"Set of Years"
All my memories are birds.
(Listen to the radio version here.)
When I was graduating from high school in 1969, one of my teachers wrote in my yearbook that he hoped I’d “wind up with a very satisfying set of years.”
That phrase, “set of years,” resonated deeply with me. It wasn’t as if I didn’t understand the finite nature of life and that one day I’d die—the very first prayer I learned as a preschooler ended with the line, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” On the nights when I remembered to say my bedtime prayers, those frightening words filled me with dread.
In second grade, my Grandpa gave me a beautiful rosary for my First Communion; now at bedtime I’d say the Rosary instead. That included 53 Hail Marys, each ending with the line, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Somehow, that didn’t make death seem quite so imminent, but in that and so many ways, my religious education focused more on dying than on living.
Biographical accounts of historical figures virtually always begin with the dates or years of birth and death, as if the start and end have primary significance above everything that happened in between. I don’t like that, which is why a line segment, entirely defined by its two endpoints, doesn’t resonate with me as a metaphor for a lifespan. No, it was Dr. Riban’s mathematical metaphor of a set that gave me the palpable sense of being alive in the here and now. I love feeling that every happy experience I have is accumulating in that “set of years” like shiny pennies from heaven dropping into a piggybank.
I had a heart attack in February 2015, when I was 63 years old. My father, a Chicago firefighter, had keeled over dead of a heart attack when he was 50, so this could have been terrifying, yet on the way to the hospital, I didn’t have even a moment of the fear and dread I’d suffered as a little girl saying my bedtime prayers. No, during that time when I was closest to dying, my brain first raced to Russ and my kids, reviewing them one by one, reassuring myself that they’d be fine without me. Then I thought about my bank account and realized with relief that I hadn’t spent any of the $2,000 advance on the ABA field guide I was writing—Russ could return it without affecting our family finances.
Those thoughts got me to the end of Peabody Street. For the rest of the ride to the hospital my brain sparkled with shiny pennies: My Grandpa holding me on his lap, his warm cheek against mine as he told me about heroic canaries who’d saved miners and pigeons who’d saved soldiers. The day seventeen-year-old Russ mustered the courage to come see me at Loyola University when I was taking a summer debate workshop. Out of the blue that morning, there was the boy I had a huge crush on walking straight toward me, backlit and silhouetted by a brilliant stained-glass window—how my heart leapt with joy! Holding each of my babies for the first time. Opening and reading for the first time my personal letter from Fred Rogers.
Shiny, shiny pennies.
And then I remembered seeing and figuring out my very first chickadee. Gepetto, the Pileated Woodpecker my kids and I raised and released.
The adorable baby Saw-whet Owl I kept next to my bed at night. I’d thaw a mouse before I went to sleep, and when the tiny owl stirred in his box, I could easily feed him in the dark without waking Russ thanks to the white feathers forming an arrow pointed directly to his mouth.
So many beautiful, funny, lovely images that went on and on for what seemed like an endless car ride. I never once, even for a moment, thought of birds I hadn’t yet seen, even my “most wanted bird,” the Cuban Tody. As Mary Poppins says, “Enough is as good as a feast.”
In the 2025 movie “Jay Kelly,” the eponymous main character, a famous movie star, is reviewing his life and says, “All my memories are movies.” In my case, just about all my memories are birds. The sidebar on the final page of my first book (For the Birds: An Uncommon Guide) reads:
When Russ and I put our family photographs in order, I couldn’t recall dates—like one excursion to the Morton Arboretum. Joey was missing a front tooth so it must have been—no, Katie’s hair had grown out from her experiment with bunny scissors so it couldn’t have been before… I remembered three Hooded Mergansers in the pond, checked my bird lists, and had the exact date. No one should go through life listlessly.
I’m thinking about all this because it’s tax time. Long ago, an IRS agent assured Russ that my photographic equipment and mileage for trips specifically to see and photograph birds are legitimate expenses as a self-employed writer about bird stuff. (It may have helped that when Russ called the IRS office in the Twin Cities, the guy recognized my name and loved my radio program.)
I’m terrible at record-keeping—Russ is the one who keeps track of every penny of my income (last year I grossed slightly over $11,000 thanks to my speaking gigs and you paid Substack subscribers!) but I’m the one who has to keep track of my birding-related expenses. Since my bird photos are automatically organized by date, I can scroll through pictures of the past year to jog my memory about where I’ve been and exactly when. Somehow, every time I do this, my memory is jogged in ways that far transcend financial records, reminding me of so many shiny pennies accumulating in my “set of years” piggy bank.
2025 in Review
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
I’ve been so much luckier than so many people, in the number of years I’ve been given, how resilient I’ve turned out to be when facing serious problems, the real-life guardian angels like my Grandpa and several of my elementary and high school teachers who unknowingly but unfailingly got me through a traumatic childhood, recovering quickly and easily from two heart attacks and breast cancer, and having the kind of memory that recalls the happiest moments even during the saddest and scariest ones. Now at 74, even as we’re facing all the devastating life changes of my daughter’s multiple myeloma (she’s responding well to chemo), I’m still accumulating shiny pennies—at this very moment, I peeked out the window at a chickadee looking directly into my eyes. I’d say I’m winding up with a very satisfying set of years, indeed.
Your gross income: $11,000...your contribution to the world in love, knowledge and kindness:
Priceless.
Laura, you are so gifted!! And, yes, that is a double entendre! Thank you for sharing your remarkable gifts, and the wisdom you've gained from your very memorable set of years, with all of us. I was moved by Fred Rogers' letter to you. I knew Fred a little, because my uncle, Don Brockett, was the baker in Fred's imaginary Neighborhood! When I was maybe 16 years old, I volunteered to wear the Easter Bunny costume in a Bunny Breakfast show that my uncle Don put on in a downtown department store every year. In meeting all the children in attendance, I was joined by Mr. McFeely!