About a year ago, I began sending a paper copy of each story to my mother. She happily has no internet. She does have a cell phone that she never carries. (She tells me that she keeps it for emergencies; I have surmised that the cell phone is useful only if those emergencies are planned.) I used to think to think that she was really missing out, but after checking my email one too many times on vacation, I wonder if she is actually quite brilliant. I left my cell phone at home today, apparently not planning for any emergencies, and I have found that the world continues its pleasant spin.

Mom gets the story out of the mailbox, sits on her front steps to read it, and tucks it safely in a box with the other stories I have sent. Someone really ought to be saving these, she says. (Something does, I explain, but I love that there is a little nest of print to the right of her favorite chair.) After she safely stows the story, she calls me from her landline to give me her assessment.

Your last story was kind of sad, she said. Are you okay? she asked. I told her that I was perfectly fine and that if we were all being honest, life had its sad moments.

I saw a sad moment in action when I was out walking Buddy Saturday morning. Buddy is clearly a union dog, for he insists on a half-hour walk every morning. It is as if he wears a Timex on his left front leg: It is always exactly 30 minutes. When Buddy was a young dog, we covered a couple of miles. Now that Buddy is decidedly an old dog, we cover a couple of blocks.

His glacial pace is good for observation, and so it was on Saturday morning, leash slack and Buddy sniffing on the side of the street. Out of nowhere, I heard the opening of an R.E.M. song from college, “The One I Love.” I expected it to be blaring from the stereo of a car driven by a prosperous driver about my age. But I saw instead a rusty bicycle, boom box strapped to the front, with a rider of indeterminate age. Between the sun, alcohol, and hard times, he could have been anywhere between 55 and 412 years old, and with a defeated mien, heavily lined skin, and uncontrollable hair, the rider cycled by with these words drifting in the air:

This one goes out to the one I love.

This one goes out to the one I left behind.

A simple prop to occupy my time.

This one goes out to the one I love.

Fire.

It seemed less like a college radio hit, more like a personal manifesto, and I realized that perhaps my version of sad was far overstated. It was rolling heartbreak.

Still singing the song, I drifted home with Buddy. Although age has taken away walking speed, it has not stripped him of his ability to eat and nap like a much younger dog, and I left him to his two greatest pursuits while I took my own walk. In a podcast, I heard this interesting tidbit: Sanda Bernhardt, the comedian, is the daughter of a proctologist and an abstract artist. As I wondered whether that unusual parental combination would always produce a comedian, I heard a loud wolf whistle.

It was the parrot.

There is an enormous parrot that lives in an enormous cage on the front porch of a house six blocks from my house. The house itself is like one from a cartoon: It is always erupting in some fashion. The owners have raised the roof, added a floor, built a massive front porch, and laid a brick driveway. Between the construction and the bird, I am glad that there is a considerable buffer between our houses. But I always like hearing the parrot.

When I was a kid, most of my dreams revolved around loud noises. I wanted to learn to play the drums, take tap dancing lessons, use a jackhammer, turn the music up to 11 and dance, perhaps all at once. A large part of my little body wanted a parrot who would sit on my shoulder, eat saltine crackers on demand, and chatter away. My mother, that perpetual killjoy, said no.

My own children have had their own noisy pursuits. My son played the violin, an endeavor that sounded at first like torturing cats. My daughter, emboldened by “The Simpsons,” insisted on playing the saxophone, a folly that set us back $306 in rental fees in the fifth grade, all for a barely comprehensible rendition of “Hot Cross Buns.” Sppprt, sppprt, spprrt.

I get where my mother was coming from with noise in general, and I really felt it about parrots specifically when I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal about parrot ownership. They are not pets for the weak, let me tell you. Some parrots can emit shrieks that can be heard five miles away. They live forever — usually between 60 and 100 years — and a parrot rescuer told of caring for birds that had come to him after they had bitten the earlobe off of a prior owner or part of the tongue of a woman who tried to kiss the bird through the cage.

With facial features intact and hearing unmolested by a loud shrieking bird, I now pause to offer thanks to my mother’s wisdom in not allowing me to fulfill my dream of parrot ownership. That bird would now be about 40, just hitting its prime, bloated from consuming too many saltines, saying not Polly want a cracker but I am filled with ennui.

I kept walking.

The morning ended at Chick-Fil-A, where I consumed a fried chicken biscuit to undo all of the health benefits of a walk. Chris and I show up there late most Saturday mornings, barely skidding under the breakfast wire. It is not an eat and run proposition. At our favorite high top, Chris reads the news on his phone while I — desperately trying to break up with mine — paint, knit, or write in a journal. There is a woman named Joan who works there, and thanks to her long skirt, impeccably coiffed hair, and regal bearing, looks like she belongs in a much classier place. Joan smiles at me and refills my tea, but for the first time this Saturday morning she offered more than just pleasantries. I like your green dress, she said. When I told her that I had made it, she asked, Are you a designer? I laughed and told her no, but on the way out, Chris told me that I had answered Joan’s question all wrong.

I have tried to really listen to what people are asking. Almost a year ago, I went to a  birthday party at a wine-and-paint place, and finding the finished product powerfully dumb, I set out on my own path and painted something entirely different. My friend Amelia asked, Are you a painter? I was not, but with that question roiling around in my head, I signed up for painting courses in January. It has become one of my life’s pleasures.

I have even painted a parrot:

With Joan’s question in my mind, I came home and set to work. Am I designer? Who knows. But on Saturday afternoon, I made a cape:

And with pliers and glue turned Goodwill jewelry into barrettes and earrings:

And finished a painting:

So, mom, to answer your question: Despite the sad moments, I am okay. More than okay. I am walking, and I am making things. For once, I am actually listening and taking people’s advice, even if that advice is implicit. I am watching my hair turn salt-and-pepper in the mirror, straddling the line between old age and youth, and I have a clump over my left eye that makes me look like I’m always having a great idea. That great idea is to live, create, and connect, and to make my very own small way in this very big world.

All unburdened by parrot ownership, yet enjoying one’s catcalls from a safe distance. For which I am tremendously grateful.

ALC