My Mom Was for the Birds

I loved her and nature equally. Then I became a teenager.

The mourning dove was in my sights, exposed by a gust of autumn that had taken away all its cover. My mother loved mourning doves. She was the one who had told me that the dove was in fact “mourning” — not a denizen of the “morning” — the naming inspired by the sadness of the bird’s plaintive five-note call. And now, at the…