My first apartment. Columbus, Ohio.

A very long time ago I lived in a ..... OK, real estate porn coming.

Lovely efficiency apartment in a unit called Neilwood Gables on the Ohio State University campus. Big living room/bedroom. Beautiful bath with subway tiles. Kitchen with glass doored cabinets. In the 1970s this place rented for $115 a month.

Mom & Dad paid most of the rent (thank you, So  so much). I loved living there, especially hearing the mourning doves cooing in the pretty alcoves between units. (The whole building was in the shape of an E, with the spaces between the tops, center and bottoms of the E being garden spots, with beautiful stone floors and benches.)

Did I say mourning doves? What I treasured so much about that apartment was that it was mine. My home, my place. I loved waking in the morning and hearing the doves ... before class, before my job as a secretary in the OSU anthropology department.  I remember their coos to this day.

I was 20-ish then. I write this as a 60-ish woman, who took a late Sunday afternoon walk and heard the cooing of mourning doves.

I wish, I wish.

The coo of the doves

I've been enjoying so much lately listening to the mourning doves, who become more vocal in the spring, along with all their winged brethren.

Their cooing takes me back to college and my lovely old apartment on Neil Avenue, north campus. The building, I'd put it at 1920s vintage, had an "E" footprint, with the spaces between the horizontal extensions of the letter serving as tiny courtyards, paved in stone and coolly shaded from the sidewalk. Three stories, if I recall. My apartment, a very spacious studio, was on the second floor.

Between my sophomore and junior year, I stayed on the OSU campus for summer quarter. I don't remember waking up to an alarm, though I had a job as a secretary in the anthropology department that required my presence at around 8.

But I do remember the coos of the mourning doves, serenading me as I awoke and prepared for the day.

That is the first bird call I ever paid attention to, and, though they are among the most humble and common of birds, I treasure their song, because it reminds me of a less complicated time of life (though, of course, back then, I did not realize it!)