My childhood memories are filled with long summer days and nights with my sisters, Hailey and Emma, and my cousin Thaj. Thaj was an only child and the only boy among his 11 cousins. Every summer, he would come to spend the summer here in New York from Orlando with the army of girl cousins he had. We had to nerf gun wars, movie nights, pool days, and most memorable, we had operation bird.

This was a plan to trap a bird in a box using bird food under a box propped up by a stick with a string we would pull while the bird was under it. Emma was always too young to care, but every morning, me, Hailey and Thaj were outside with our trap ready to go.

Why did we do it? I don’t know. We were just kids with nothing to do. We never did catch a bird, and if we did, we would have let it go, but we just wanted to try.

Unfortunately, Thaj is no longer with us, and these memories are all I have of him. I hold them close to me, and every now and then, I think about the pure joy that he brought my sisters and me. Maybe this summer, I’ll set up a trap and finally catch a bird.