Pookie
By: susan peterson stamis
Tags: best friend, birthdays, cake, foreign service, mother, parrots, state department
Category: Uncategorized
My aunt Nia often asks the question, ”Who has more fun than people?”
It was my twelfth birthday and the goofy appearance of the cake whose candles I’m blowing out indicates that I probably baked and decorated it myself. I’m pretty sure my best childhood friend, Betty Lou, in the red dress, helped me in the kitchen, but she seems to have lost interest in the birthday proceedings. My other guest looks ready to cry. Is it because she senses that 48 years later I won’t remember her name?
Good old Mom is schmoozing with her Half Moon parrot,“Pookie.” We had acquired Pookie and his little birdie buddy in Guatemala, and my mother became so fond of them that she was determined to have them shipped stateside with our other household effects. Traveling by truck and by train, the pair began their journey together in their cage.
I like to imagine that they enjoyed the changing scenery along the way, thoughtfully sending postcards to their Half-Moon friends and relatives left behind. ”Having a great time, wish you were here.” “Caught the Sinatra show passing through Vegas.” “Wow, it sure is flat east of the Rockies.” Alas, only the hardy Pookie survived the arduous overland trek from Guatemala City north to Los Angeles, then across the expansive and varied American landscape to Bethesda.
Mom became the sociopathic Pookie’s only companion, because everyone else stupid enough to approach that crazy bird was left dazed and bleeding. One cold winter day, a visiting houseguest forgot to close our back door after letting her fluffy little white dog out to romp in the snow. Poor little Pookie caught a nasty chill and a few days later, with a pathetic squawk, he fell off his perch.
The second cake was also for me. I know this because another snapshot shows me blowing out those candles as well.
So, who has more fun than people?
2 comments on “Pookie”
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About Me
My father was a Consular Officer in the United States Foreign Service. He was first stationed in post World War II Berlin, where I was born in 1950. Subsequently, we lived in the Philippines; Jamaica; Guatemala; Washington, DC; Greece; Ceylon and Mexico; visiting many places in between. I was reared by my parents and nurtured by the various amahs, nannies, and housemaids who, every two years or so, entered and exited my little life.
I was educated in American Schools in “foreign lands,” but the most fascinating classrooms were the exotic locales where we lived, and the most inspiring teachers were the colorful people of those exotic and ancient cultures.
The bi-annual “home leaves” which my family spent at my grandparents’ homes in Los Angeles, California provided a sense of constancy to our nomadic lifestyle. My many aunts, uncles and cousins lived there and I eagerly looked forward to those vacations. We were 1st and 2nd generation Greek Americans (all 4 of my grandparents had immigrated at the turn of the century), and thus had foreignness stamped onto us even though we were Americans.
Two of my father’s siblings were also in the diplomatic service, and we world-traveling cousins were a source of endless curiosity to our domestic counterparts when we came home speaking English with unusual accents, reducing the statesiders to hysterics.With his various cameras, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, 16 millimeter, Super 8 and Polaroid, my father rarely lost an opportunity to document the events unfolding around us. After years of waiting patiently in boxes under the stairs, these photographic records are now fulfilling their purpose as mnemonic retrievals of my little life.
Mnemonic Retrievals 
That’s one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever read. I may never stop laughing.
Well done!
G
That is such a great picture. Everything is so unnaturally orchestrated.