A black-capped chickadee.Bryan Gee/The Globe and Mail
Daniel Scott Tysdal is a writer, filmmaker and teacher. His books include The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems and the forthcoming short-story collection Wave Forms and Doom Scrolls.
I tell my friend what the chickadee who visits did the other morning. On FaceTime, I show him the feeder I was walking to when the chickadee surprised me. He says his grandmother would love to see that, but I don’t have the footage. My friend’s grandmother has dementia, and though, he says, she’s growing more and more withdrawn, witnessing what the chickadee did would give her a real lift. If we could show her, he says, she would smile and exclaim, “That’s chickadees!”
My friend suggests I make a documentary about the chickadee. My wife and I have been working from her brother’s cabin during the most recent months of the pandemic. We put up a feeder to meet some of the locals, and one chickadee in particular often flits over to say hi. My friend suggests I document this fleeting bond formed during the pandemic. I don’t have it in me, not with our stay at the lake ending, with work piling up under the pile of each day’s worse news. But my friend speaks with such brilliance about the chickadee, about courage and compassion, that I can’t stop myself from scribbling note after note, my eyes welling. That’s me!
I name the chickadee Pan. He is one of the dozen or so who gather at our feeder, the chickadees one of a dozen more acquaintances who visit, too. In the slivers of time between teaching, meetings and grading, I film, documenting them all. The nuthatches, juncos and evening grosbeaks. The woodpeckers, mourning doves, common redpolls and white crowned sparrows. With the leaves falling, the great blue heron no longer calls, but I film where she landed in the summer, at the edge of her feeder, the lake.
The story my friend’s grandmother would love starts with me walking to the feeder with a seed-filled cup. Pan lands on its narrow lip. He tosses aside seed after seed until he finds one to his liking and then drops to the grass to enjoy his treat. As I continue to the feeder, my little friend, chirping, stops me. I turn to find him looking up at me, chirping still, unhappy with his choice. “Fine,” I say, holding the cup out to him, “have another.” He flits back to the cup and picks again. That is chickadees.
My wife read that feeders help with bird mortality rates in the winter. Each time she mentions this, I ask her to phrase it the other way: vitality rates. It amazes me that something as slight as a chickadee can survive that relentless stretch of barren cold. My wife assures me they’re better at getting by than I am. I can’t disagree. She learned that a chickadee’s memory improves in the fall, so they can better remember all the places they have tucked away seeds. The feeder is more of a planter right now, as chickadees fly from feeder to woods, feeder to woods, caching seeds in bark crevices and tree crotches to flourish as winter meals.
I named the chickadee Pan by mistake. I’d meant Puck, the mischievous trickster from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like Puck, my chickadee friend is playful, flying up to the window to invite me outside, landing on my head during online meetings, setting up shop in my palm to eat. Even as I film, he tricks me out of my despair, settling on my shoulder as though judging shots. I regret finally noticing the significance of my accidental misnaming. Did you catch the sorrow in my slip? Pan. As in pandemic. Cue the gloomy echo of a grandmother’s joy: “That’s the pandemic!”
This is a pandemic. This is what grounds my flight. The unceasing anxiety and dread, yes, but also the worry I’m merely cultivating the behaviour that got us here – the anthropomorphizing of animals, the belittling of the wild. There’s the guilt I feel retreating, escaping into images and seeds, into chickadees and words. There’s the fear that I can’t gather what matters.
My hope is that this bond forms less around me misshaping this plucky, fluttering creature, and more through the chickadee reshaping and befluttering me, inviting me to commune in this moment my friend highlighted: the rare, precious encounter in which the fear that divides animal from human animal is overcome. It is evident in Pan’s trust as he lands in my seed-filled hand, offering, as my friend put it, an awareness of our kind’s potential for compassion. Isn’t this the ideal for all our relationships? If we want to make ourselves worthy of the trust of one, we want to make ourselves worthy of each one. How lovely to discover that longing hidden in my little friend’s mistaken name, Pan. The Greek root: all.
I also hope it’s not a question of gathering what matters, when what matters most is the act of gathering. Mirroring the chickadees, I collect seed after seed of image, word and sound, of meaning, mystery and mood, and tuck each away. Improving my memory. Increasing my vitality. I save these seeds to feed future creations, what I can’t make now, but could one day complete. Or maybe I’ll never finish these creations, but in sharing these words I might spur you to gather, might prove that creating right now isn’t a retreat from the pandemic, but a necessary nurturing of attention within it, a witnessing of our capacity to witness. To still and distinguish. To marvel at every tender wonder and exclaim, “That!” That. That. That. That.
Back in the city, thick with winter, I struggle to start my documentary. Far from the lake now, probably never to see my chickadee friend again, I am grateful for this struggle, for these words, for the footage gathered thanks to my friend’s thoughtful prompting. I even have an ending, if the time ever comes to add it: Pan flutters against the glass, singing, calling me outside. The footage is blurry as, pulling the door open, I film with one hand and feed with the other. But you can still make out what matters: the bond and the hanging on, the hunger and the touch, the woodpecker stopping by to join in this gathering, to offer her curiosity and trust.
I still call my chickadee friend Pan because, really, that is now and forever short for, “I meant Puck,” which is short for grant us wonder and love and joy, short for “give me your hands, if we be friends.” In naming him Pan, I name all chickadees Pan. All juncos, nuthatches, herons and crows. All of us in need of feeders, still giving what we can to keep the feeders full. Scribbling, sketching, snapping, sculpting. Composing and connecting. Gathering for when we can gather again. Because even if what we begin we never finish, even if every creation remains in pieces, only ever holding the place for what might have been, we are still left with these kernels of our hope and endurance, caches of our vitality, storied seeds of surviving we can cherish and share. Let’s offer them, first, to my friend’s grandmother to thank her for spurring this work, lifting once more as she smiles at our making and exclaims, “That’s us!”
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