As I walk down my street to the bus stop on this warm-ish spring morning, I realize that I’ve always heard the same birdsong. Breathing in the crisp air, I smile subconsciously as that sweet, pitchy tune fills my ears. It’s so familiar that I almost don’t notice it- the same notes swing upwards, followed by low, echoing warbles. From backyard shenanigans as a kid to early sunrises before high school, these sounds have remained a constant in my life— at least, when I happen to be paying attention at just the right time. No matter how much I trip and tumble through life, the cardinals chirping in my backyard allow me to take a deep breath and regain solid footing time after time.

These days, I feel like I spend every other second saying that I’m ready to leave Northborough: to start my own life and get out of this bubble. And I am— growing up here was safe and comfortable, but I’m graduating high school with very little experience in the real world. What frightens me, though, about leaving my hometown, is that soon I’ll wake up to the song of different birds. These birds don’t know me; we aren’t acquainted. They didn’t watch me drip sticky popsicle juice all over my tricycle or stomp home from the bus after failing another Algebra II test.  Without their familiar song, how will my feet find the ground in an entirely new place? My backyard birds are the one thing I can’t pack up and illegally sneak into my dorm room. I’ll have to find new birds.

Twenty years from now, perhaps I’ll be driving back down my street in little old Northborough, trying to sneak a peek at whoever set up camp in my childhood home. Who knows if those chirps will stay the same? Perhaps a new generation will have taken over, echoing their parents’ tunes, but with their own variation. Maybe they’ll even create their own, entirely new birdsong. Perhaps I will, too.