One Robin per Household

My father thought grief merchandise was hilarious. Sympathy cards with robins made him wheeze — 'when I go, I'll send you each one, cheaper than flowers.' It became his running joke through his last winter; he'd point at robins on the feeder and say 'not yet, I'm still using the body.'

At the wake, my sister raised a glass and said, 'Right, Dad — four of us, four robins, don't be cheap.' We laughed the way you laugh at wakes: too hard, near the edge.

I live on the coast. My brothers live in two different cities; my sister lives abroad, in an apartment with one window box. Within eight days, each of us had a robin. Not a robin sighting — a resident. Mine arrived the morning after I got home and established itself on the porch rail, where no bird has ever lingered because of the wind. My older brother's took possession of his car mirror and defends it. My younger brother, who had literally never noticed a bird in his life, sent the family chat a photo captioned 'is this one of them' — it was on his office windowsill, third floor, looking in.

My sister's took eleven days, and hers is the one that ended the jokes: a robin in a country where, she discovered when she went to look it up, they aren't native. Her local birding forum got mildly excited about the vagrant. It stayed one week — on her window box — and left.

Four robins, four households, one per child, behaviourally identical: close, calm, insistent on being seen. Ornithologist friends offer territory expansion and coincidence, and for any one of us I'd accept it.

Mine still comes every morning. I put out the seeds Dad used. Cheaper than flowers, as agreed — and delivered, like everything he ever promised, slightly late and exactly right.