Barking Mad
This story was published on May 14th, 2026 on Oprah Daily.
She likes to bark! Like a dog. Sometimes for no reason, often home alone, always with her family. Recently, she bought a small plastic bird feeder that sticks to the window in the kitchen. It took a few days, but word soon got around that there was free food at 587, and birds of all colors and sizes flocked. Her mum had bought her an illustrated sheet with the names and photos of the most common birds in the area. She stuck it on the cupboard next to the window and watched as a brave black-capped chickadee swooped in next to the dark-eyed juncos, only to be replaced by a white-crowned sparrow before a blue jay darkened the window and cleared the feeder. One of the most exciting birds to appear was the male white-winged crossbill, which, contrary to its name, is actually a beautiful pale pink color. Not wasting any time, she called her sister and whispered the news over the telephone so as not to frighten the bird away. Whispering back on the other end, her sister demanded to see a photo. It was not lost on either of them how loudly this screamed middle age!
Usually, when she barks, she sounds like a small lap dog. More shih tzu than Chihuahua. This past week, squirrels have bullied their way into the bird feeders, finding a way to scramble up the siding and the glass to get to the food. Initially, opening the window and yapping at them was enough to send them back to the woods, but over the weeks they’ve become bolder, and she now finds herself having to run out into the rain-soaked garden in her socks and slides, harnessing the power of a midsize dog. After the success of one such mission, she put her hands on her hips and surveyed her domain; chest puffed, she glanced back up at the kitchen window and saw one of her daughters and her husband watching her. She smiled, wondering if this perhaps was a little too much for one marriage to stand?
A couple of months ago, she went to New York City for work and a sprinkle of Fashion Week. She left instructions at home for the bird feeder and packed a bag with clothes in the hopes that something would make sense once she got up to the city. No longer needing the head-to-toe appraisal of women quite so much or the greedy slobber from the male gaze, she opted for comfort and anti-establishment, wearing a vintage E.T. sweatshirt with jeans. She had forgotten how fun these parties could be. Giggling with old friends, making new ones, and like the plumped-up, beautiful birds in their feathers at home, everyone swooping in for free food and cocktails. Later that evening, she ended up in borrowed PJs sitting cross-legged on a bed with two of her best friends, much like they used to do when they were younger. They gossiped, laughed, and cried into the early morning, waving away the heavy price of deferring sleep.
Throughout all of this adventure, not one bark escaped her lips, nor a faint gasp about birds. She is different around her friends than she is at home, more controlled, perhaps because when they met almost two decades ago, she was more reserved, and muscle memory always reverts us back. While barking was a relatively new part of her life, the silliness and lightness of who she was at home only started to appear when she became a mother and moved out of NYC to the New England countryside.
Colliding with the freedom that this space gave her, while also aging into midlife, and the letting-go of caring what others thought of her, gave her inner child permission to roly-poly to the surface. She often thinks she would like it if these two sides of her could live closer together, wondering if it seems inauthentic to be so different in different places. But maybe we need the separation, the freshness of the change, or the delight in the secret of what else goes on. Like the successful businessman who comes home and closes his curtains before allowing his fingertips to lightly drift along the line of beautiful dresses hung up in his “other” wardrobe, wondering which one he will wear that night. Or the quiet child at school who, when the door closes behind her at home, loudly and unabashedly air-guitars her way around her bedroom.
Our lives are layered, and so are we.
A little over 24 hours later, she was on the road home again. Her body was beginning to demand the sleep she’d lost, and she missed her family. The return journey is always her favorite part of any trip, that feeling of the city slipping further and further behind her, landscapes changing from bloated gray cubes to Rockwellian postcard villages, before finally pushing into the flat ocean and trees rushing past the window. It was dark by the time she crossed the border of the 95 into her state. Sighing with relief from inside the comfort and warmth of her car, she smiled to herself before finally letting out an excited welcome-home bark!