Nesting Instincts

This spring I’ve been doing some bird watching. Not the kind where you hike into nature with binoculars, more the kind where I lounge around on the porch swing or the back deck and watch the activity in our bird houses.

We have a lot of bird houses.
Last winter, Bill decided that he wanted to do some building projects with the little kids in our life.
Now, a lot of guys would have just bought some wood and maybe a plan and went with it. But, Bill, being Bill, had to do some research on bird habitat, try some experiments and produce a prototype or two before coming up with exactly the right project for three to six year olds.
He did and the kids had a great time. Everybody got to hammer something, turn a few screws and slap on primer or paint or both. The kids took home the birdhouses that they made, souvenirs of an unforgettable afternoon in Mr. Bill’s workshop.
We, of course, have all the prototypes and trial runs still here. So Bill put them up in different spots around the yard and they’ve been very successful. We’ve had wrens and tufted titmouses (titmice?) in the back and English sparrows out front.
The English sparrows got their house a little dirty and Bill suggested that’s because they are English. My heritage. I guess German sparrows would have been on their wings and knees every morning scrubbing around the perch!
Watching the mom and dad fly in to feed their screaming little nestlings over and over again is very addictive. But you know those parents must get sick to death of it. Here’s a worm. Fly away. Fly back. Here’s a worm. It doesn’t matter how exhausting or monotonous it gets, that’s what they’re supposed to do, so they do it.
That got me thinking about human families and all the things that we are supposed to do and somehow manage to do it.
I hardly remember a time when my mother didn’t work. Even back in those days, when most mom’s were stay-at-home, mine was not. It was partly economics. My dad made decent money as a laborer, but my mom’s paycheck meant more than pin money. And she really liked working. She was a practical nurse and a very good one. She took a lot of pride that. Pride she didn’t have in her haphazard housekeeping, messy sewing and brown thumb.
So with that example and all the time and money it took to get my education, it seemed pretty unextraordinary for me to have kids and a job. Until I managed to support myself with writing, I worked as a professional librarian.
Not that I would recommend it. Parenting is hard enough just by itself. Adding career on top of it, is probably crazy.
I remember very clearly what it was like. I’d finish my day at work and be just exhausted as I dragged myself through the parking garage to my car. Then I’d worm my way through traffic to the freeway which would be crowded to near bursting point. All I wanted was to get home.
Then the reality would dawn on me. Home was no quiet refuge or place of peaceful respite. The hours between my arriving home and the kids’ bedtime were the busiest of the day. Everyone would be grouchy and tired and hungry, especially hungry. I was supposed to monitor homework and referee sibling disputes while creating something hot, tasty and nutritious in the kitchen.
There would be laundry piled up and mold growing in the bathroom. I would have, unbeknownst to me, been volunteered to send twenty-five President’s Day cupcakes to school the next day. And there would be a very annoyed message on the answering machine from the receptionist at the orthodontist’s office because I’d forgotten our appointment again.
My husband helped, but he was tired too. More often than not we’d snap at each other. That is, if we got a chance to talk at all.
So as my commute continued, my mind got clearer. Approaching my exit, I confess, there were many days that I thought to myself, "What if I just kept driving?"
I could skip my exit, keep heading north and eventually I’d end up in Canada. Maybe they would never find me.
But every day, I clicked on my blinker and eased right onto the frontage road.
I did it, because that was what I was supposed to do.
Here’s a worm. Fly away. Fly back. Here’s a worm.
I guess that English sparrow and I have even more in common than I thought.
And I would venture to say that neither of us have any regrets.

This was first published in 2008, but this morning I decided it was worth re-posting. Hope you enjoyed it. P