At age 57, Angelina has raised two children, run a business, and survived divorce.
She believes herself a woman capable of managing any challenge.
But when her daughter leaves her pet bird in Angelina’s care before setting off for Venice, Angelina comes face to face with the one thing she’s never managed to do in her life—achieve a dream that’s been with her since childhood.
A thoughtful and uplifting short story by the author of The Red Umbrella.
“Birdsitting” is available for the month of January 2026 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 1.
Birdsitting
By Jessica Baverstock
“ARE YOU SURE you can manage him, Mum?”
Angelina nodded in response to her daughter’s ridiculous question. How was it she could raise two children, run a business, survive divorce, and still find herself questioned every time she was asked to look after Tom?
“You know,” Angelia said, taking the bird’s wire cage from her daughter, “I would love to go with you sometime. I’ve always wanted to see Venice.”
Julie rolled her eyes, looking so much like her father, and said, “Oh, you wouldn’t enjoy it, not with my three kids. Byron and Cherise are only interested in eating ice-cream and pizza, and Honey-Belle won’t set foot on a gondola. Much better to go on your own sometime.”
Mother and daughter parted with a quick kiss and then Angelina was left alone with Tom. She looked down at the pink and grey galah who glared back at her.
“You’re going to be a good boy, aren’t you?” Angelina said, as she carried the cage out to the back veranda.
“Take away?” he screeched at her.
Angelina sighed. The bird embodied everything that worried her about Julie’s life. How could a mother give her children such ridiculous names? Why couldn’t she have called her son Tom, and the bird Byron?
Byron had been a surprise. Angelina had never thought her daughter interested in poetry, but when Julie announced the name of their first son Angelina hoped some of her literary side had rubbed off.
“Actually,” Julie confided to her ten weeks after the birth, “I remember seeing the name on one of dad’s old books and thought it was catchy.”
Catchy. Even now, Angelina couldn’t help but shake her head at that.
Then came the news her daughter was pregnant again. This time Angelina had bought Julie a baby name book as a present. Julie’s smile tightened when she ripped the packaging open and saw the cover.
“Is this some kind of hint, Mum?” she’d said.
Angelina made light of it, simply saying that every house should have one. But the reality was choosing a name for a baby was a huge responsibility – one that should be pondered and fully understood.
Like Julie, meaning ‘beautiful’ or ‘vivacious.’ What more could a mother want than to bestow a name that was easy to remember, easy to spell, and contained a wish for the future?
But Julie simply closed her eyes, flicked the book open and dropped her finger on to a name. “Cherise,” she read out. “Meaning ‘Cherry.’ I like it. What do you think, Chaz?”
Julie’s husband grunted his approval without looking up from the paper. It broke Angelina’s heart to see how little interest the parents took in the process – a process she and her husband agonised over for months.
“What about Sofia?” Angelina had said to her own husband one night when she was five months along. She pored over the baby names book while he pored over the accounts. “It means ‘wisdom.’”
“It’s a bit exotic, isn’t it?” he said.
She ran her finger along the details of the name. It was the Spanish form. Sophia, with a ph, was Greek.
“Have you given any more thought to Spain?” she said, glancing across at the travel brochure she’d pinned to the cork board two months ago.
Looking back on the moment now, thirty-two years later, she could see her timing had been wrong. She’d not yet learnt never to talk to a man about holidays while he was doing the accounts. The argument was inevitable, not just because they couldn’t afford it but because it brought up the same, weary conversation that had started the very first time she’d mentioned honeymooning in Barcelona.
No, she didn’t think he was made of money. But there was a great wide world to explore out there. Couldn’t he take her to see a little of it?
The Spain trip was ruled out, as was the name Sofia. Julie was chosen, and then three years later they chose David as a son’s name. Both simple, beautiful, and easy to spell.
When Julie’s third child had come along, Angelina resigned herself to their naming process. Goodness knows where Honey-Belle came from. Most probably Julie was now combining words from her recycle bin for inspiration. At least she hadn’t chosen Honey-Dew.
“Take away?” screeched Tom again.
Angelina realised she was still holding the bird cage. She put it down on the table and went inside to fill the water container.
Taking care of Tom had become a regular occurrence over the past few years. Once Honey-Belle was old enough to walk on her own, Julie and her family were off to New York, London, Vancouver, and even spent a few weeks in Turkey. All places Angelina would love to have gone. In fact, she hinted to them each time that she would be happy to come along, paying her own way of course. Except for London.
She didn’t want to see London.
After twenty-five years of marriage, during which her husband declared he had no interest in travelling, he’d fallen for a British woman who worked in his office. His explanation of the affair was short.
“I need a new start. Everything’s so stagnant between us. We never go anywhere or do anything. It’s just work and home. I’m looking for a bit of adventure.”
He moved to Cornwall, of all places, and started a pub. She moved to a smaller house three blocks down the road from their family home, only a few suburbs away from where she’d grown up.
“Take away?” Tom called out hopefully, as she returned with his water.
Tom’s two-word vocabulary also concerned Angelina. Although Julie would never admit to feeding her children junk food, Angelina couldn’t help but wonder if the children asked for it regularly. How else could a bird who could only mimic have picked up his favourite two word phrase so clearly? Still, after several weeks of his incessant repetitions, she wished the children had been more specific with their requests. A bird that could say, “MacDonald’s,” “Domino’s,” and “Chinese” would still be preferable to one who could only say, “Take away.”
Each time Tom came to stay, Angelina would try to teach him some new words.
“Ciao,” she would say to him over and over. “Ciao, bella.”
If she couldn’t go to Italy, she would bring Italy to her.
She remembered the first time she’d seen a picture of Tuscany. She’d been eleven and the library book had been so new there wasn’t a single wrinkle or fold on any of the pages. She brought it home to show her parents.
“Can we go there?” she’d said. The rolling hills of grapevines and the peach-coloured render of the buildings drew her so strongly she thought she would be sucked right into the pictures.
“How would we ever get there?” her father had replied, laughing at her. “You’ve got a great big country here to explore.”
Her next fascination was Sweden, and then Switzerland. When she hit fifteen she discovered South America and began dreaming of such exotic places as Asunción and Buenos Aires.
She would mention each new place to her parents.
“What would you eat there?” her mother would say.
“And how will you pay your way?” her father would say. “Travel is expensive.”
Her first job paid very little, but she was determined to save. She told the girls at the switchboard of her plans and asked them if they were interested in going.
“Too far,” one said.
“Think of all the bugs you could catch,” said another.
Then her husband came along – tall, handsome, with a well-paying job. He indulged her fancies of travelling the world, looking over the books she had collected and even talking about visiting her chosen cities one day. But not on honeymoon. No, they needed to get set up in a house first. Then there were other expenses. And then there were children.
Finally there was a British woman, who in a few short months convinced him to do something Angelina hadn’t manage in a quarter of a century.
“Take away?” Tom said.
“Oh, shut it,” Angelina said, wiping her hands on her trousers and deciding to return inside. She thought about phoning her son, but realised it would still be too early in South Africa. He’d be sleeping.
She wondered how she had managed to infuse both her children with a love of travel without them ever offering to take her along on their trips.
From the time David was a rambunctious three-year-old, he’d found Africa fascinating. He gravitated to the giraffes, elephants, and lions in the picture books she’d bought him. Their visits to the zoo were spent staring at the meerkats or hyenas. It was no surprise, therefore, when he turned twenty-four and declared he was moving to Africa to work on a game reserve.
“Maybe I could come with you,” she’d said to him.
He smiled. “Mum, I don’t think Africa is really your kind of place. You should spend your money on a trip to Italy.”
“How do you know what my kind of place is?” she huffed at him, frustrated at how he made a rejection sound so friendly.
He pointed to the Tuscan panorama that hung above her settee. “That’s your kind of place, Mum. Always has been.”
It was a cold and wet morning when she’d seen him off at the airport. Afterwards she wandered past the arrival hall, wondering how many years would pass before her boy would step back through those gates.
Running her gaze over the people there – reunited lovers, grandparents doting over grandchildren, business people squinting at the scrawled names held aloft by drivers – she spotted a face from her past.
Stepping through the doors, tanned to a burnished brown and wearing a flowing linen dress purchased in some faraway market, was one of the girls Angelina had worked with on the switchboard years ago. Marnie. Not a girl anymore. They were both women in their fifties now.
Angelina waved to her and the light of recognition dawned on her face. They sipped coffee together while Marnie told Angelina all about Marrakesh – the narrow alleys and the central market, the smells and tastes of the Moroccan foods.
“It all sounds so wonderful,” Angelina said. “Where do you plan to go next?”
“I haven’t decided,” said Marnie, tilting her head to the side as if she were scanning an imaginary map.
“Perhaps we could go together.” Angelina leaned forward to show her sincerity.
Marnie smiled and agreed, but her offhand manner implied she was merely being polite.
Angelina wrote her number on the back of Marnie’s luggage tag, but she never heard back. She now sat and wondered how many places Marnie had visited in the intervening five years.
“Take away?” screeched Tom, sounding just as shrill through the flyscreen.
“For goodness sake,” said Angelina, grabbing an old tablecloth from the cupboard. She marched outside and threw the cloth over the cage. “It’s about time you stopped saying that.”
“Take away?” said Tom, quieter now as if she’d hurt his feelings.
“Take away?” she said to herself. Hadn’t those been her words throughout her life? Hadn’t she been asking for fifty-seven years for someone to take her away, to whisk her off to visit the distant places of her fascination? Had her wishes sounded as repetitive and irritating?
She took the tablecloth off the cage and stared at the bird. “What is it you want?”
Tom bowed his head and stepped forward on his perch, appearing to listen to her.
“Do you want to leave?”
He bobbed his head up and down, making gentle tutting noises with his tongue.
Angelina watched, reminding herself that he couldn’t really understand her. Still, she could not resist. She opened the door to his cage.
“Go on then. Fly. Take yourself away.”
Tom stared at the opening, still nodding his head.
Angelina stepped back. “I’m not helping you. If you want to leave, you have to do it on your own.” Then she walked inside.
“Take away?” Tom screeched one last time.
But she wasn’t listening any more.
Instead, she settled herself at her laptop and started searching for fares to Tuscany.
“The Red Umbrella” is available for the month of January 2026 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 1.
“Birdsitting”
Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Baverstock
Cover and Layout copyright © 2016 by Jessica Baverstock
Cover design by Jessica Baverstock
Cover art © musri/iStock
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.