forcefully than even the loss of her parents. Or the break in her marriage. Or the emptiness of her own nest. Why did she keep the thing that reminded her so much of her departed companion? Why not throw it out?

And in that case, why not sell her parents’ house? Stop paying her kids’ bills? Stop begging her husband to come back?

Why not sharpen the paring knife?

The bird chirps and Joy’s heart rebounds in her chest again. Her cheeks flush with purpose and she doesn’t flinch as she picks up the exhausted bird with her bare hands and sets him gently on the floor of the cage.

“It’s not much,” she tells him. “But it’s better than nothing.”

Joy brings the caged bird into the house. She has no plan for how to care for it. Just the instinct she’s always relied on. To care for things. To care about things and people. She used to think she was good at caring, until she discovered how easy it was to not care at all. And how little a difference it made to the world whether she cared or not.

She finds a large cardboard box and makes a temporary enclosure for the bird. While he rests there, water and frozen peas within reach, Joy sets to scrubbing the memory of Pavarotti from the rusted bars of the cockatiel cage.

The heat in her stomach presses its way into her lungs and up into her throat where it makes her eyes water until they overflow. She sobs and scrubs and chokes on her buried grief until the cage is like new again, save for the dents and faded paint.

She moves her wounded friend into his new home and returns to washing dishes. Then she cooks dinner for herself and Danny.

For the next several weeks, Joy oversees Danny’s recovery. She learns he is a simple house sparrow, but she tells him he doesn’t have to accept that. He can be anything. He can be a cardinal or an eagle or an albatross or goddamned cat if he wants to.

She records his movements, his growth, his singing, and shares parcels of the experience on social media. Not because she thinks anyone will see it. Or care. She doesn’t have many followers, and even fewer friends. But she wants to tell Danny’s story. And she wants that story to matter. She wants it to matter that he’d nearly died and come back from it. That he is thriving, despite the universe’s attempt to dispose of him.

Danny’s company, his progress, and his reliance on her care are enough to keep Joy’s heart beating. To bring the dormant blush back to her sallow cheeks. To coax her lost voice from out of the dark wings of her gut and into her chest, where it can easily make the short trip north across her throat, tongue, and lips.

For the first time in years, Joy sings. She sings because her heart is full and she isn’t alone.

But joy, like pain, pleasure, love, and purpose, is fleeting.

Temporary.

Always.

Danny becomes restless, as all who are denied the freedom to reach their potential eventually do. When he stops singing, Joy knows what his silence means.

It means she isn’t needed—or wanted—after all.

It isn’t the first time her nest has emptied, but as Joy sharpens the paring knife and sets it alongside the apple that will be Danny’s last home-cooked meal before his release, she vows he will be the last to leave her.

She is done caring. Done singing. Done providing and sharing only to be robbed blind while her hands and heart are open and vulnerable to the elements.

She opens the door of the cage and reaches inside for Danny’s dish. There is a blinding rush of feathers and a gut twisting thwack as Joy’s heart cracks and splinters behind her ribs. Her eyes clamp shut instinctively, protecting her from the impact, but her ears can’t close themselves to the splash of Danny’s broken body hitting the dirty dishwater in the sink.

She waits for grief, but it doesn’t come.

Something else comes in its place. Something darker.

Her stomach churns and her skin flushes red hot. She holds her breath even as her lungs scream for sustenance.

She grips the knife handle, pressing the blade against the damp surface of the cutting board until she can feel the wood give way. She lifts the blade and admires, distantly, the groove it left behind.

A low rumble of thunder pulls her around to face the window. She only has to see Danny, floating belly up with his wings spread like a fallen angel, to know what has to be done. She drops the knife on the counter and rushes to the sink, grabs the bird’s lifeless body in her bare hand and storms outside.

The air is wet and alive with electricity. It makes the hair stand up on Joy’s arms and the back of her neck, now stiffened by the helpless rage coursing through her. She fights back vengeful tears as she hurls the bird’s body across the yard and into the sickly remains of her parents’ garden.

“Take him!” she cries. “Take everything, and leave me alone!”

A flash of lightning followed by a deafening crack of thunder drives Joy back into the house. She grabs the paring knife from the counter and makes for the bathroom, choking on guilt, but no less resolved to be left alone.

She sets the knife on the edge of the tub and turns on the faucet. She kneels on the floor and clasps her hands together, pressing them against her forehead, praying for the courage she needs to stop caring.

The sky outside splits open, sending a torrent of rain upon her home. The sound quickly envelopes her, drowning out the voices in her head, softening the hard surface under her knees, unwinding her muscles, and filling her chest with a familiar warmth.

She opens her eyes and catches sight of the water filling the tub. She instinctively reaches in to test the temperature with her wrist, just as she’d done countless times for her children when they were young.

They’re grown now. With babies of their own to test the water for.

Her fingers drift to the cool, blue tile on the shower wall. The same tile that used to kiss the skin of her back as her husband’s devoted hands caressed and opened her … the memory of their shared vulnerability still palpable on the wall’s dewy surface.

His hands are no longer hers. But she knew them, intimately, for a time.

The metal grab bars, installed to prevent her parents from slipping and falling as they aged into resigned helplessness under her care, wait dutifully. To be needed again.

Joy turns the faucet off and sits in the semi-silence of the bathroom. The storm outside reduced to distant rumbles of thunder and a steady pattering of rain on the windows. The nagging warmth in Joy’s chest spreads into her cheeks. She breathes over a humbling pang of remorse in her gut.

She closes her eyes and prays again. This time for the courage to keep caring. Even if it makes her vulnerable to heartbreak. Even if it robs her of the things and the people who give her purpose. Even if it makes little difference in the world that she cares.

A little difference is better than no difference at all.

Joy dries her tears on her shirt sleeves and hoists herself up to standing. She drains the tub and returns the paring knife to the counter alongside Danny’s uneaten dinner. She collects his remains from the garden and carries him into the house. While she waits out the rain, she wraps him in a dish towel and tucks him snugly into a shoe box. She finishes slicing the apple and lays the pieces alongside him, sprinkling the apple seeds around his tiny head. Joy isn’t certain the seeds will take in the garden, but she’s prepared to wait, dutifully, for signs that they have.

She tucks the paring knife under the towel beneath Danny’s wing and thanks him, tearfully, for making a big difference in her little life.

She buries him in the garden, alongside Pavarotti, and her son’s first goldfish, and her daughter’s only hamster, a clump of dormant tulip bulbs her mother planted, and a time capsule full of romantic keepsakes she and her husband buried the night they moved into their first home together.

She marks Danny’s small grave with an appropriately sized headstone and sits with him for a while, pulling weeds and considering what to do with her empty nest. With the unkempt garden. The cluttered garage. The outdated bathroom.

The rest of her life.

Basic hunger lures Joy away from weeding and back into the kitchen, where she prepares dinner for herself. She makes a list of things she wants to do that overwhelms her to the point of paralysis.

Her heart flutters rapidly and her thoughts spin in a deranged circle, unable to get off the ground.

She is restless, as anyone driven by purpose would be.

She leaves her dishes soaking in the sink and searches her empty house for her phone, swallowing her pride along the way.

On a country road, less than ten miles away, a phone chirps loudly on the passenger seat of a minivan, snapping the female driver out of highway hypnosis.

She pulls off the road safely and picks up her phone.

“Sorry to bother you,” Joy writes. “But I really need your help.”

“It’s okay,” the woman replies.

“I’ve got you.”

Photo by laura bicknell on Unsplash