On Monday afternoon I came home to check the nest on my front door wreath, expecting that finch fledglings had flown. They are the earliest brood I’ve ever known: four tiny blue eggs laid during the last week of February and hatching by the second week of March; I discovered a pile of fuzzy gray, mohawked nestlings after a snowfall.
By Monday, as the temperatures finally warmed, I hadn’t heard their happy chatter at my door in a day or so. I assumed the babies had left home; it was just over two weeks after hatching, which is normal.
But that afternoon I found two perfectly beautiful fledglings dead in the nest.
First time this has happened in all the years of house finches adopting my porch as their sanctuary. No real clue as to why. Inexperienced parents? Doubtful, as nesting in my wreath is an established pattern and the finches are quite prolific. Disease? Maybe; but where were the other two babies? Sustained freezing temperatures? Possible. Survival of the fittest? Probable.
No sign of the parents. Had something happened to them? Had they abandoned these little ones? If so, why?
I stood before the nest, icy shock quickly melting into grief.
It had to be dealt with…
Armed with paper towels and cloths, I extricated the tiny lifeless babies. I carried them to the edge of the woods out back and covered them, together, in a deep bed of dry leaves. I couldn’t just throw them away; they had been living things. They had been growing. I couldn’t bury them; birds don’t bury their dead and furthermore, they’re creatures of the air.
They never got to fly.
I bid the babies goodbye and told them I was sorry that this was the best I knew to do for them, to let nature reabsorb them.
Then, the nest.
Finches sometimes reuse them.
If I were a mother bird, however, I wouldn’t want to reuse a nest where two of my precious babies had died.
I decided the nest—every one a unique masterpiece, this one threaded with tiny dried flowers and padded with white hair from some mammal—had to go. In case there were mites or germs or traces of decay…
It should be burned, I thought, as I pulled it away from the wreath.
Instead I wrapped it, bagged it, and threw it in the trash.
I almost threw the whole wreath in the trash, too, but just as I took it down, I remembered how, all winter long, two little birds slept in this wreath together at night, keeping each other warm, sometimes startling me by flying out when I opened the door.
No doubt it was the finch parents, staking their claim until nesting season.
I couldn’t throw the wreath away.
I guess…I know… well, just hoping…
I shook out the wreath and hung it back up.
Monday evening, I was forlorn. I read everything I could find online about bird babies dying in nests. I read that bird parents grieve for their lost ones. I peeked out of the front blinds; I am sure I saw a little shadowy figure on the porch railing, just as it saw me and darted away, without a sound.
I didn’t sleep well.
Tuesday morning, as I got dressed for work, the silence was depressing. This is the time I’d hear them most, the parents with their song-chatter, the chorusing baby voices…
So I went outside with my Merlin Bird Sound ID app. It picked up robins, a mockingbird, a Carolina wren, a chipping sparrow, a mourning dove…no house finches.
I drove to work heavy-hearted, knowing that there are countless other birds for the savoring and that in the human world incomparable horrors are steadily unfolding…yet that’s why the finches matter. One bit of joy that softens the edges of the blade. A little song of light against a devouring darkness. A tiny comfort on the wing, a fleeting moment of transcendence…
Tuesday afternoon I came home and checked the wreath.
I don’t know what I expected. I don’t even know if this is wise or healthy (when is a thing officially an obsession?).
It didn’t look any different. I thought I saw one shred of green grass hung in the grapevine where the nest used to be…probably a remnant.
I tried Merlin Bird Sound ID again. —Crows! You are SO. LOUD. Chickadee, cardinal, dark-eyed junco…blue-gray gnatcatcher? Chipping sparrow, osprey. —Osprey! Several of them, impossibly high overhead, calling in their wild, echoing sea-song bursts.
But even in my awe…no finches.
As I turned to leave the driveway a bird sailed right past my head to land in the crape myrtle.
I couldn’t believe it: Papa Finch! Speckled brown, gorgeous red head…I’d know him anywhere.
Then another swoop over the fence to the backyard, not so far from where I laid the babies to rest…is that Mama Finch? Am I making this up? The power of suggestion, or wishful thinking? Writer’s imagination?
I came back into the house to watch a while through the beveled glass of the front door… clandestine operations…
It wasn’t long before he appeared on the garage roof top.
Papa Finch.
With something trailing from his beak.
‘THEY ARE REBUILDING!” I cried aloud to no one, before I remembered to be clandestine.
Sure enough, Mama Finch soon joined him… appears they have a personal stash of building materials on top of my garage, for they took turns swooping to the front door.
Making a new nest, in a big hurry.
If you have time, watch the short video; it is the first footage I’ve ever obtained of the house finch parents. I’ve never even been able to get a photo. But here’s Papa holding wisps of nesting material while Mama sets hers in place; she returns, and he goes to add his layer.
In the exact same spot as the nest I removed the day before, with the lost babies.
This is what they accomplished in one afternoon:
Look at those soft white pieces procured by Papa.
They’re not done, of course, but are working feverishly in tandem; I suspect Mama is ready to lay more eggs…
If I know my finches, they’ll start hatching right around Easter.
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new —Revelation 21:5.
For the first time, I rejoice at tearing the old nest down. I marvel at the fortitude of these little birds, prevailing today over yesterday’s loss, pressing on with urgency. They have a contribution to make to the world. This is not the first time, nor surely the last, that I am awed by the resilience and regenerative power of nature. It’s all doing exactly what it is meant to do…with hope and healing for the taking.
Courage, dear hearts.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge
with thanks to fellow Slicer-poet Denise Krebs, who, upon realizing my Slice of Life Story Challenge posts have followed an abecedarian pattern, asked: “Will you do a post about the titles? Perhaps make an abecederian poem using the titles?”
I hadn’t thought of that. Is it possible? Would it even be worth reading?
As I have come to the end of the alphabet with five more posts to write and no plan… why not?
Here goes…
Auspices are favorable for my
barefoot baby ballerina on her toes, at present so like
crows, the absolute embodiment of Thought and Memory. It shows, in throes of
doggerel she tries to recite from her baby books, before she even knows words.
Eavesdropping at nap time, I hear her singing her own invented lullabies.
Focus on saving details of her story, I tell myself. Like the way she calls “Good boy” to the
graze academy of cows pastured behind the manse, and how proud she is of
herself in her little pink coat that shall NOT be removed, nay, all the livelong day.
I remember these from my own early story, memories flitting like tiny gray-cloaked
juncos in ancient winter grass:
koala life lessons from a book my grandmother read to me, in verse;
love notes in the cadence of her voice, ethereal rhythms falling on me like gentle
March snow. There was a book of birds tending their
nestlings as lovingly as Grandma tended me, slathering me in an
ode to menthol (Vick’s VapoRub) when I couldn’t breathe. I am well-wrapped in legacy.
Pursuing knowledge came early: Why is Granddaddy’s middle name St. Patrick?
Quotable Patrick, aka Granddaddy, with a sigh: I got no ideer. And he changed it—!
Remember these days, I say. Write now; who knows what the future holds? A long
sleep experiment poem unfolds. And so each day I am about
taking stock: my pile of good things grows to wealth untold. I play with words like
unfare while my mind time-travels to and fro, a
vagabond in search of a keeping-place, forever digging under the
wall on the writing. Oh, my baby ballerina and big sister nurture scientist/Jeopardy
X-ray expert/backseat prophet, someday you’ll each know how Franna prayed for
your one wild and precious life, filled to running over with awe and
zest—the whole A to Z gamut of my existence.
❤ My granddaughters ❤
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge
and several fellow Slicers who made requests for particular postsalong the way
— now: What to write tomorrow?
Ah, but story is in the making every precious moment that we live.
Here’s a story about my oldest granddaughter, then age five, told to me by her parents (also known as my son and daughter-in-law).
One night while watching the game show Jeopardy! an answer came up about a substance to be swallowed before a certain kind of X-ray.
Our then-kindergartener instantaneously responded: “What is barium?”
Which is correct.
“How do you know that?” asked the astonished parents.
“It’s in Franna’s Curious George book,” said my granddaughter.
And so it is. I’ve read it to her countless times.
George being prepped for an X-ray after swallowing a puzzle piece in Curious George Goes to the Hospital, Margret and H.A. Rey, 1966.
She never tires of this book and asks me to read it to her even now when, at age seven, she can read anything she wants on her own. My son once found one of his theology books in her bed.
I recall that that one of the greatest Jeopardy! champs of all time, James Holzhauer, said that he prepared for the show by reading children’s books in the library: “I don’t know why more people don’t do it.”
My little X-ray expert’s future looks so promising.
Lord, let me be here to see it.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge
On the last day of Ethical ELA’s Open Write, host Denise Hill offered this invitation:
“Take a metaphor or idiom and reverse it or twist it up in any which way you choose – mumbo jumbo jam it!
Then write from the ‘sense’ the new phrase makes. It may be total nonsense. That’s perfectly fine! It may provide a ‘feeling’ or strike a memory chord or a fantasy chord with you in some way that inspires your poem today. Just go with it!”
Here is what came of my scrambling the writing on the wall…
The Wall on the Writing
In prehistory cave-dwellers dipped their fingers into animal fat charcoal their own earwax
then dirt and ash
to paint their stories on the walls by flickering torchlight
over time many caves collapsed
to be reabsorbed by the earth
In the course of human migration the region of the caves became a fortified city with iron gates and great stone walls
one of which was constructed over the buried caves
It is said that at this wall the great orators gave their mighty speeches humble petitioners made their prayers poets composed their epics chroniclers penned histories and storytellers found their words
I do not know if the wall or the legends are real
but I do know that when I hit a writing block that I cannot go over around or through if I dig deep deeper deeper still within
I will find the words
just human DNA finding its way with story waiting deep deeper deeper still beneath the wall on the writing
Driving along a deserted road in a deluge in the dark my hands gripping the steering wheel for dear life
I see him in the headlights there, ahead on the right
standing, bent, in the sheeting rain thumb held out
—how can I not stop?
Rain beats the car roof like a drum as he flings open the door and slides into the passenger seat.
“Thanks,” he says.
He’s wearing layers of clothes
a sodden cap over straw-like hair
sporting a scraggly beard.
“Sure,” I say. “Where are you going?”
He looks at me for a peculiar moment: “The better question is where are YOU going?”
His eyes (maybe it’s just my overactive imagination) are silvery in the darkness.
“H-h-home,” I stammer.
“Then I’ll ride as far as you’re able to take me,” says the stranger. “How old are you, anyway?”
What does it matter? “Eighteen,” I say.
“You mean that you have lived to be eighteen and no one has told you not to pick up strangers?”
I blink.
“It’s raining…it’s such a bad night…” I start
but as I speak I can hear Grandma’s voice reading a favorite book to me when I was small (Never Talk to Strangers!) and what she always says at our parting: Take care of your precious self…
he finishes: “It could be an even worse night. You don’t know what some people might do. There are a lot mean people in the world. It isn’t safe for you to stop alone like this. If you let me off at the next intersection, it will be enough.”
I blink.
I drive on to the next intersection, a well-lit place where he opens the door:
“Thanks for the ride. But don’t pick up any more strangers,” he admonishes.
The lights change a horn blares I’m only dimly aware for watching open-mouthed as the vagabond absconds into the rain-cloaked night.
I am standing with Aggie Ray at the bus stop. I don’t know why we are here or where we are going. Aggie Ray, big as a mountain with black hair parted in the middle and a face like a storm cloud, has brought me here. We had to walk a ways and I’m tired but one thing I know: don’t whine to Aggie Ray. She’s my babysitter and, somehow, my relative, but I am not sure how. She is keeping me while my parents paint the house they just bought, near the school where I will go to kindergarten in September.
I do not know when is September. I know it is summer now. The sidewalk is hot and Aggie Ray’s face is red like a rose, and sweaty. Still. Storm cloud. Warning.
I am not the only kid she keeps. There are others but they’re all bigger and they run around and sometimes knock me over. I try not to cry any more because Aggie Ray just calls me a crybaby. She shames me in front of the others for not being able to tie my shoes. And for other things…
Daddy says she sometimes eats a stick of Blue Bonnet margarine for snack and I have tried to watch to see if that’s true but I haven’t seen it yet. I don’t want to get in more trouble.
But today it’s just Aggie Ray and me when the bus pulls up with its loud WHOOSH and nasty exhaust. I gag and cover my nose; I am funny about smells but I remember Aggie Ray and pull my hand down.
It’s a good thing, too, because just then she grabs hold of my hand, bends low, and looks at me with them dark eyes that feel like knives although they aren’t even touching me. She growls: “When we get on this bus, you tell them you’re four years old.”
She’s made a mistake. I had a birthday not too long ago.
“I’m not four. I’m five now,” I tell her, but she squeezes my hand, hard.
“I don’t care. You tell them you’re four, hear me?” she hisses, as the bus door folds open.
I can’t help it.
I start to cry.
She hauls me up the steps and drops her fare in the box, as the bus driver says:”Well, now, what’s the matter with you, little girl?”
Oh, I can feel the steam coming from Aggie Ray’s big body and the power of her big, hard hand.
I am just so proud to be five. I don’t want to say I’m four.
It’s a lie.
And so I blurt it out to the friendly-faced driver…
“I AM FIVE.”
Gimpo bus fare box. Wikipedia Commons. CC BY SA 3.0
Suffice it to say I survived.
I realize now that Aggie Ray didn’t want to pay my fare; riding was free for four and under. And I wasn’t much past four.
I still don’t recall where we were going, or why, only that I was being told to lie. Usually kids have to be taught to tell the truth. I really was so proud to be five.To have to say I was four seemed more shameful than not being able to tie my shoes, or the other things…
I have no remembrance of a consequence. It is best. Aggie Ray is long gone now. She did have redeeming qualities, as well as a difficult life.Last time I saw her, she was ill and frail, but she came to hug me with a big smile.
Perhaps it’s unfair that this is my clearest childhood memory of her.
But it was unfair to me, and I knew it even then.
Perhaps I should say “unfare.”
Be that as it may… fare-thee-well, Aggie Ray, in your final destination.
I didn’t use your real name.
I didn’t think it was fair.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge
With thanks to Stef Boutelier for the “pile-poem” form and Canva template on Day Two of Ethical ELA’s Open Write.
Thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge.
Life IS a challenge. The greatest. For writing inspiration, Stef quotes author Rainbow Rowell:
So, what if, instead of thinking about solving our whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow.
lit bits and pieces 