The Season of Nests

I have nests on the brain: love nests, bird's nests, empty nests and wasp nests. Spring brings all these in droves, but I've encountered them in unique ways this year that have made me think a little more on the idea of "nest".

Two weeks ago my husband and I moved our nest from Dundas to Northfield. We've been busy placing furniture in rooms and organizing where to keep things. In a sense we are much like the swallows outside our bedroom window who are both also frenzied doing the very same thing, albeit with straw and mud. In and out of the nest they fly, beaks laden with something new for the home, hour after hour. Moving day was indeed hours and hours of in and out of the houses carrying boxes, lamps, sofas and cats. We have since gotten things settled in and we are beginning to relax. But not the swallows. They still had five more days of building. So, yesterday, it was a warming sight when I noticed small feathers in the lining of the walls of the nest. The feathers signaled the completion of their build, but the beginning of the real work.

Matthew and I do not have children of our own, instead we have cats. This makes for a quiet nest with little to no stirring or chaos most of the time. There is never a mad dash out the door with two people who need to be different places at the same time. We never are woken by cries and fevers in the middle of the night. We do not have doctors on speed dial. No kid art adorns our walls or appliance doors. Sometimes the simplicity of our nest is heavenly after a long week in an office. Sometimes our nest is too quiet. I often wonder what our life would be like with children. I imagine a full nest, noisy with need and thought, cluttered with details. Inevitably spring brings these thoughts because I watch rites of passage like prom, graduation and college going-away parties pass through the lives of those we know.

My nostalgia-swelled emotions are quelled when children of these so proud parents are enduring doting that makes little sense to them. The children don't know the pride that has been born through the work these parents have done. So, grouchy and embarrassed children of whom photos (from infancy to graduation) have been posted about the home for a party are wincing as they pass each one in the house. Wasp sting-like words are exchanged, the nest is disturbed. With only weeks of togetherness left: celebrate your nest and all of its padding. It was built for you.

This August will be no different. The swallows outside our window will learn to fly, they will learn to find their own food, learn where they want to live, learn to build a nest for themselves. I will melt when I see the first bird hatch and I will melt when I see the first bird launch from fledgling to flight. I'll muse how amazing it is that the first to hatch may not be the first to fly, and vice versa. I'll be amazed at nature, at life, at beauty. Then I will see it: the empty nest.

After the last graduation party and the last van has returned from a college dorm, I will see the tear-worn eyes of the mothers who are returning to their nests, one bird short. I will have cake and coffee with them. I will have a lot of cake and coffee with them. After, I will come home to my nest - so evenly full and evenly empty and wonder at how any of these birds do it.

Find me for cake and chocolate and coffee: there's room in our nest.

x,

Angela