A long, long time ago when I was a child, my mother had two books on her bookshelf that I was not allowed to read. One was called Gentian Hill and one was called Green Dolphin Street. Eventually I got far enough into my teens to be allowed to read them. I read them and promptly forgot about them, without ever hearing from my mother why they had been forbidden.
A few weeks ago, I started thinking about these books and wondering what had been in them that had been so adult that I was not allowed to read them till I was older. So I ordered them from Amazon and started reading them, Green Dolphin Street first. I’m almost through the book now and still can’t figure out what the problem was with reading it. But more especially, the heroine had a parrot that went with her on all her adventures around the world. And I have to ask myself whether this is not the reason that I now have parrots in my life that have been with me for all my adventures. There was certainly no other influence that would account for my love of parrots in specific and birds in general. If so, I am so eternally grateful to my mother for letting me read Green Dolphin Street and for the heroine who hauled that damned parrot Old Nick half way across the world, like I did to my first parrot Adeline.