Naming Sarakeet

In the first year of a new century,  in a big Shakespeare Festival in a tiny Texas town, I met John.  I was an actress. He was a carpenter. Living up to my own expectations, I spent the late nights after the shows eating Whataburger, drinking beer, discussing movies and music and poetry - then running it all off in the morning at the junior college’s gym. By six PM, I was back in the dressing room and we got to do it all over again.  I was twenty years old and half-way through my college experience.  John took me to parties on the lake.  He wasn’t in school.  He knew how to build things.  He was strong. He was twenty-two and living on his own with a dog.  
     I hoped my whole life would be like a Summer romance working in a theater festival.  
     When John and I got married and moved in together, he was the recipient of a minute-by-minute re-telling of my day.  He often joked he had to throw a blanket over my head to get me to sleep.  I spent long stretches of time on the phone with friends and family.  Without realizing it, I would wander over to our full-length mirror watching myself talk.  I would twirl my hair or pose while gazing at myself on the phone.  John soon decided I was a little bird - Give her a Mirror and she won’t be lonely.  Throw a towel over her cage and she’ll go to sleep.  
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The Parakeet.
The Sarakeet.