Author: Michelle Heimburger

A wedding gift for friends who recently got hitched — one of those utterly-perfect-for-each-other couples that warms the hearts of even their most curmudgeonly friends and gives others hope that true love is real and attainable. Sure, it might sound nauseating to read about it, but you wouldn’t think so if you knew them.

The bride, the girl with birds in her hair, is an old friend (who has indeed worn birds and all sorts of odd things in her hair). She’s a real character in all the best ways, and the more I thought about what I wanted to make for them, the more I realized that she really ought to be a character in a children’s book. She’s adorable, charming, quirky, talented, and always sparkling. I don’t know her husband as well, but I know I’ve never seen her so happy. Even saying his name on the phone I can hear the grin in her voice.

Here’s how I imagine their story as a kids’ book.

The words are pretty unreadable in the image, so here’s the text:

The Girl With Birds in her Hair

There wandered once a sparkling girl with songbirds in her hair,
Who trekked and traipsed and traveled far by stars and sails and air.
Her eyes they pined for foreign sights, her heart it longed to roam.
Her birds weren’t migratory, though, and begged her to stay home.

“The bags are packed,” the girl laughed. “The adventure’s just begun!”
So off they navigated by the map upon her tongue.
For though her birds might have preferred a less unsteady roost,
Each sparrow, rook and starling wouldn’t dream of being loosed.

For everywhere they wandered their girl found them souvenirs,
Like bouncing bits of ribbons, shells, and tiny, shiny spheres.
With chirping cheers they thanked her as she gussied up their nest,
And all the while she sang them serenades with zeal and zest.

Sometimes she sang a sad lament or wistful, warbling trill.
More often she sang joyous songs with unrepentant thrill.
At night she sang soft lullabies all nestled in the dark.
She crooned hymns for a cardinal, wailed shanties for a lark.

But her songs were always stories, based on all that she had seen,
Starring acrobats and robots and raccoons and dancing queens.
She sang tales of stars and shipwrecks, of pugs and parakeets,
And her melodies were met with her birds’ happy cheeps and tweets.

As land to land their travels spanned she added to their tales,
The sights and sounds and characters they met along their trails.
Each place was filled with wonders, and such people they would meet!
But never would they settle, for the girl had yearning feet.

Some didn’t want to see them go. They cried out, “No, not yet!”
And tried to put them in a cage or catch them with a net.
But “toodle-oo!” the girl would sing and once again they’d fly,
Glimmering and shimmering as they streaked across the sky.

But then one day in her travels, a most unexpected twist:
A boy, who when she traveled on, she quickly found she missed.
“Go back,” the birds beseeched her. “Go back and find your love!”
“It’s time to roost,” cried one loud and persuasive turtledove.

And it was true, the girl knew, with just a quick reflection,
So she reversed her course for a more northerly direction.
Back they sped by roads re-tread from far-off Zanzibar,
Until they heard the humming, thrumming strum of his guitar.

And there the boy sat playing with a smile wide as the moon.
The gallivanting girl sat down and said, “I like your tune.”
Then her birds went all aflutter as she flashed a fearless grin,
And the tune became a chorus as the songbirds soon joined in.

The boy cooked a feast for girl and beast, and birds began to crow,
As miles around folks heard the sound and spied her gleaming glow.
At last the girl who’d seen the world saw it was time to rest,
And like her birds she truly knew that she had found her nest.

So, voices joined, the girl and boy began a new duet,
As they composed a cozy home of twinkling twigs and nets,
With space for all their feathered friends to roost up in the rafters,
And there the boy and girl lived, harmoniously ever after.