Nesting

I lived in the country for a while and one of my jobs was knocking down the nests of house wrens who built right over the lights on any exterior door.  I was reclaiming the house from nature and they were adamantly refusing to yield.  I could knock down a nest in the morning and by noon it would be almost rebuilt.  Finally, one morning I knocked it down and some eggs fell out, cracking on the porch.

I felt terrible.  I only meant to drive them away so they would build their nests somewhere else, like the trees or the bird house I put up for bluebirds.  That was the last time they built there while I lived there, but it was a sort of sad victory.

The bluebirds did finally move into my birdhouse and as I mowed the ever growing yard I kept tabs on them.  First three eggs appeared.  Then I could hear babies chirping and see the parents flying in and out all day long feeding them.  Then one day there was nothing.  Finally peeping inside I saw one broken egg shell and nothing else.  I never saw them again.

I felt a kinship to these birds.  Struggling against all odds they were trying to raise families and get on with it.

My parents were like that.  Two people very much in love, both with amazing skills, trying to do what they were supposed to do and raise a family.  Totally unprepared for raising their own young my parents were like cuckoos who refused to follow suit and lay their eggs in other bird's nests.

Instead they struggled valiantly on, building and rebuilding one nest after another in an attempt to bring us up as the exotic creatures they believed us to be.  But some divine hand kept knocking the nests down until one day we were all grown up and some of us flew the nest.

Others hung on until the last twig disappeared.