My sister and I were only three months apart in age because we were both adopted, so we both started to reach puberty around the same time. We only had two bedrooms in the house, so when that happened we stopped sharing a bedroom and my dad and I shared one room and my sister and mother shared the other. I slept in a double bed with my father (my parents’ bed). He had a big stomach and he snored and his breath always smelled awful, stale, because he smoked all day and drank all day. One Sunday morning I remember waking up, on my side, looking out the window, my father was behind me snoring and stinking away. It was warm but not hot, so probably June or maybe May, and across the street in an old pine tree was a mourning dove. Mourning doves prefer pine trees. I’m not sure if that’s an actual fact, but I’ve never really known them to nest anywhere but in pine trees or other evergreens like spruces or hemlocks. I always loved the song of the mourning dove, which is really simple, it’s two notes. First one note, then it goes up in pitch for the next note, then three notes that are the same as the first one. There was something about that song that just negated all the sadness in the room so that I didn’t really mind being in a bed with my drunk, stinky father because the mourning dove was outside in the tree and it made everything seem peaceful.