Brian Buckbee and Carol Ann Fitzgerald, WE SHOULD ALL BE BIRDS: A Memoir
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[0:45]Brian Buckby and Carol Anne Fitzgerald are the authors of We Should All Be Birds, a memoir.
[0:50]Brian Buckby lives in Missoula, Montana.
[0:53]He is co-founder of the 406 Writers Workshop.
[0:56]His stories have appeared in The Sun, The George Review, The Mid-American Review, Shen
[1:00]and Doha, The Southern Review, and Elsewhere.
[1:02]Carol Anne Fitzgerald is a former editor at The Sun, and The Oxford American.
[1:07]Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Plowshares, The Oxford American, The
[1:11]Sun, The OA Book of Great Music Writing, and Elsewhere.
[1:14]She lives in Chapel Hill.
[1:15]Welcome, Brian, and Carol.
[1:17]I'm so delighted to have you both on to discuss We Should All Be Birds, a memoir.
[1:22]Thanks for coming on.
[1:24]Thank you for having us.
[1:25]So explain how the two of you met up and how this book came to be, please.
[1:31]OK, so I think there's two different periods here, which I think of as BCA and ACA, that's
[1:40]before Carol Anne and after Carol Anne.
[1:44]So before Carol Anne, I was simply putting up a post on Facebook, and I really never
[1:52]used social media, but I found this pigeon, and this pigeon had been very special to me.
[1:59]So a national bird day a few years ago, I put one post on Facebook with a link to a couple
[2:05]charities, and a short description of why I was asking people to donate to charities.
[2:10]But the thing is, people who read the post wrote me back and said, well, I'd like to hear
[2:15]some more about this.
[2:19]And when I say right, I actually wasn't writing because I've had a medical condition,
[2:25]and my headache is so bad, I really can't look at screens.
[2:28]So I was dictating the post.
[2:30]So I put it more the second day, and people I had heard from in, since like high school
[2:37]even were saying, gosh, I want to hear more about this.
[2:40]And I thought people didn't read more than a sentence or two on Facebook, but they were
[2:45]reading it, and so I kept dictating these chunks, one chunk at a time, until I felt like
[2:53]I kind of got to an end, and I was completely totally exhausted.
[2:58]So then these people who I call the Facebook people, and they are so special to me, because
[3:04]I wouldn't have done it without them.
[3:06]When I talked in my head and told the story, I talked directly to them, they said, you
[3:10]should publish this thing.
[3:12]And then we move into the ACA period after Carol Anne, and Carol Anne, you can probably take
[3:19]it from there.
[3:20]Right.
[3:21]Okay.
[3:22]So we overlapped, Brian and I overlapped a little bit in the publishing world in the
[3:26]past, and he reached out to me and said, hey, I've got some posts on Facebook, you know,
[3:32]you want to read them.
[3:33]And I was like, Facebook writing, not sure about that.
[3:38]And I started reading these Facebook posts, and basically they were about Brian encountering
[3:44]a pigeon who basically he was following Brian around for three nights in a row.
[3:51]The pigeon suddenly appeared in Brian's vicinity, was looking at Brian like he wanted something
[3:56]from Brian, finally Brian put out his hands and the bird jumped into his hands and Brian
[4:02]took the bird home, and that is the bird who became two-step.
[4:06]Brian was writing about two-step, and it was so charming and so funny, he, you know,
[4:12]he was taking walks around the block and two-step who had an injured foot would be hopping
[4:18]around, down the block, all the way around the block with Brian.
[4:21]So they're like two buddies.
[4:22]They'd go down to the Orange Street Bridge, which is a Missoula.
[4:25]I don't know Missoula, but I know it now from the book.
[4:28]And two-step would be on Brian's head, and people would come up and say hi, and I mean,
[4:34]Brian taught two-step how to fly, because two-step was injured.
[4:37]And so Brian, despite his condition, which makes him extremely weak, would take two-step
[4:43]out to the softball fields, and he'd run so that two-step would have to hop and sort
[4:48]of fly after him, and finally, you know, two-step started flying, and it was this incredible
[4:53]moment.
[4:54]And Brian wrote about it just so beautifully.
[4:55]It was so cinematic, you know, I was like, oh my gosh, I need to know more.
[4:59]I think Brian had in mind publishing an essay, which, you know, I was happy to help him
[5:04]publish an essay, but I was like, I have so many questions.
[5:07]What is this illness you have?
[5:09]Like, you never talk about that in these posts.
[5:11]You know, he alludes to it.
[5:13]This woman you love, and there was clearly so much more to the story, and I wanted to know
[5:18]the answer.
[5:19]So just for the sake of satisfying my curiosity, I was like, you know, Brian, let's try
[5:23]to write a book.
[5:24]Or no, Brian, why don't you write a book?
[5:26]And he's like, I can't write a book.
[5:27]And I was like, of course you can.
[5:28]And he's like, I can't do it.
[5:29]I'm physically incapable of doing this much dictation, of sustaining a story in my head, blah,
[5:34]blah, blah.
[5:35]He's like, if you agree to do everything except for the dictating, we can do the book.
[5:41]And I was like, I mean, I wanted to read the book so bad.
[5:44]I was like, yes, I had no idea what I was getting into, but it was just complete joy.
[5:48]And the only other thing I want to say is that what really I noticed about the Facebook
[5:52]post is that here's Brian was very sick, clearly.
[5:55]I didn't know with what.
[5:57]But he was so funny.
[5:58]I mean, these stories about the bird and the, I mean, it's just hilarious.
[6:03]And that's something that I don't know if everybody gets from the book.
[6:06]But for me, I laugh a lot when I read the book.
[6:09]So what a story, first of all.
[6:11]Brian, when you wrote, let's talk about the illness first.
[6:15]So you write about it and you said it's sort of like chronic fatigue syndrome in a way
[6:20]that you get exhausted from doing very little and that it's excruciating to look at the
[6:26]light. And now here we are in Zoom and I'm feeling incredibly guilty right now.
[6:31]And be like, oh my gosh, this is, I'm like, door drinking this poor man.
[6:34]It's been through so much.
[6:35]But you said, you know, if people like that you had to sort of come to terms with
[6:41]the fact that you are ill and you're not going to live necessarily the life
[6:44]that you thought maybe you were going to live, like, can you just talk a little bit
[6:47]about that?
[6:48]Yeah, I think I was a teacher.
[6:51]I love teaching.
[6:52]I love my students and I played hockey with a hockey player, love hockey.
[6:58]And I had this partner, I was very dear to me.
[7:01]She's the one in the book.
[7:03]I refer to as L in the book.
[7:05]And I was in Kuala Lumpur one day and found myself in a hospital because I was
[7:12]having very odd symptoms.
[7:14]And since then, I've had a headache and kind of intense body pain that increases
[7:21]when I do activity and this sounds kind of like or is what is called the
[7:27]chronic fatigue syndrome and it pretty much is making my life.
[7:31]I kind of think a lot about those old horror movies.
[7:34]I don't know if you've seen them where the walls like literally closing on
[7:36]people.
[7:37]That's kind of what I feel like that the world is she gets get smaller and
[7:41]smaller and smaller because there's less and less and less like in jail.
[7:45]And that's why this pigeon was so important to me because it was, that's what
[7:51]I did with my life was take care of two step.
[7:53]Oh my gosh.
[7:54]Well, the way you wrote about it, the monster, so to speak and how it felt
[7:59]waking up to so much pain and just like longing for the night where you could go
[8:02]back to sleep.
[8:03]I mean, that was really, you know, really emotional to read.
[8:07]So I had never had really headache problems before because I may be hangovers and
[8:12]stuff on your eyes, I never had a migraine.
[8:15]And then I got a migraine and I don't know.
[8:19]I had a migraine.
[8:20]I just had one.
[8:21]Yeah, I just had one when I was pregnant.
[8:23]They said it was like related to the pregnancy or something.
[8:26]Yeah.
[8:26]Oh, well, I'm sorry for that.
[8:29]It seems like the migraine happened a lot with people.
[8:32]It comes on.
[8:32]The onset is is more moral.
[8:34]And so it's a lot of like high school age girls start getting migraine
[8:39]problems.
[8:41]And for me, when I got this, this headache that became intractable, you know,
[8:47]I've had it for five years straight.
[8:49]I began thinking about these people I went to high school with.
[8:52]And most migraine sufferers are girls.
[8:55]The proportion is like for your four to one.
[8:57]The same as it is with MECFS, my illness.
[9:00]And I think about what, you know, high school is hard for me.
[9:04]What would it have been like to try to suffer through high school with migraine?
[9:11]And I'm just kind of awestruck that these people did it.
[9:15]And I'm embarrassed because I had no idea.
[9:21]I had no idea that these people were kind of suffering around me.
[9:25]And I paid no attention to them.
[9:28]And so I this headache that I've gotten has made me kind of see those people.
[9:34]And it also kind of made me see pigeons are also kind of similarly neglected.
[9:41]And interestingly about pigeons, you point out early on that the refuge center
[9:46]wouldn't take the pigeon, whereas they would have taken lots of other different types
[9:50]of birds based on its sort of history and captivity.
[9:55]And how it's, you know, ended up here and how pigeons are like at the short end of the
[10:00]stick and aren't as revered necessarily as other as other birds because for
[10:04]a while people just wanted to eat them.
[10:07]Yeah, or sacrifice them or sacrifice them or just show them off for display.
[10:12]I think Carol Ann, I'm really when I contacted you with the first question I
[10:17]probably asked you was, are you a pigeon person or not?
[10:21]Perhaps. I don't remember that. But the thing was, I was always a bird person.
[10:26]You know, I had parakeets when I was little and you know, you and I had very a lot of
[10:31]similarities with our relationships with our moms and our connection to animals through our moms.
[10:36]So I was not a pigeon person though. But I mean, you don't have to be a pigeon person to respond
[10:42]to this two step character. Brian would always say, you know, who wants to read a whole book
[10:47]that's just about one character? And I was like, it's not, you know, he was talking about
[10:50]himself. And I was like, no, two step is like the main character. So there's two characters. But anyway,
[10:56]I mean, this bird is very funny, very charming, very loving. Just really, I don't know.
[11:03]I had never read a story about a bird that touched me so deeply. Yeah.
[11:08]So I do now. I love pigeons, of course. And I see now how maligned they are. I mean,
[11:16]there's some movie where they say the character calls pigeons like rat with wings or something.
[11:21]You know, I wasn't really sensitive to all that until meeting Brian and learning about,
[11:26]you know, pigeons really are not beloved. And they're poisoned and, you know, towns and cities
[11:33]even poison them to get rid of them. And it's, you know, it's just an interesting issue to me.
[11:38]So and it's good to open your eyes up to to these maligned things around us that, you know,
[11:44]you just like, even rats. I mean, why do rats get such a bad rap, you know, but anyway, yeah,
[11:49]that can be your next book. We should all be rats. We'll see. You could compare them, see how
[11:53]they do relative to each other. We should all be rats. We should all be rats coming soon to a
[11:58]bookshelf near you. I think regardless of whether you are or are not a bird person or whatever,
[12:06]I think that the book makes everyone just more aware of the fact that we are sharing the world.
[12:12]So with creatures who have thoughts and feelings, not necessarily our own. But if you haven't
[12:20]fallen in love with an animal, like now is the time with the book. I mean, I feel like so many
[12:24]people have dogs, like I have my dog behind me. And, you know, I'm like convinced my dog is human.
[12:29]I usually do. Yeah. My cat is my cat. Right. Yeah. But really, if you ascribe that much
[12:36]meaning and emotion and all of it to every creature, it's almost like hard to live with ourselves.
[12:42]Knowing what happens in society. So I think that people almost like block it out in the way
[12:47]people kind of like block out deaths so that they can get out of bed every morning. You know,
[12:51]I think they just don't necessarily want to leave room for that. I don't know. What do you think about it?
[12:56]Yeah. I think it is kind of crushing. You know, my parents, when I was little, maybe watched the
[13:02]movie, Old Yellow, like a lot of our parents did. Me too. And like, I still am at it then for this.
[13:08]Even though we were supposed to be good for me, those things are hard. And for me, when
[13:13]I was so sick in my life, it changed. At that point, it had so much pain. I didn't
[13:19]that be around for all that long. It was just not sustainable. These little creatures
[13:24]who were so vulnerable and a little two step hopping along next to me on the street.
[13:30]And it was just heartbreaking. And it was so hard to take care of them and just keep them alive
[13:35]because it wasn't just two step because I had two step. But then he found a partner and I had
[13:40]to kind of feed her and then a flock stared at coming. And then they started coming in the house.
[13:45]And soon I had like, well, birds flying around my house and they were having babies in the house,
[13:50]which were adorable. But it was hard to watch. They were to worry. And I think that's part of our
[13:57]culture is we were really sort of scared of exposing ourselves to sickness and pain like that.
[14:05]Have you had like second opinions, like third opinions of your medical diagnosis?
[14:11]Have you like, I'm sure you have? I just, I feel like I want to try to help
[14:15]so I can give you something. So like, you know, like maybe there's a missed diagnosis or
[14:20]because the girls in high school having had a girl in high school with migraines, like there are
[14:24]medicines and you take the pill and the migraines stop. Like the fact that your migraines don't stop,
[14:30]their response medication is, you know, well, I think thank you for caring and trying to help.
[14:36]That's wonderful. My headache, even though I still have the headache, it's, you know,
[14:40]six years old now or something, it's much less intense than it was when I was writing the book
[14:46]prior to that. And that I think is because of some of the medications that I've taken.
[14:50]But for these chronic fatigue syndrome things, there's not really anything that they can do
[14:57]about that. And a lot of people, a lot of people in medical profession don't want even try
[15:02]to do anything about it. Because like, for instance, when I was in the hospital in Kuala Lumpur,
[15:07]it had been there for like six days. And I did not think I could physically make it back to the
[15:11]states. I had so much pain. And one day, my doctor, and this is a really good facility,
[15:17]my doctor brings in a sociologist and says, hey, look, I want you to be the other doctor.
[15:21]I think she can help you. I'm like, wonderful. And he says, he introduces me to her, and she's a
[15:26]a psychiatrist. And so this is the big story with chronic fatigue syndrome, is that we are not
[15:33]believed. And again, it's this long history, especially because, as I said, most of the sufferers
[15:41]of this illness are women. And so when it started kind of popping in the 80s, 90s, they weren't
[15:49]believed. It was kind of written off as a theory or depression. And it's still that way,
[15:54]even after COVID. And people sort of suspecting that what long COVID is, kind of overlaps a lot
[16:01]with what chronic fatigue syndrome is. Interesting. So in putting the book out there,
[16:08]what are both of you hoping that people feel, think, do like, what is the ultimate goal for you?
[16:15]Carol, and maybe you want to answer that one.
[16:18]I mean, I've just always felt, from the moment I read the post, the post on Facebook,
[16:24]that Ryan's story was brought me inspiration during tough times to keep going, to laugh,
[16:32]to find beauty in the midst of pain. I don't, I myself am lucky to have not had physical pain,
[16:39]but obviously, you know, we all suffer emotional pain at various points. I just felt like people
[16:47]around the world are, you know, anybody who reads this will benefit from this,
[16:51]feeling like they're not completely alone and isolated in whatever they're going through,
[16:56]their grief, their physical pain, you know, their loneliness. I want people to feel like uplifted
[17:02]by it. And I don't think everybody will feel that. I mean, some people will just feel like,
[17:07]oh, this is a book about sickness. And it never really was a book about sickness. It's really a
[17:11]book about a bird and how a bird like kept Ryan going. I mean, Brian has some very dark thoughts
[17:17]along the way. And he, I mean, he wrote very beautifully about those dark thoughts very bravely,
[17:25]I thought. And so I don't, but I'm not saying every reader is going to feel like, oh my gosh,
[17:30]this is like a hopeful book, but I know there are people out there who will respond like that
[17:35]and feel comforted. Well, it's all about sometimes how specific you are. I feel like
[17:42]the more granular you get in something about your own life, the more people see themselves in it
[17:47]or get something out of it. And this particular interaction over a short period of time, relatively,
[17:55]can do just that. Like, what does it say about our relationship to others and what we need to keep
[18:01]going? And human connection, especially contrasted with the pandemic, where, you know, you were starved
[18:07]for company, Ryan and like everybody and no conversations even and then suddenly you get a new type
[18:14]of friend. And I don't know. Well, one of the great things about about having an illness that
[18:20]isolates you like this. And mine coincided with the start of the pandemic. So there was a ton of
[18:25]isolation. There was all this kind of weirdness going on. I'd already been isolated. And so
[18:31]people who are now isolating because of COVID were calling me for advice on how to be an isolated
[18:36]person. But it turns out when you're, when you need help, which I did, people come to help you.
[18:45]And I grew up in a really small family. We were very isolated. My father kind of retreated from
[18:51]the world. It kind of became a hermit. And all these people, including the Facebook people,
[18:58]including you today, Zigbee, have kind of entered my life and have and Carol Anna, especially
[19:06]participated in this collaboration of making this thing that only is so collaborative because I have
[19:13]so many limitations. The people at 10 house had to do so much because I have limitations. Our
[19:20]agent and our agent's name, by the way, is Farley Chase, which is like the best agent name I think
[19:25]ever in the history of the world. He had to do so much because of my limitations. Like, Carol Anne,
[19:30]I mean, it was just heroic what she did. And so it's, for me, it's been just really great to be
[19:37]able to be this collaborative process. And I feel like the reader is part of it. They're in my
[19:44]head. I talk to them all the time. So yeah. And do you find, like, can you listen to audio books?
[19:51]Like, do you get relief in the same way from other people's stories as other people are getting
[19:55]from yours? Yeah, I don't know. You probably have had a lot of people.
[20:00]We'll talk to you about audiobooks over the years.
[20:03]For me, it's just not the same as reading.
[20:06]I do listen to them, and I use speechify now.
[20:12]Do you know speechify?
[20:13]Yeah, it has been easy.
[20:14]So speechify is a bunch of different voices
[20:16]who can read to you.
[20:17]And I've chosen Gwyneth Paltrow.
[20:20]So Gwyneth Paltrow reads me everything.
[20:23]So the newspaper, if there's news going on,
[20:25]I'll be reading the Middle East.
[20:26]Gwyneth Paltrow's reading it.
[20:28]If it's a book I'm listening to on audio, Gwyneth Paltrow
[20:31]reading it.
[20:31]So I do listen to thinking on audio,
[20:33]but I haven't really read a book,
[20:35]including parts of my own book, since I get sick.
[20:38]Oh, well, yeah, Gwyneth Paltrow.
[20:41]I mean, I hope my husband's not listening
[20:43]to me with Paltrow all day, every day.
[20:45]I can say, I should ask him who he uses
[20:47]in speechify, he uses it to read scripts.
[20:49]I love these characters.
[20:50]Anyway, I'm making this.
[20:52]OK, so what is the most important thing
[20:55]that two-step taught you, both of you?
[20:58]Yeah, I mean, I feel like for me, it is being the invisible.
[21:02]That was, pigeons are all around us.
[21:04]And I live in Chicago for a long time.
[21:05]I was always around pigeons.
[21:06]And maybe I think you were in New York pigeons are everywhere.
[21:10]And people are like, oh, pigeons.
[21:12]And a lot of people hate pigeons.
[21:13]They despise them.
[21:14]But I was around pigeons all the time in Chicago.
[21:17]And I never saw them.
[21:19]And really sort of the first pigeon I ever
[21:21]really saw was two-step.
[21:23]And it was such a gift because he
[21:25]made the invisible world visible.
[21:27]And a big part of that invisible world for me
[21:30]were these people, people who suffer.
[21:32]And there's just a lot more of them than I realized.
[21:36]Yeah.
[21:36]And it was such a gift that he gave me.
[21:39]And still, Caroline, you probably maybe have something different.
[21:42]Well, I mean, you know, I love two-step.
[21:45]The book is about two-step for me.
[21:47]But really, Brian, two-step is also about you.
[21:53]And all the love you poured into that relationship.
[21:57]And respect for his wildness.
[22:01]And you know, you took him in.
[22:03]You rescued him.
[22:03]He was wounded.
[22:04]You healed him.
[22:06]He taught him to fly.
[22:08]You had some funny incidents with him.
[22:10]He got hit by a car and all this stuff.
[22:12]But then you had to release him to the wild.
[22:14]And you definitely didn't want to do that
[22:15]because he was your best friend.
[22:17]He was your only family member at that point.
[22:19]But you released him to the wild.
[22:21]And that's really the arc of the book, which
[22:24]having to let go of something that you love so much,
[22:28]just to honor who they are, what they are.
[22:31]So two-step, for me, is also about Brian.
[22:35]And the love that Brian has that I find so inspiring,
[22:40]compelling.
[22:41]It makes me want to be a better person
[22:44]to the earth, to the creatures, to other humans.
[22:48]It's just good.
[22:50]It just pushed all the right buttons for me.
[22:52]I'm not saying it's going to do that for everybody.
[22:54]But for me, you see how Carol Ann is in Zippy?
[22:57]This is what Carol Ann was doing.
[22:59]While I was exhausted, I was like, there's no way
[23:03]I can send you more.
[23:04]And she was so aware of what the book needed.
[23:06]She said, I need another chunk about so-and-so.
[23:08]I said, I'd send her another chunk.
[23:09]And she was just so positive and so encouraging.
[23:12]I was so much plattery and so sweet that somehow she
[23:15]cared me over the finish line.
[23:17]But you also were carrying me over a different sort
[23:19]of finish line.
[23:20]So it definitely went both ways
[23:22]of this relationship.
[23:23]Oh, yeah.
[23:24]Well, I mean, just this dynamic alone
[23:27]is another wonderful thing that seems to have come
[23:30]from this experience.
[23:32]We've never met.
[23:33]What?
[23:35]In fact, we didn't even see each other on Zoom
[23:37]until we met with our agent, I think.
[23:40]That's right.
[23:41]Carol Ann, I think you need to get on a plane
[23:43]and go meet Brian.
[23:44]Well, I'm going out for the launch.
[23:46]OK, OK, OK, good.
[23:48]All right, there you go.
[23:49]Well, well, I feel like as I contend with empty nesting
[23:54]out there somewhere for me with my four kids, which
[23:57]is back of my head all the time and for so many parents,
[24:00]like this particular story of taking flight
[24:05]and so many loves or leaving the nest and all of that.
[24:10]And the emotions of caring for something
[24:13]and how that just elevates all the experiences
[24:17]you have with that creature, this hits home
[24:20]in ways that are not only about birds.
[24:24]This is not about pigeons to me.
[24:26]The story is so much bigger, but it's
[24:28]told through this sort of story allegory, if you all.
[24:32]So anyway, I appreciate it very much.
[24:35]And I appreciate your writing, Brian,
[24:36]and how open you were about your health
[24:39]and your relationships and your inner life
[24:42]and your fears and doubts and is a very vulnerable piece
[24:46]of writing and very well done.
[24:48]So congratulations to both of you.
[24:50]Thank you for saying this.
[24:52]It's so much, Zivi.
[24:53]It's been a really great talking to you.
[24:55]You too.
[24:56]Congratulations.
[24:56]And I still think Brian, you should get some more opinions.
[24:58]Because you never know what's coming down the pike.
[25:01]You just don't know about new treatments.
[25:03]And that was my dream ending.
[25:05]Brian was going to meet the right doctor.
[25:07]And all this is going to be figured out.
[25:10]Yeah.
[25:11]Oh, just saying.
[25:12]OK, thank you, Zivi.
[25:14]I'm working on it.
[25:15]OK, all right.
[25:16]All right, thank you both.
[25:17]OK, bye.
[25:19]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zivi,
[25:22]formerly mom's don't have time to read books.
[25:24]If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[25:27]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zivi Owens,
[25:30]and spread the word.
[25:32]Thanks so much.
[25:33]Oh, and bye the books.