MORE MISSIVES FROM KATIE AND ZOONG: FATHERS ARE LIKE BIRDS’ FEATHERS

Posted by Audrey Chin on January 22, 2014 · 9 Comments 

Living in cramped quarters in the city, most children in Singapore don’t have many opportunities to interact with wild life. This was so even when I was a young child. Back then, chancing upon a bird’s feather would be a big thing.

Believing in magic, we’d hide these found treasures between the pages of our text books, sprinkling bread crumbs over them to feed them. If we loved them enough, we used to believe, the feathers would sprout fluff at the bottoms of their shafts and eventually (very very eventually) grow into the birds themselves.

I suspect the fluff that appeared was probably mould. And of course, the feathers always fell out of the books and disappeared before they had time to turn into swans or peacocks or even crows.

Anyway – this is a poem in Zoong’s voice about that childish practice:

Fathers are like birds’ feathers

Father’s are like birds’ feathers
You got to stroke them right

Father’s are like birds’ feathers
Never ruffle them wrong

I have two feathers
One from a peacock
The other a crow

They’re both black and shiny
Like my father’s hair
Like my father wrestling with his troubles
They bend smooth and bounce back strong

I talk to my birds’ feathers every day
I pet them every night
If you love your birds’ feathers
They’ll love you back the very same way

Father’s are a lot like birds feathers
Somehow …

Did you believe in magic when you were little? Tell us about one magical belief you acted on that seems oh so foolish now …

Filed under POSTS · Tagged with childish magic, children, children's poetry, Growing up, Growing up Vietnamese, magic, Poetry, Third culture kids