Fran Haley

Grace reflections: Spiritual Journey

/ Fran Haley / 9 Comments

My fellow Spiritual Journey writers post on the first Thursday of each month. Our host for September, Patricia Franz, offered these bursts of thought for reflection: Life at the speed of grace. Grace is my shorthand for God. How will Grace find you?

To me, grace, like love, is a many-splendored thing. It has many facets, casting fiery rainbow-sparks like a diamond ring.

When Patricia says It’s my shorthand for God, I remember discovering my aunt’s spiral-topped notebook when I was a child. The pages were covered in curious swirls and curls, an otherworldly language, impossible code. I was awed by the way my aunt, a civil-service secretary, could interpret these runes into words which would become an official letter typed on behalf of the U.S. military. To this day I cannot read or write shorthand. In this way, grace is code written in the offices of Heaven, authored by God, signed and sealed with His unfathomable, unconditional love. It is the language of love. To be a true recipient of grace is to be an authorized and expected giver of it, in turn.

But what IS grace, aside from aesthetics: clean lines, beauty of movement, a blessing over food before we partake? One dictionary definition says it’s the unmerited favor of God, something echoed over and over in the New Testament. My favorite grace-verse is probably Romans 5:8: God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (ESV).

I have a bracelet that bears this paraphrase: I loved you at your darkest.

Grace.

In preparation for a lesson I recently taught at church, I arrived at another understanding of grace. In the same epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul writes: For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned (12:3). In this message to the Roman community of believers, Paul expounds on the characteristics that (should) set them apart from the rest of the world. That opening phrase is what catches my attention: For by the grace given to me…suddenly a portion of the code becomes clear. Grace is more than unmerited favor writ in the blood of unconditional love. Grace is a force for living. A sustainable fuel for powering us throughout all of our days.

I can never write about grace anymore without thinking of Eugene Peterson and his paraphrased reflection of Christ’s words in Matthew 11:29: Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Which of these word holds the most transformational power?

unforced

rhythms
grace

Learn.

For me, it’s learn. That is where I must begin. Grace begins with God. The unforced rhythms of grace are currents that have existed long before me and will continue long after me. Learn, as in learn to swim. Therein lies a unique freedom, being carried by that current and never being swept away by it. Grace seeps into one’s heart, becomes a beat in one’s blood, in one’s soul. A rhythm, a song, a dance. A unforced force for living.

Learn.

Of this, I will be forever a student. But all around me, every day there are reminders, endless grace-analogies making themselves known. During Hurricane Idalia last week, the hummingbirds never stopped coming to my window-feeders. The gusting wind and rain appeared to have no effect on these tiny creatures. Completely undeterred, the feisty hummers came for their nectar amid the storm, steady, straight, and sure, same as they do every day.

I have an entire bluebird family that appears, morning and evening, like clockwork, around their little log cabin birdhouse on the old grape arbor. When the birdhouse was on my dilapidated back deck the parents raised several broods in it. When I removed it for the deck to be torn down and rebuilt, the puzzled parents came searching for their home. It shattered my heart. I put the birdhouse on the arbor, not knowing what to expect. They found it immediately. The bluebird family followed it. They still lay claim to it, still operate from it. They are devout about it. I might add that there’s a little cross on the top of the birdhouse; my granddaughters call it the bird church. I might also add that it held during the hurricane…during several hurricanes, actually, including a few before it was moved.

I consider the makeshift birdbath my granddaughters and I built with an upturned trashcan lid and rocks. The solar-powered fountain kept spraying in the storm, even though there was no sun that I could see in the grayness…

For me, all of these echo unforced rhythms of grace.

Most every morning and afternoon since school has started again, on my drive to work, I’ve seen the great blue heron I love at its pond in the corner of picturesque little farm. I’d much rather be birdwatching and soaking up nature than playing around online, but I couldn’t resist a “what bird are you” quiz I came across online. I gave it a try. The results: You are a snowy egret.

That same morning, when passing the pond, I didn’t see the blue heron. Instead I saw a white egret in flight, reflected in the pond.

The very image of grace.

I am more amused than awed: If that egret represents me, I’d be the reflection of it. I cannot be the breathtaking, winged creature itself, skimming with perfect ease above the water. But somewhere in my being is an image of it.

And so it is with God, in whom all things connect, from whom all blessings flow.

Unforced rhythms of grace on the wing, in every breath, in the often-turbulent currents of life, a never-ending song, a ceaseless rising.

Funny how I’ve just now remembered a thing, during this writing: When my husband became a pastor many, many years ago, I was asked to sing my first solo at church. I was twenty-two. Scared and unsure, I tried my best. I fell dismally short of what I hoped for. But an elderly man, a woodcarver, made a gift for me to commemorate the occasion: a white egret on a little base. Underneath, he etched the title of the song: Amazing Grace.

Let me throw my wings wide
to rest in and ride
the currents,
O Lord.
Let me abide
in the depths of your grace
as a wanting but willing
conduit.

Snowy Egret reflection. Wendi Schneider.

Screenshot

/ Fran Haley / 8 Comments

Usually it’s the sound of cicadas that stirs my soul, their rattling courtship-chorus reaching a feverish crescendo in late August. Summer hits its brutal zenith just before it begins to die. Interesting how August means to increase.

On the last Sunday of August, it’s not the sound of cicadas which captivates me.

It’s the sight of one clinging to the screen in the kitchen window, early in the morning.

So still that I wonder if it’s dead.

I am tempted to go out and see, but I don’t. Let it be. If it’s dead, it will still be there after church and I’ll save its body to show the granddaughters. Cicadas are big insects that evoke terror in many people; I do not want the girls to fear them. The antidote to fear is understanding. Study. Fear not. Maybe even learn to love.

I take a photo instead.

It is a dark morning, like the one in the sermon text for this day, Mark 1:35: Jesus rises “very early in the morning, while it was still dark” to find a desolate place to pray. He’d spent the previous day healing the sick, including Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and driving out demons.

When I return home, the cicada is gone.

Not dead.

All I have is this snapshot of it resting alone in a quiet place on the grid, with the crape myrtle by the old dog’s grave blooming in the background.

I could write an entire book, perhaps, on the symbolism and metaphor here.

I settle for a poem.

Clinging to the grid
In respite from work
Crape myrtle abloom
August’s crescendo is the last
Defying death in the wings
As love drives resurrection

The cicada and crape myrtle are symbols of life, longevity, immortality, and resurrection.
Summer is dying, but only for now.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge

If you build it…

/ Fran Haley / 10 Comments

The Birdbath

We built it, we three
my sweet granddaughters and me
fountain birdbath, see

spray sparkling in sun
although birds have yet to come
awe, already won

My little bird-girl Micah, 20 months

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge

Doing great things

/ Fran Haley / 13 Comments

for Micah

Once upon a time, which is now, the second summer of your being, you reign supreme in the province of Franna’s house. Each day holds untold wonders. Every moment is rimmed with pure gold; with every tick of the clock, you are gaining strength and power.

Speaking of which: You are enchanted by the grandfather clock in the foyer, even though it’s not working at present. You have discovered, if you stand close enough and jump hard enough, the bells will chime for you.

You are so proud of the two ponies you wear in your hair. When you are in your bed, fighting sleep, you pull the ponies out.

You are a study in language acquisition and word associations. Homonyms don’t throw you. Rock, for example. You understand perfectly well it means the big gray thing out by the woods as well as the movement of the white chairs on the porch. It’s one of your favorite things to do; a dozen times a day, you have your hand on the front door handle, asking to rock.

Another dozen times a day, you hold your hands up to me (got you) with the directive Watch. Birds. And I hold you at the windows where we watched the bluebirds going in and out of their house from early spring to summer, feeding two successive broods of babies until they fledged and flew. You mimic my whisper: Watch. Watch. You became especially fond of the Dada bird, so vibrantly blue, and you knew he was helping to feed his babies (often with a big bug in his beak).

Then you see Grampa in the rocking chair. He’s wearing his big black wristwatch. Your big brown eyes (so like your father’s, so like mine) miss nothing: Grampa watch. A thought flickers across your face. I get it, you say. Back in the house you go, looking for my watch on the kitchen table where it’s charging in a patch of sunlight. You slide it onto your little arm and hold it up with pride: Watch.

You don’t yet know about time. Tempus fugit, says the face of the grandfather clock. Time flies.

You will know this soon enough. For now you are exploring all the windows of your world. On tiptoe.

You know love. You rock your dolls (babies). You see the Gerber baby on the packet of yogurt melts that Franna always, always keeps on hand. Awww, Baby, you say.

You hug the Gerber baby, too.

Your curiosity knows no bounds. It outweighs your fears. You say loud when a plane flies over; you cover your ears, but you love planes. When they disappear from view, you say Bye, plane. You keep looking for another.

This week a helicopter flew over Franna’s yard and utterly captivated you. You are grappling with that word, helicopter (Franna understands it even if others can’t yet).

The hammering of the new deck construction is loud but you have found a just-right seat on the telescope base to watch the man working.

The Lowry organ in Franna’s living room is way too loud for you so we don’t turn it on; you are perfectly happy sitting on the bench, pressing the silent keys, flipping the couplers (that control pedals, special effects, swell, and great) up and down. That is, in fact, what you call the organ: up down.

You are learning to question. If a toy rolls under a table or bed: Where’d it go? When there are no birds outside the window, you call in your singsong voice: Birds, where are you? When you want to watch a music video on my phone, you pat my pockets or stick your hands between the sofa cushions: Where is it? Phont. I get it.

For you adore music. You sing. You dance. You ask for specific song videos (we know exactly what these are, don’t we): Na Na Na, Sunny Day, Shine, Ba Ba Minion, Giant, B-I-B-L-E. Not to mention do-do-do-do-doot-doot-do Bluey on TV.

You play drums with spatulas on my big kitchen bowls. One two, you say. We are working on three four.

You want to do the things you see your big sister doing. This summer, at age seven, she taught Franna how to play chess.

You are determined to play, too.

One of your newest words is try. You so want to do things for yourself. At twenty months you aren’t a baby anymore. Although you still like to be held. A lot.

You try. You watch. You shine. You show your love by curling your little body around your Franna so you can’t be put down. So Franna holds you for as long as you like.

Your Dada tells me that you are refusing naps at home and that you lie in your crib crying Frannaaaaaa…!

This is a great thing to your Franna. A very great thing.

Every moment of every day, you are doing great things.

I write them here for you, thinking of all the great things yet to be.

For that is what grandmothers are, memory-keepers.

Until the time your memories become your own, while we live this story of our beautiful once upon a time, which is now, oh, I cherish the keeping.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge

Home poem

/ Fran Haley / 16 Comments

For today’s Open Write on Ethical ELA, participants are invited to write poems about “places we call home”.

Nothing pulls on the heart like home… I can almost hear the Beatles’ song “In My Life” playing in the background: “There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed…” The memory of these places, and the spirit of them, really are the theme song of our lives.

Of all the places I remember and could write about…have written about…I choose my home now. I have lived here the longest. I became a grandmother here. I have learned a lot more about savoring here. Usually I try to make my poem title do more work, but today, no other will do. 

Home

In the first moments
of pale-pink light
the big brown rabbit
comes from the woods
to nibble away
at the clover

in the ever-thickening branches
of the crape myrtle
my husband and planted
years ago
I can spot hummingbirds
hiding among the leaves
always alone
never together 

they dart, one by one
to the kitchen-window feeder

silvery-green females
perfect, pure
ethereal as fairies

a male, ruby fire at his throat
(brighter than the cardinal-flame
landing over on the fence)
impossible greens and turquoise 
shimmering on his back

unaware of his utter tininess
he sometimes perches
atop the feeder
as if to say I am King
of this Water-Mountain

a pair of doves feeds
on the ground by the tree line
then takes flight on pearly wings
vanishing in the pines and sweetgums
where their nest is secreted

robins, robins everywhere
just last week
a speckled fledgling on the back deck
both parents in the grass
chirping ground-control instructions

the mockingbird in the driveway
strutting and stretching his banded wings
as if he knows how legendary he is

a trill of finch-song from a nearby tree
so plaintive I fear my heart may burst

and the bluebirds
oh the bluebirds

if only I spoke green language
I would explain that I removed their house
from the back deck 
because it is about to be torn down

that I waited
until their unexpected second brood
flew out into the world

never imagining these parents
would return to the empty rail corner
a day or two later
clearly so puzzled
to find their house gone…

if I were the hermit wizard-woman
of this semi-enchanted nook
(as I sometimes pretend to be)
I would have known what to do

but my unmagical self did my best:
placing the birdhouse atop
the old wooden arbor
built by my oldest
when he was a boy

well away
from the impending deck destruction

and to my astonishment
the bluebirds have followed
their home

I do not yet know
if more eggs have been laid
in the house relocated
to the arbor

but as evening draws
and the pine-shadows fall
across the arbor
and the crape myrtle
and the big brown rabbit
back in the clover
and the old dog’s grave
and the old deck
about to be made new

I ponder
my length of time on this Earth
and the continuous carving-out
of home
how it goes on and on

a path forever unfolding before me
that I must follow

like the doe in the little clearing
across the road
pausing for one long moment
with her two fawns
before disappearing
in the leafy green

One fawn has already been ushered across

*******

with thanks to Ethical ELA and Two Writing Teachers
for the inviolable, invaluable writing spaces
and the inspiration

Fibonacci poem: Hey, Ancestors

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

On Day Two of July’s Open Write at Ethical ELA, host Mo Daly invites us to write a poem in Fibonacci sequence: six lines with syllables of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8.

The Fibonacci sequence appears over and over in nature, from shells to flowers to trees to our own DNA.

Maybe that’s what led to this double-reverse attempt…

Hey, Ancestors

composed after a trip
to the home place

Come
sit
a spell
on the porch.
I want to know you.
Tell me the stories of your life.
I don’t mind your being a ghost.
Just (if you please) try
not to rock
your chair
too
much.

Old rockers. Poor Ole Rich. CC BY-SA 2.0

Mask poem

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

The July Open Write on Ethical ELA begins today with host Mo Daley, who invites poets to “Consider the masks you or those around you might wear. Using a format of your choosing, write a poem about a mask or masks.”

My first thought in response, with masks being linked to ancient theatrical performances, was writing around Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”

But then a little creature appeared in my head and ran the rest of it away.

Which may be for the best…

Mask Obscura

Raccoon was named
for the way it uses
its “hands”

rubbing and rinsing
its food
in water

not for the mask
forever typecasting Raccoon
as bandit-trickster
in human lore.

Unlike humans
these creatures know one another
by their individual masks

not donned as shields
or ritual
or protocol
or festivity
or theatrics
or deeds of darkness

but serving to
absorb light
in the night

to see

to survive.

Yet like humans
Raccoon covets shiny things

and can be trapped by them.

Hunters of yore
eventually learned
to cut holes in logs
to place a bit of tin inside
to hammer in nails
around the small circumference

knowing Raccoon
would be beguiled
would reach its hand inside
for the bright thing.

Once the fist is clenched
the creature will never let go
to set itself free…

in paradoxical symmetry
so does the creature
that named itself 
for its supreme intelligence.

Might it have been better named
for its own myriad masks
and motives, ever disguised?
Or for the hubris and folly
accounting for so much of its
own demise?

If only Raccoon
had the ability
to write,
there might be annals
of Ring-Tales
read aloud in the night
at a gathering deep in the forest
by crackling firelight:

To see or not to see*…
Lord, what ultimate Tricksters
these Homo sapiens be!
 
There in that circle, perhaps
with shivery spines
and whiskers a-tremble
they name us
not for our deeds or dominion
but for the way
we wash our hands.

—
*Note: The collective noun for raccoons is a gaze.

Procyon lotor (raccoon).jpg. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Procyon lotor is derived from Latin for “washer”

Sun-kissed summer: Spiritual Journey

/ Fran Haley / 8 Comments

And so it comes to pass, at long last, that I return to the site of my sun-kissed childhood summers.

My ancestral homeplace in eastern North Carolina. Literally the land of my fathers: My dad, my grandparents, my great-parents, my great-greats were all born within a small radius of a tiny town and crossroads that were old long before my appearance on this Earth.

Thus began my fascination with Time.

In the bend of a dirt road stood my grandparents’ home, where my father grew up. My youngest aunt was born here in the same room where her father, my Granddaddy, would die fifty-three years later at 92. He wanted to die at home. He did, peacefully and “full of days,” as the Scriptures say of Abraham, Isaac, and Job: After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days (Job 42:16-17).

Likewise, my grandparents saw four generations. They lived to see my children. Incidentally, Granddaddy had a brother named Job who died in the 1920s (he drowned, if I recall correctly; this is a coastal area).

So it was that I grew up on stories of the old days and ways, a little city girl mesmerized by my deep country roots. In my time the once-thriving community was already history; nature was reclaiming the unpainted houses, one by one. Some were still visible through the woods (an early memory: a cypress shingle roof in the treetops, if you looked just right) and others were in various stages of falling down with yards still mowed by descendants.

On this return journey a few weeks ago, I discovered that my grandmother’s homeplace from the early 1900s is being swallowed by the forest:

A terrible jolt, as I can remember it having a hedge, a lawn, a porch swing, a screen door. I remember the layout inside and my great-uncle living there, tending to a patch of sunflowers.

And I knew, prior to this journey, that my grandparents’ house, which stood on the corner a little farther on, is gone.

This story is a little different, however. Instead of the forest reaching its veiny green fingers to reclaim its own, a young couple has built a home right in the middle of what was once my grandfather’s garden. I can’t help thinking how Grandma would marvel at the beauty of this new house and its lovely landscaping.

All that remains here from the enchanted summers of my childhood half a century ago (and from time before me) is the pumphouse, one of Grandma’s crepe myrtles (now wistfully draped in Spanish moss, which never used to be in these parts), and the sidewalk that once led to the front porch of Granddaddy and Grandma’s home:

As a teenager I wrote a song about a sidewalk. Haven’t thought about it in ages:

Where does this lonely sidewalk lead?
You think by now I’d know
Footsteps into yesterday
That’s where I want to go…

I had no idea, then, that only the sidewalk would remain in this place I loved so well, where I used to play outside in the sweltering bug-infested heat, where Grandma would sit at her piano in the evenings to have me sing old hymns with her as Granddaddy listened from his recliner, where I felt loved and wanted and sheltered and that I belonged…

The old dirt road remains, too, of course.

There was another dirt road branching off of it here in the shadows to the left; it once led, Grandma said, to a two-story antebellum house with a double balcony. I could hear admiration for that house in her voice. In my childhood the road was just two tracks through grass and thickets. The path faded more and more with every passing summer. Now you would never know it had ever been anything but woods.

From this vantage point, my grandparents’ yard is on the right, and to the immediate left is an old family cemetery. Not my family’s, although I walked it often with Grandma over the years. When I was a child, I was afraid ghosts would come out here at night. Grandma assured me they would not. She offered this dubious comfort: No need to fear the dead. Fear the living.

When I wondered at the graves of so many babies, she said people just didn’t know what to do for them when they were sick.

It’s clear how much the children were loved and mourned. This tiny cemetery remains painstakingly tended and strangely outside of time:

Hello again, baby Leafy Jean and big brother Leon Russell.

These siblings died a month apart in 1917. Grandma was born three months after Leon, almost a year to the day before Leafy, in the soon-to-be obscured homeplace just around the bend of the road.

Four-month-old twins Audrie and Aubrie died a week apart during that same summer.

The greater wonder, in its way, are the children who survived disease and mothers who died giving birth to them, which almost happened to Grandma: her mother delivered a stillborn baby three months before she was born. My grandmother was a twin. Grandma journaled this because I asked her to; in her writings, she says several women in the community who recently had babies helped nurse her while my great-grandmother was so ill that she “almost didn’t make it.”

—Why am I just now realizing that Grandma’s lost twin would have come around the same time as Leon Russell? Could his mother have been one of the women who preserved my newborn grandmother’s hungry life? if so …imagine saving someone else’s child and losing your own…

So many mysteries in this place. I’ve always felt the pull.

Over fifty years after I first walked this cemetery with my grandmother, I’m awed by the good condition of the headstones. I halfway expected them to be eroding into illegibility — after all, these people’s earthly homes have long since crumbled. No greater mystery than Time…

I cannot linger here, ruminating, for there’s another place to visit. Really just a good walk “around the horn” to the church, a journey I’ve made many times.

This was once the heart of the bustling farm community. The church was built on land given by my grandmother’s predecessors. Her father, mother, brothers, and other family are buried to the right of this crossroads.

Granddaddy and Grandma are buried in the churchyard, to the left.

Such a beautiful little resting place, presently bordered by a lush cornfield. An old live oak felled by a hurricane in recent years has been replaced by a new one nearby.

Grandma would be so pleased to see how well-tended everything is.

There’s even a new footbridge over the ditch at the churchyard, for easy access to the little community center across the road. This building stands where Grandma’s three-room grade school used to, she said in her journal.

Here’s where old and new converge most for me, where Time is most relevant and paradoxically elusive. The spirit of this place is old; my own memories are growing old.

My father as a teenager, in the churchyard

I am the keeper of memories older than mine.

But I came for the new.

I brought my granddaughter, you see.

All along the journey, I told her stories. Of the old days, the old ways.

I brought her to dig for fossils at the Museum in town (which is where the phosphate mining company sends its rejects now, instead of scattering treasures on the old dirt roads).

We found a bit of coral skeleton, shark’s teeth, and some bony things I’ve yet to identify:

Making new memories from the old… even from the ancient, from time before recorded time.

As we were leaving, I discovered that the old library in this old, old town looks the same as it did five decades ago when Grandma drove me to pick out books to read at her house in the summer. I halfway expected to see her coming out with the armful she had to help me carry…

And I think this is used to be, or is at least near, the butcher shop where Daddy worked as a teenager.

There’s so much more to be said about memory, legacy, endurance, overcoming, and family… about the whole spiritual journey of life. The greatest gift my grandparents gave me, beyond their unconditional love and their stories, is that of faith lived out. I learned long ago that eventually there comes a homecoming so bright, so glorious, that all the former shadows are forgotten.

I expect I’ll recognize my little corner of Heaven, having had such a foretaste here.

Until that time, I carry on in the footsteps before me, praying I walk even half as well.

My now, my tomorrows ❤

From Everlasting to Everlasting: A Prayer of Moses

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
    in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
    or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You return man to dust
    and say, “Return, O children of man!”
For a thousand years in your sight
    are but as yesterday when it is past,
    or as a watch in the night…

Let your work be shown to your servants,
    and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
    and establish the work of our hands upon us;
    yes, establish the work of our hands!
Psalm 90: 1-4;16-17

*******

with thanks to my Spiritual Journey friends who write on the first Thursday of each month
and to host Carol Varsalona who posted this reflection and question for July:

Pause and praise God for His wondrous gifts! 
What are you rejoicing over this summer?

/

Bluebirdology

/ Fran Haley / 5 Comments

This spring, a pair of Eastern bluebirds raised a brood in a birdhouse on the back deck. From the windows I watched the whole process. I learned much from my avian teachers.

Bluebirds are curious; they want to know everything, including what humans are doing. When the finch nestlings died a couple months back, necessitating that I dispose of the nest, Mama and Papa Bluebird sat side-by-side on the fence, solemnly watching my every move. Bluebirds are all about family. Their fledglings stick around. When this first brood left the next, the parents became fiercely territorial. They attacked the kitchen bay window and cars in the driveway. No matter how far down the driveway my husband parks, they still take over his car; I even saw the father bluebird killing a worm on top of it one morning, like a mighty hunter on some holy mountain. I wondered if that worm was a meal for his children; the parents continue to feed them for a while after departing the nest.

Lesson One of Bluebirdology: protect your young at all costs.

Mama Bluebird takes over the hummingbird feeder, frequently looking in the kitchen window: What are those humans up to?

Papa Bluebird in all his blue glory, patrolling the fence.

The baby bluebirds are juveniles now, and over the last few weeks I’ve seen three or four them at any given time in the grass or lined up on the fence.

Lesson Two of Bluebirdology: Persevere.

One of the juveniles getting its own breakfast worm: Ta-daa!

What I find most remarkable is how the juveniles help to prepare for the next brood. I watched Papa Bluebird carry new nesting material into the birdhouse; in a moment, here came one of his children with a bit of straw.

Lesson Three of Bluebirdology: Teach your children well; survival is a community effort.

This weekend my seven-year-old granddaughter and I watched Mama Bird sitting on the fence watching us through the window, when out of the blue came Papa Bluebird. He landed beside his mate and fed her an insect in his beak. “They look like they’re kissing!” exclaimed my granddaughter.

They did. It was a sign, for sure…

I suspected, with the recent activity around the birdhouse, that new eggs were on the way. Here’s the thing: That birdhouse has only one little opening where the birds enter and exit. No way to peek in and verify anything or even to clean out a used nest.This is where the plot really thickens: My husband and I are about to embark on much-needed deck repairs. I needed to know: What’s in that birdhouse? If it is an active nest, by law we cannot disturb it. And if there are eggs… well, to me that makes it a sacred place. Not to be desecrated.

And so I bought a little endoscope and ran the wire camera into the birdhouse.

There are four bright blue eggs in a bed of pine straw.

I am not sure when they were laid. It could be a week or two from now before they hatch. Then it will be about three weeks before this next brood fledges and begins to fend for itself (I am imagining a whole army of bluebirds on the offense at that point, with Brood One still in the wings).

The deck repair will have to wait a bit, alas… not sure how I am going to explain this to my husband or our builder but I will take my chances with them over the bluebirds. In honor of life.

Heeding Lesson Four of Bluebirdology: There’s no place like home.

One of the juveniles still hanging around its natal home.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge

Happy Birdday

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

Was there a childhood birthday when you woke up excited beyond description for what you hoped that day would bring? It was like that when I turned six. I couldn’t wait for my father to take me to the store where I’d pick out my first pet: a parakeet. I’d begged and begged for one. I was enchanted by birds then, and I am exponentially enchanted now, which is why I woke up so excited last Saturday.

It was to be a day filled with birds…more than I could even count, although I had to try.

Global Big Day, you see.

World Migratory Bird Day, to be more precise, a global celebration occurring on the second Saturdays of May and October. As defined on the WMBD website: World Migratory Bird Day is an annual awareness-raising campaign highlighting the need for the conservation of migratory birds and their habitats. It has a global outreach and is an effective tool to help raise global awareness of the threats faced by migratory birds, their ecological importance, and the need for international cooperation to conserve them.

In the common interest of science, conservation, and celebration, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology invites bird lovers around the world to count all birds seen or heard on Global Big Day and to enter this data in official checklists.

And so I joined Team eBird with my friend and fellow blogger-poet, Kim Johnson. She’s in Georgia, I’m in North Carolina, but we are birds of the same feather in countless ways, equally excited for this bird-counting day.

It began when I woke up to birdsong early Saturday morning. Lately it’s been a mockingbird, which, I’ve learned, is usually a male singing while the female incubates eggs.

This day, however, the dawn singer was a robin.

I threw on my robe and went outside to start my count as the earth swelled with bird chorus.

Here’s what Merlin Sound ID (a Cornell Lab app on my phone) told me I was hearing out front and on my back deck:

There are also some regular bird friends whose voices aren’t in this mix. Back in the house, a fluttering at the window…

My male ruby-throated hummingbird visits periodically throughout the day, and this day was no different; he arrived early and was off in a flash. I added him to my list.

Then there are my eastern bluebirds.

They’re a mated pair which nested in a birdhouse on the deck before Easter, attempting to be as furtive as possible, until the first week of May when they went stark raving territorial. The female flew and flew at the kitchen bay window. Both of them became obsessed with cars in the driveway; one morning I watched the male killing a worm on top of my son’s car. I am still not sure what prompted the sudden change in behavior, but I suspect their babies fledged and flew, resulting in fierce protectiveness of the habitat. All I can say with certainty is that these two birds believe they reign over the kingdom of my yard.

Because they do.

His Majesty

Her Royal Highness, taking over the hummingbird feeder

Never fear, Bluebirds Dear; I added you both to the list. And you don’t know it yet but I bought a “snake” camera to check your nest in the birdhouse, to see what exactly is in there. More on that later…

Other birds awaited on this Global Big Day. Off to the lake I went, in hopes of seeing eagles.

I didn’t see any. But I did see two great blue herons, separately, standing still as statues, as elegiac as poetry, in all their strange and ancient beauty.

They remind me that birds are the last living dinosaurs.

One of the two great blue herons

Over at the dam, a giant nest is protected by government fencing and two fake owls, which don’t seem to bother the two nesting ospreys at all.

One of the two ospreys

After duly noting the ospreys, I made a note to self: Get a good digital camera ASAP. The zoom on the phone can only do so much.

The trip to the lake yielded over thirty species of birds. In addition to those I noted at home, Merlin Sound ID picked up scarlet and summer tanagers, pine warblers, a Swainson’s thrush, Eastern phoebes, brown-headed cowbirds, white-breasted nuthatches, Eastern wood pee-wees, red-bellied woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers, Eastern towhees, chimney swifts, ovenbirds, and the American goldfinch.

Then a huge bird fell straight down from the sky and landed in the brush few feet in front of me.

A red-shouldered hawk. With its beak it grabbed a little snake I’d have never seen otherwise. And then the hawk ran—yes, ran!—into the woods.

I added the hawk to my list as I headed back to the car, exhausted but elated with my bird inventory. I was pretty much done.

But the hawk wasn’t done with me yet.

A little farther down the wooded path, a sudden loud “screaming” of birds— an unmistakable warning of danger, as the hawk sailed by to land on a low pine branch.

I stood as still as I could, videoing that bird for over two minutes while he cocked his head, observing me (does he have a checklist, too?). Smaller birds clamored all around the whole time; some were quite near the hawk, almost like groupies. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hawk long enough to see exactly what the other birds were; Merlin later told me “robins.” Really? I have read that robins are the birds whose warnings make all others take cover but I have never heard them so loud, in such stereo sound. I’d already counted robins, fortunately…then just like that, the hawk took off and the wild screams followed right after him…Elvis has left the building.

Wild.

The red-shouldered hawk, celebrity of the day

Back at home in the evening my family gathered ’round to celebrate my birthday… even more bird-wonder in this day!

Books on birds and birding

Books to share with my granddaughters, ages seven and eighteen months

Finch earrings from my son

I settled down to bed that evening, counting my years, counting my birds, counting the many blessings and love in my life….all in all, the happiest of birddays.

I opened one of the new books, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human, to read the opening sentence:

Imagine what might happen if birds studied us.

Imagine? There’s no need to imagine...

I know without question that they do.

His Majesty, looking in the window

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life story writing challenge
to Kim Johnson, for always inspiring me
to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for its amazing mission
to all who help protect birds

and to birds, for all the awe
and the lessons we need to learn
about tending our Earth