There it is—a flash in the corner of my eye. Look full on, nothing. But maybe? Her light laugh?

A chickadee-dee-dee echoes but mimics her voice, her shy tones. Deedle taught me to listen for its call. I can’t say chickadee without the dee-dee trailing after. As a girl, I followed her, my grandmother, as she filled each feeder: black sunflower seeds, white proso millet, safflower seeds, thistle, peanuts, and cut apple. “Don’t get the milo seed!” she warned. In the winter, she rolled the seed into suet balls. I watched as she splashed water in her birdbaths, the green hose with the rusty metal end.

Something stirs here, on my deck—wait, there!

A glimpse of her plaid housedress, her nose pressed deep into a lilac blossom. A peach rag is tied around her pink curlers, one strand of gray hair floats free. Just then, a black-hooded oriole lands for the jelly. “They like grape best,” I remember her saying.

Pshhh, what’s wrong with me? I shake my head, smile, continue to sweep the deck, but I’m unnerved.

Another day, another uneasy flicker, a brush of squirrel tail, spirals around a fire-charred oak, but the dogs don’t even alert or sniff the air. A cool breeze blows on this sweltering day and dries the sweat on my brow.

Do I hear a rifle shot?

She always shot at lurking cats. En masse, the birds startle and fly high. I watch them disappear to safety.

Get a grip! I sigh, yet keep checking over my shoulder.

I catch a sparkle next to the sun. Confronted, it fades like a vapor trail; even so, wings rustle and tickle my ear—yet no feathers, no call, no streak across the sky. A red robin, my grandmother’s favorite, hops along the wooden boards near where I sit in the shade. He’s picking up seed others have dropped. She taught me to add dead grubs to my seed mix, saying, “It makes them jump for joy.” And she twirled, she, so happy too.

She grew so old, I weep. Then realize I am close to the same. Forty years since I lost her, yet…

I push through the screen door, distracted, but there she is again, decked out in her purple suit with black sparkling buttons, the one she’d say, blushing like a rose, “I wore to the White House.”

Now she is evaporating as the bird feeder swings, newly full of seed.