A Wing and a Prayer

Somewhere between a blog and a Zen tale, my prodigal summer continues to show me both where I am stuck as well as the interconnectedness of all that is in our own illusion.

At the first sign of spring, I noticed a small Nuthatch carrying nesting material into an old birdhouse that my family and I had painted more than four years ago.  Not once in all of my backyard birding had I ever seen a bird even explore our avant-garde aviator abodes.  Yet this tiny visitor decided that this would be the year that she would consider making a roost in our rafters.  Something about how all of the pieces seem to fit together touched me in that moment.  How even now, someone could be in a science lab somewhere building a new compound that might cure an illness that may not even exist today.  For whatever reason, my family and I built these tiny dwellings, and at this moment they became the perfect model home for one of our feathered guests.

It was a wonderful story.  And had the petite Nuthatch actually laid eggs this spring, it would have been an amazing dharma moment indeed!  But for whatever reason it had seemed to be perfect timing, the manifestation of form from the formless in the cosmos, no baby birds graced our man-made nests this year.  However several other birds flocked to our light fixtures, low shrubbery and porch eves this summer to set up blue egg nurseries.

Up close and personal, I was able to capture the first moments of life with my mobile phone camera.  I thought about creating a blog as I chronicled the development of the tiny feathers on nude little fledglings.  Yet not knowing whether the birds would survive, I was hesitant to post a story that may not have a happy ending.

My kids have known for years that I am not a fan of cinema downers.  No matter how poignant or meaningful a movie may be, if it has a heart breaking ending the kids know to tell me – “You don’t want to watch that … it’s not Mom Approved.”

Yet day after day, I balanced precariously on rocks and benches careful not to disturb our new neighbors as they were busy tending to their brood.  A California Towhee built an amazing nest not more than four feet above ground and nestled into the bamboo of our small water garden.  However, the nesting season seemed to come at a time when we had unusual overcast and our solar water pump was still for most of the three weeks of the construction.  When the hatchlings did emerge from their tiny eggs so did the hot California sun.  Despite my best efforts to keep shade on the nest site, near 100 degree heat and other unexpected and unknown events culled the brood from three to a sole survivor in a matter of a few short days.

Meanwhile the house finches above our security motion lights as well as those just outside our front porch were busying tending to their clutch at a time we had scheduled our exterior house to be painted.  How kind was the crew to block off the new nests while spraying the stucco all around our little spots of nature.

So we watch and wonder and realize how we anthropomorphize every detail of the volery much in the same way that we plan, ponder and criticize our own lives in the midst of unexpected and unknown events.  As much, I felt my heart sink when I saw an empty Towhee nest one morning after watching the parcel so closely since its birth.  Only to notice days after that the parents still seemed to be gathering mealy tidbits and whisking them off to a thicket in the back corner of my yard.

Was the offspring still alive and kicking?  What will happen to the birds out front now that the painters have gone?  What about my own children as they grow up and spread their wings to explore the unknown and unexpected events all around them?  Perhaps in this moment someone, somewhere in the world has their hand busy at what will become an integral episode in their future lives.  All we can do, it seems is watch and wonder and realize that it is only in this moment and this breath that we feel the wind beneath our wings.