November 13, 2016 — Those of you with kids, either your own or those of your family you help take care of, know of the phenomenon of repetitive watching. We all do it, put on a video to keep the young child occupied while we go about doing other things — housework, work, a bath, whatever thing we need for ourselves. And don’t tell me you didn’t learn every line in those movies just from overhearing them. The ones we retain in our knowledge are the ones from the years our child or relative-children were the appropriate age for the repetitive watching. For me, that’s Shrek; I hear Donkey, and that has great meaning to me. Before the availability of movies there were books, read to entertain, but always read to accompany bedtime. I used to help read to my little sister. Her choice of book was always Part Time Dog, the story of a dog who moved from house to house on the street, bringing joy and companionship to each. Funny, I can’t remember if the dog ever settled in to one house, but literally I have that dog, literally, my part time dog, a dog who once lived with neighbors, but spent so much time crawling through the pickets of my fence to eventually live here.

We grow up and retain one part of the repetitive watching, or perhaps it’s just me staying forever three, but my repetitive thing I still do is listen to a song, over and over and over again. The difference, for me, is a repetitive song doesn’t stay forever, like Shrek or Part Time Dog did; they come into full-constant rotation because we need something from them, but only for a time. I have almost put down my latest, Carrie Underwood’s Blown Away, with its determined music and strong lyrics harkening the scariest thing of at least part of my formative years.

I think I might have been reliving my own survival of these tumultuous times I am in, and have been in. The visual of the song in my mind, of the video, of the lyrics, of the sound of the music become literal for me — dry lighting cracks across the skies, those storm clouds gather in her eyes… of a color that makes the day turn to night, waiting for sirens one only hears in the distance because the ones at the elementary school one block away go off now only if the tornado is on your streets. Technology is much better now than when I was a teen when the sirens would go off all around, like the song describes. Now, you have the tv on, as loud as possible, still not covering the sound of the storm, while the news anchor says what streets’ residents need to go to their safe room. It’s dire stuff, life-threatening, they say. I know, for sure, our middle bathroom, the best safe room that house, wouldn’t be enough no matter how many times we’ve gone in there. Still, this last time, summer 2015, I put them all in — my hamster, bunny, parakeet, brother’s parakeet, and Sasha, my African Grey parrot, knowing there wouldn’t be enough time to get them all in when the sirens went off if the tornado moved north of the streets the news was calling out. I suppose the hundred times I listened to Blown Away, recently, were to serve to remind me that I am small, and that something, some wind, metaphoric or real, can always take one out, take those we love, blow away everything we came from; this literally happened not to my daddy (he’s wonderful), but to my daddy’s business a long time ago, till there’s nothing left standing, nothing left of yesterday. But we must always, or at least always try to, keep at it, oh and curl our hair and put on really killer eye-makeup!

At some point, as if to break me from my listening to way too much Carrie, I was interrupted by my parrot’s whistle. I’ve talked about the Ellie Goulding song before, Keep on Dancing, how it has a whistle in it.

My parrot learned a version of that whistle the first time she heard the song, her happiness to join in the singing of the song always apparent. So, to make her happy, I put on Keep on Dancing, a live version where Ellie hums the whistle. I was humming, my parrot Sasha was whistling (yes, this really happens and yes, I’d be a strange thing to live with because I really do break out into song and dance), but then she stopped. I could tell she knew her note pattern was not exactly correct.

The note pattern of the whistle is long, seven notes, with two places of heavy syncopation. Sasha’s face showed she knew she didn’t have the first syncopation pattern right. Mind you, she had seven notes, the correct pitch, just not the initial “jump” in the sound. Anyone would, and should, be proud of their parrot for her skills, but she did not look happy. She was not right; she knew it, and she wanted to get it right. So I went over it with her, breaking down the notes. There have been back and forth whistles between me and my bird for two days. Yesterday, I woke up to a very proud Sasha who had, now, six notes with the correct syncopation. But again, she realized she was still not quite right. So yesterday, I broke down the note pattern into two halves, so she could hear the extra note, a short note before the finish notes. She practiced and practiced. It was all day, whistling the pattern, practicing. Affirming this communication, this morning, she made her own break, apparent that she was asking me to give her the whistle broken one note farther than where I was breaking it the day before. So I’m whistling that now, breaking after the first five notes, not the first four, so she can hear the missing fifth note. One out of every two back from her is correct. I think she’s going to get it. Of course, right now, she’s barking and imitating a cough (yes, I’m still a bit sick), but she has done about two entire whistle patterns correctly, and while she is not yet consistent, I predict I’ll wake up tomorrow to the correct pattern done consistently. She sleeps on things you see.

So I’ve come to the conclusion there’s value in repetition, of diligent practice until you get it right. Listening to Carrie’s Blown Away song 100 times gave me courage, reminded me of how far I’ve gone, reminded me it’s far from over. And Sasha! No matter how many times we have to repeat the same seven notes, at some point, she shows we’ll get it right. Sasha is my unlikely inspiration. If Sasha can work this hard to get something right, and she’s a bird, then so can I. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going….