There’s a possibility that I’ve written about this before. I can’t remember and it’s what I want to cover right now so as to feel a little less wretched, so you’re getting something that could be a repeat. Could be. We’ll find out if I ever bother to go back through things.

There was a period where I lived in a place, and I think it was the longest I’d lived somewhere since moving out of home. I don’t know. But I lived there a while and it wasn’t a great place. I definitely wrote about living there, but that’s in the past. I guess this bit of writing is about the past, but that doesn’t matter. Or it does. Anyway.

So my partner at the time and me, we lived there a good few years, and at one point had the place wholly to ourselves. Moved to one of the front bedrooms and it was… I don’t know if I’d say it was great, but it was our home, and it was nice for that. But what was really nice was having a frangipani growing outside our window.

The window looked onto the front yard and the street, which had a few trees and was quite pleasant for having them. We’d get cockatoos, and I like to refer to them as seasonal cockatoos as that’s how they seemed to be seasonal, and they’d create a racket and be noisy, and you’d see them eat and play, and it was something I appreciated. Always good to see a bunch of birds. It was clearly an urban place, but sometimes it didn’t feel urban.

The closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling like I was living in the bush was in the first place I moved into when I moved from home, where the toilet was an outhouse built into the house. You’d have to go out the back and walk a few metres from the door and along the wall and you’d be there. Sometimes in the morning I’d be on the toilet with the door open and early morning sun would be shining through the trees, of which there were a few, and it was just lovely. Just pleasant. But I digress.

In the frangipani, occasionally some doves would rest there. They were more likely to if you didn’t notice or pay attention to them as they had as much a view into the bedroom as we had a view into the frangipani. But it was nice to see them there, resting, taking their time away from whatever it was that they were doing.

When it would rain, we could see a few more than usual, as the frangipani provided a good space away from the rain. It wasn’t perfect by any measure, but it was enough, and so we would look at the doves, admiring them and their cuteness, and they would probably look at us, not knowing what we were going to do, if we were indeed going to do anything. And once the rain died down, they would leave and continue doing the things doves do.

When I was going through getting dumped last year and my ex was in the process of moving out, we saw a dove perched on the switchboard box, and for a moment the relationship hadn’t ended. For a moment everything seemed to have been forgotten, and we were back in this joyous period. It was not long, but it was wonderful.

The dove didn’t want to move, and it didn’t seem to fear us either. My ex left, and it was gone in the morning.

Seeing birds rest in a tree, or somewhere more artificial in structure, things like these are small moments, and they’re worth cherishing.