Letter to Parrots

Dear Ellie and Isabelle,

I am in Oregon, in a little cabin in the mountains, sitting by a fire and enjoying the view of the river just under the deck, the peaks of the mountains not too far off. The fog dwindles down the mountain. It is unspeakably beautiful here. Writing in a cabin in the mountains by a river... a small dream come true.

I'm writing an article--your article--about how you learned to read. I'm seeped seven pages into this sucker, with an entire page of references already. I've written the introduction, reviewed prior research and have already written all about the materials and stimuli used to teach you. The other researcher and I have discussed you today, and the organization of this article, and at her prompting, I've written to three journals about their interest in publishing this material.

And with all of that background, I get to you, my sweet girls. Procedure is this section, and I must relive the moments of joy as I watched you learn to touch colors, then discriminate between colors... (Isabelle, I thought you'd really never learn! You always tossed the colors across the room--FOR MONTHS--and I honestly decided you were my artistic, expressive, but-not-very-bright bird child. And now you rival Ellie in your word-recognition skills!) Then as you touched the letter A for the very first time.. and then B, and C and all the letters that came after. As you distinguished BALL from BELL and cascaded into reading words and danced into emerging reader books.

I sit here, writing and reliving these memories and bawling with pride because you are the most amazing little bird girls on earth, and I am so honored to be your "bird mama". I have a notebook full of research articles on "orthographic processing in animals" - and researchers say over and over again: reading is a complex cognitive process rooted in language development, and it is a uniquely human process.

And you two have shown that it's not. You are incredible and smart and colorful and amazing. I love that you LOVE to learn, that you beg me every single day to teach you more, that you don't shy away from hard tasks.

It is a privilege to share my life with you.

With more love than could ever be described,

J