Winter sun

January 25, 2022 

All day I’ve experienced an overwhelmingly warm and powerful sense of wellbeing.

I love the Indo-European root kailo-. From that root we get so many nourishing words: wholeness, health, hale (as in hearty and...), wholesome, healing, hallowed, and holy. A depth of wisdom is expressed in a language where health comes from the same root as whole, and where healing and holiness are bound into that same family.

I’m a Self-help Junkie and am perennially dissatisfied with what I can accomplish in an hour, day, or year. This weekend, in yet one more attempt to harness my potential, and very aware, painfully aware, that I’m running out of time and personal resources (on turning 65), I devised a schedule for the week, mapping out what I would do each half hour of the day, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Jim looked at my list and asked if it were punishment. I can see where he’s coming from, but I really didn’t think it was.

And this first day of the experiment bears it out. I’ve somehow given myself permission to actually accomplish my aspirations, from mundane but satisfying housework: laundry and sweeping and meal preparation, through answering emails, writing up board meeting minutes, and on to my greatest aspiration: writing.

Last winter, with so many activities cancelled or relegated to Zoom, I wrote about Fierce February Light and sunlight Piercing the Windowpanes. Activities still aren't back to pre-pandemic 'normal.' I find myself home all day on many days. I follow the sun's progress, rising in my south window and then falling to the west. It feels like magic. Distinct from a month ago, the sunlight pours into the windows all day with a different substance to it. I can feel without measuring that the sun is reaching higher at its zenith. All day I can tell it will set later than a week ago.

It has now set, making the woods behind the apartment buildings look soft and furry. I’ve always had that false impression, that the winter hills of New England and Pennsylvania (place of my nativity) are covered in brown sable fur and not made of prickly twigs and branches and hard trunks. It's a beautiful illusion.

The sunshine instills me with a deep and peaceful hope. Something is coming unstuck inside me.

Bird nests

 A few weeks ago, Jim and I were having a ‘homework party,’ where we share his office together, each working on their own projects. I saw a flash of orange and brown outside and realized that a robin had just flown to the second-story window ledge. I had seen a nest a few days earlier, from the driveway, but I couldn’t see inside.

When the mother bird flew away, we went to the window and saw four ‘robin’s-egg-blue’ eggs nestled in the grass and twig nest. It brought back sweet childhood memories of my dad lifting me up with his strong arms so I could peer into a nest and marvel at the tiny blue eggs.

Jim was concerned we would frighten the mother, so he put a packing box on the floor and later closed the blinds. We worried that she would abandon the nest, but next day I saw her again. Some days later Jim peeked around the blinds and found an empty nest. We can only guess that something attacked the nest.

A few days later I was looking out my bedroom window at the three-story evergreen tree next to the house. I saw a blue jay nesting. I was shocked: I’d never seen a blue jay’s nest. It gave me a warm feeling about blue jays.

I haven’t always had a warm feeling about them. I’ve always enjoyed their bright-blue plumage. But I had an encounter, probably 25 years ago or more, that left a bitter taste in my mouth.

A friend of ours from church had ‘rescued’ a nest of  three baby sparrows which had dropped out of a tree in her yard. She didn’t have a safe place to put it, so she asked me to foster the birds. I put them in our enclosed front porch and we watched them. As they grew feathers I knew it was time to let them fly. I took the nest out to our yard and watched. One of the fledglings jumped out of the nest and soared away. A second followed suit. But one sat on the ground.

“Go on!” I urged, to no avail. It sat in the driveway, inert.

Then a blue jay swooped down and caught the tiny baby. Shocked, I shouted and shooed it away, but the damage was done: the little sparrow lay dead on the asphalt.

Determined not to reward the jay for its cold-blooded greed, I got a garden spade and dug a hole near a tree where grass doesn’t grow.  I cried bitterly as I dug the grave and gently lowered the bird down. The blue jay had been so cruel, so heartless.

But here, outside my bedroom window, I saw a blue jay lavishing maternal care on her three babies. The day that it rained all day I saw her on the nest, keeping the nestlings dry.

Watching the babies grow has been delightful. A few days ago I looked out and saw a flash of wing, with the distinctive white and black markings on grey instead of blue. The baby nearest my window was stretching halfway out of the nest and spreading its grey and white wings. His nestmate followed suit. I wondered if they would fly away, but it was just a test run. They soon settled back into the nest.

Yesterday morning the heads and chests were well above the top of the nest. They were growing fast. I could see that soon flight will be imperative: they wouldn’t fit in the nest. Just two days ago only their heads were visible. They sat perfectly still, each looking out in a different direction.

This morning the nest was empty. I checked during the day, but they are gone.

Having a tiny blue jay family outside my bedroom window heals my heart of bitterness. It is part of nature, of the environment we cherish, to have predators and prey. If every songbird baby survived, the earth would soon be filled to overflowing and the food supply would run out. Birds by the thousands would die of starvation. Nature has built in restraints: food for the sparrow, blue jay, hawk, owl, and eagle.

Grand Night for Singing (Notes from the Field)

 May 1st Jim and I headed out on the road. We drove straight through to Chicago, a thousand-mile drive. We spent four days with Jim’s nearly-ninety-two-year-old mother. Jim focused on helping her sort photos for inclusion in her life history. I made a delicious (and I do say so myself) carrot cake and took a walk around Hyde Park one day.

We’re both fully-vaccinated and today is Day Fourteen for me. I’m gradually getting used to the idea that I could be out in public without a mask and not inwardly cringe when someone invades my six-foot bubble. I still wear a mask when I see non-family members, to comply with regulations and show solidarity.

After enjoying a two-day ‘getaway’ to Antietam Battlefield and Harpers Ferry, where we walked a tiny bit of the Appalachian Trail across a railroad/pedestrian bridge, we came to southeast D.C. to spend time with our youngest son, Sam, his wife, Savannah, and dear little Eliza and Link.

I’m sitting out on their backyard deck, listening to a bird “who is bound he’ll be heard…throwing his heart at the sky!” The trees are in full leaf. The cherry blossoms are long gone and the last of the azaleas are browning while the roses open up. In the distance I hear the sounds of the highway, DC-295. Many years ago I was camping next to a rushing stream in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The water ran all night, of course, and sounded a lot like constant highway traffic. When I returned home the sound of Bedford St out my bedroom window took on a soothing character.

I’ve always been aware that Washington is at least a month ahead of Boston in spring. In the nineties, when our children were all at home, I would drive to suburban Maryland to visit my oldest brother, Steve, during April vacation. When we lived in New Hampshire, we would leave a landscape that had barely emerged from winter and as we drove south the signs of spring appeared along the roadside: yellow forsythia in Connecticut, flowering trees in New Jersey and a riot of azaleas, red, white, and pink, in Maryland. The reverse trip at the end of the week rolled the film backwards, but in New England once again, I had hope that spring was coming: I’d seen it in the south.

With vaccinations going apace, I have hope that things will be different this summer from last.

I remember my anxiety on March 12, 2020, wondering what a ‘lockdown’ would look like. Would we be required to stay inside? What about grocery shopping? As it turned out, we had it relatively easy. I could go on walks and hardly encounter anyone. My garden never looked so good: I hired a teenager and three of his younger sisters to work with me. And the lockdown was an opportunity to test our food storage. Based on counsel from our Church leaders, we’ve stored food since we were married. Our basement has a year's supply of calories: various dried beans, rice, wheat, flour, and canned goods. We lasted six weeks without a trip to the grocery store. I was pleased.

This afternoon on the deck is restorative. I don’t often make the effort to sit outside. I haven’t spent the time just sitting: I’m too restless for that. But I have looked up from my computer from time to time, soaking in the deep green foliage and the songbirds.