Empty Nest Patience

I returned a couple of days ago after being away for a week and a half. During that time, the young robins in the nest on the front of my house matured and flew away. I missed the combination of parental teaching and a young bird's hesitation or boldness that resulted in the necessary plunge into thin air and successful flight. As I was traveling far from home encountering my own new adventures, the final act of the quiet nest drama took place. Life went on, but I had grown used to the robin accompaniment there outside my window. When my timing was just right, I was able to watch the mother robin patiently turn the eggs so they were equally warmed all around. Then her patience shifted to letting the babies do their own pecking to emerge from the too tight quarters of light blue eggs. Without that solo task, they would not be strong enough to survive. Sometimes at night when the world grew still, I could hear the tiny, hungry voices of my temporary neighbors in the nest on the drainpipe.

The picture above is of another empty nest out front. It hangs sideways from its anchoring place in the pine, displaced following a tumultuous spring storm. The drainpipe nest may well be used again. This one won't. Sooner or later, the pine tree will host patient construction again, a nest shaped one mouthful at a time.

Empty nests remind me of the power of patience. Patient power is evident in building safe nesting places, in skillfully waiting for what can't be hurried, in standing back as others accomplish what they must, in leading those same ones to untried edges and letting them go. Around me robins model their common routines of patience from tree and drainpipe.

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More Than a Nesting Robin

The rural road where I live teams with birds in the spring — robins, doves, red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, crows, sapsuckers, to name a few. The air overflows with birdsong this time of year. It's the robins who are in most abundance. They nest all over the property around my house — riding the sway of a pine bough, tucked in between the thorns of a rose bush intertwined with a trellis, safely placed on the thick branch of a maple or hackberry tree, adhered to the ledge by the window over the main door of the church building next door. This year's new location is pictured above — under the overhang of the roof on my house at the bend of a drain pipe running from the gutter above.

Recent nest sitting has had a sound track. It's rained heavily several days and nights throughout the week. Water has drummed on the overhang sheltering the nesting robin's head and swooshed through the pipe to which the nest is messily but firmly attached. I've wondered if it's music or noise for the robin on egg sitting duty.

One Hebrew word that refers to God is shekhinah. This is a word indicating divine presence. It is also a word used for nesting birds. I have waiting several days this week to receive a good picture of the robin and the nest. When it hasn't been raining, it's been gray, dark, and cold. Perhaps metaphorically this shadowy picture is most appropriate for a holy presence drawn near that tends to be subtle and doesn't take to shouting. Perception of the sacred ordinary requires our attentive, open-ended willingness to behold even when we aren't expecting anything special. A robin has nested right outside my window. I'm watching and waiting not just for hungry beaks.

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Sunrise Joy

For years I have spent time on Lake Michigan's eastern coast, the Michigan side. I have reveled in towering dunes, been impressed by the holding power of beach grass called marram, carted home pounds and pounds of rocks, and have never tired of the spectacular evening show at sunset. I used to borrow a friend's cottage off season, in early autumn and later spring, to write and rest. Meanwhile, I knew folks from Wisconsin who insisted my awareness of the lake was so limited because I hadn't logged in time on the western coast, the sunrise side in Wisconsin.

On retreat in Racine, Wisconsin a weekend ago, I began to rectify that. Great Lakes' shorelines can be very wild in the winter. Often high winds have shapeshifted ice, snow, airborne lake spray, and sand into a frenzied foreign landscape. At those winter times, if you are visiting a shore location that's new to you, it's difficult to determine where land and water tend to meet in calmer, warmer seasons. This winter has been milder than most and the coastline buildup far less dramatic. But I stepped down carefully to the water's edge from the high ground where the retreat center sits. I had recently strained something in my right leg, wasn't moving well, and didn't want to find myself splayed out on rock and ice. My fingers quickly grew cold when I removed my woolen mittens for even an instant to focus my camera on the lightening eastern sky. And then it happened. It was as though I'd forgotten everything I knew about sunsets and sunrises over the water. In my preripheral vision, liquid gold began to ride on morning waves. The sunrise was reflected all about, at me feet. I shouted with joy as I greeted Wisconsin's sunrise magic.

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Ritual Makers

My older daughter devised a plan a year ago that she announced to her husband, her younger sister, and me. “We're going to Hawaii for Thanksgiving next year.” She planned, and we cooperated. We are recently back from our holiday on Oahu. Vacation is a familiar expression of heartland with its time at the shore, on the beach, where land and water continually come together and separate.

I'm not much of a sun worshipper. I have to be careful and attentive with my fair skin. It's only a matter of minutes before I start to burn. Spending a week sweating in the sun and burning to a crisp is not my idea of fun. I'm a bit of an odd duck on Waikiki. My favorite time at the beach is not in the heat of the day. Rather, I love to get up early in the morning when it's still dark as dawn rolls over into sunrise. On Waikiki Beach, this daily drama backlights Diamond Head, the craggy remains of an ancient volcano that blew its top long ago. During our week away, I found a sacred viewing spot on a breakwater where I could sit soaking in the sun's eastern leap into day.

The last morning I was there in the dark and quiet, an older Japanese man walked down the breakwater carrying a plastic bag of individual orchid blooms. I recognized them from the iconic leis people receive at hotels and special events. He embraced the bag of blooms. I didn't watch, but I knew at the end of the breakwater he would scatter the flowers into the sea. He was composing a ritual, a container of meaning for the day. He did it himself. We all can. For we are capable of embodying what's important and essential.

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Firefly Stage

I grew up in the northeast with the seasonal pleasure of summer stock theater productions. Theater venues varied from unique community theater buildings, to old churches, to the dining room of a country inn, to circus tents. I can close my eyes and remember productions of The Music Man, Wait Until Dark, Brigadoon, The Fantasticks, Jacques Brel, and others. I loved the intimacy of summer stock productions, never more than a few hundred seats. Years later, I moved to Saint Louis and lived there for most of the next thirty years. Summer theater in Saint Louis meant The Muny, the Municipal Theatre Association, an outdoor musical amphitheater opened in 1917 with a capacity audience of 11,000. It took me so long to get used to the sheer size of The Muny. I just wasn't accustomed to theater on that scale. Time passed, and I accumulated my share of summer theater memories there too including Miss Saigon, West Side Story, Cats, Chorus Line, Hello Dolly, Peter Pan, and Aida — to name a few.

Last night as evening slowly darkened into night, I stopped what I was doing and sat at the window. The breadth of what I could see reminded me of The Muny. Outside the dance of the fireflies was in full swing, an uninterrupted, long run, every night it isn't raining. I observed their twinkling glow with sheer delight. I was particularly grateful that even if I hadn't paused to see, the show would have gone on. An audience wasn't required for the nightly performance. Their abundance of darting and swooping, like a ground level field of falling stars, was generously there for whoever might be watching or not. Nature reminds us not to judge by the viewers but rather by the truth of what we're up to.

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River Reminder

In addition to being the Prairie State and the Land of Lincoln, Illinois is laced with rivers and their watersheds. The vast majority of the state’s borders are water miles. Of all the states strung along the Mississippi River, Illinois claims the most miles. The vast Illinois River watershed is the last connective piece flowing from the Mississippi through the Great Lakes into the Saint Lawrence Seaway, and on to the Atlantic Ocean. Barges share river waters with many a canoe and kayak. The state once had a thriving button industry based in river clams. And on occasion those same clams even produced a pearl.

The closest river to me, the Kishwaukee is a minor league waterway in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t carry commerce, but its two branches do have the unusual characteristic of flowing north until they join the Rock River. Most of the time the Kish is a fairly quiet affair, a favorite of those who fish, of birders, and of canoe and kayak paddlers. The last week or so has been very, very, wet. The Kish that was high and fast last weekend has breeched its banks, leaving young fields of corn and beans in a watery grave and stranding trees and fence lines.

I watch the river overflowing in places it doesn’t belong, and recall how familiar we are with lives that are overwhelmed or overwhelming. We move fast, reach far, say yes often, like to impress, mistake busy-ness for a badge of honor, evaluate more to always be better, and may only stop when exhaustion is unavoidable. We are left then as useful and potentially as dangerous as a river far beyond its banks. Today the river reminds me to consider the scale, the pace, and thus the health of our lives.

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Pilgrim Plant

My friends are in the midst of a move. For over thirty years they've lived in and loved dearly an old pink Victorian on the prairie. For them it's time to downsize. Since they are in transition without yard space to plant at their new home, I asked about the wild ginger, “Can I take it for my front garden?” Last night we dug it up. This morning it is settling into unfamiliar soil outside my window.

Before the wild ginger was with them, it was with me. Several years ago, I was searching for a new job and home in northern Illinois, ready to relocate from a nearby state. After staying with my daughter and son in law for Memorial Day, I was en route to an interview. On the way, I stopped to walk a lovely backyard labyrinth. As I finished my labyrinth time, the woman in whose yard I was walking inquired if I would like some wild ginger. She was thinning plants. I said “yes,” went to an interview that led nowhere, and then traveled to my friends in the pink Victorian. I arrived with wild ginger in hand. I was going to be on the road for several days. They were glad to find a spot for it. It has survived a much too sunny location in their garden, an intital summer of killing drought, and the winter of the never ending polar vortex. 224 miles later the wild ginger is an experienced pilgrim.

Pilgrimages are undertaken with intention. This plant bears a sturdy intention to grow. Whenever a plant lands in new soil, there's vulnerability. Will it take root and thrive? Our pilgrimages carry us into the vulnerability of newness too. In my pilgrim days ahead, I'm keeping company with a wild ginger plant.

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Red-Winged Fire

There was defiance and disgust in her stance and voice. She rose to her full first grade height and pronounced on that first day of spring in Burlington, Vermont, 1991: “The weather person lied to us!” My older daughter could find nothing right in the blanket of fresh snow that greeted us that morning. How I recognize spring has depended over the years on geography. As a child in upstate New York, by the first day of spring, we were well into the short sugaring season. The rich taste of maple syrup bookended the spring equinox on either side. A few years later at a northern Vermont college, deep into April my ancient American Literature professor commanded us to note the delicate spring green outside our windows. “That is the color Frost wrote about,” he announced. “Look, it will be gone tomorrow.” A friend of Robert Frost in his later years, my professor was an authority on such things. Spring came earlier in Saint Louis than any place I had lived before. Often warmth teased us for weeks before the season’s designated start date. Dogwood and redbud blossoms against dark tree trunks before branches had leafed out were what I loved most then and there. Back north in Massachusetts, multi-colored crocuses pushing through late season snow told it all.

Here in northern Illinois, there’s a very special sign I watch for — the return of the red-winged blackbirds. This morning a full week before the official spring date, I saw just a few of them — rich black with flashes of fire on their wings. I was thrilled as can be. With mild temperatures and a manageable wind late in the day, I built a fire outside to honor their return. Spring’s soon here the red-winged ones’ appearance assures us.

 

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