Bird Course - Ken Gracie

Ken Gracie

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Bird Course<br>On leaving the nest and flying hard into a window

Ken Gracie<br>May 31, 2026

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I woke with a lump in my throat, a hard mass a couple of inches long and tucked under the left side of my jaw. The node had appeared a couple of weeks earlier and slowly grown. Now it hurt to swallow, and I felt awful. Days later, a doctor at Student Health would see it and thank me for having an interesting medical problem, but so far I had tried to ignore it. Exams were coming. I had priorities. I would rest later. Today was the first mid-term for PHYS 105, the first-year physics class for physics majors with a reputation as a killing field for physics frosh.<br>Being sick, I slept badly. My burning eyes drifted open and took in my room. About six feet by twelve, a single bed jammed between a small desk with shelves above and a narrow closet beside built-in drawers and a small mirror. My own room in residence, a bonus for winning an entrance scholarship. There were a few posters on the walls, but the shelves were my trophy case: my high school diploma, my scholarship letter, my Grade 12 yearbook, and my hockey provincials championship ring. Clothes and loose-leaf notes were scattered everywhere, shoes and a backpack were tossed at the foot of the bed, and my desktop was buried in clutter. I got up and showered, my unmade bed adding to the disarray.<br>I dragged myself to the cafeteria and forced down some cold cereal and toast despite the pain in my throat. Then I was back in my room, frantically studying. I was always doing that. Once, my floor don walked by and did a double-take. “I know you’re working hard, Ken,” he said, “because the only clear section of carpet in your room is between the door and your desk!” Working harder was how I managed stress.<br>Working harder had so often paid off before. The yearbook above my desk testified to that. The faux leather cover and embossed title gleamed in black and gold, the school colours. It was a thin, dark treasure chest full of gems that I would open and look at for encouragement. There were snapshots of my dorm crew, Greg and Henry and Darren and Pete and Gunner, smiling or caught by surprise. There were photos of the girl that I’d fallen for ass over tea kettle, who sat with me on a railroad track in the warm golden light of sunset on the prairie in June and laughed her beautiful, ridiculous laugh. Written in margins and across printed text were notes and signatures from classmates and teachers, each wishing me well and expressing easy confidence that my future was as warm and bright as that sunset, as golden as the inset on the yearbook cover.<br>“Come back and see us when you’re famous!” wrote my biology teacher, and could it be, was he right, was it written? That book was a well of memories that raised a different lump in my throat and seemed to vouchsafe a promise of what I was becoming. It was a talisman that would evoke the old magic and make the stress work pay off again. It had to.<br>Time to go. The lump of promise plunged into my gut.<br>I recall the day as bright and beautiful, a postcard image of the long southern Ontario autumn. It was a jewel of an October day, crisp but not what anyone back home would call cold. The sky was a cloudless azure near the trees, deepening to sapphire overhead. The maples around campus seemed to be on fire, leaves blazing red and orange and yellow as they prepared to fall to earth. But that deep blue sky and those flaming trees could be an insertion based on many such days that I saw that autumn.<br>On the day of the exam, I noticed very little. I was wrapped tightly inside my pounding head, my breathing was shallow, and I was more afraid than any mid-term should have made me.<br>Dad had come to visit me in September. Old washed-out photos show us on the steps of Gordon House on a day just like this. I squint into the sun in my loud high school jacket, black and gold and white. He grins proudly in a jacket and tie, tan trench coat, and Irish cap. His son was at the university, on the path to success blazed by generations of Gracies before. Two generations in a row had gone to Oxford. One of my cousins got a double first. Another later rose high at the BBC. A third would climb the ranks in the Bank of England, at times interacting with some guy named Carney.<br>I wanted so badly to show what I could do and to make my family proud. I had read War and Peace in high school for fun, in part because Dad said that I’d never get through it. I went to Ottawa to study the Canadian political system in Grade 11. CBC Radio’s Ideas program enthralled me: the quiet, incisive presence of host Lister Sinclair and the breathy insights of producer David Cayley introducing me to topics like Religion and the New Science, The Rebellions of 1837, and the writings of Ivan Illich and William Blake. It lit in me a blazing fire to learn and to grow and to contribute something of my own.<br>And now the moment had...