Out of the Nest

The birds have flown the coop—well, actually the nest.

This afternoon as I was walking out the door near their nest, I heard a flutter of multiple wings. It only took a second to realize that three of the babies weren’t babies anymore. They swooped past my head, one heading for the flower bed across the drive, the other two for the tree next door. Mama bird was beside herself and apparently so was the male. Both were chirping madly and flying way too near me.

When I returned to the door a minute or so later, I noticed it wasn’t quite empty. One of the birds, the one whom we thought of as the “runt” was still in the nest. He/she was having nothing to do with the flying business. Periodically for the next hour or so, I’d check the status. The siblings were always nearby, sometimes perched together on a wire near the nest. At one point, one of them came back near the nest with a worm! And mama bird was sitting on the wire, chirping almost continually, I imagined her trying to coax the runt out of the nest. A few hours later I had to go out and as I drove off past the nest, the bird was still there. But a couple of hours later when I returned, there was no bird anywhere. And just to be sure, I checked again and the nest is empty.

I feel an odd mix of feelings. Relief that no bird met with a bad end in the driveway while trying to launch. And that the cats that roam around didn’t have a little extra something to eat. Happy to have watched a part of God’s redeemed world carry out its natural cycle before my very eyes. Amazed at the endurance of the parent birds. Finally, they have only their own mouths to feed. But mostly, mostly I feel strangely lost knowing there will be nothing in the nest to check on tomorrow.

But, this is, after all, the way the world works. I launched two sons and was relieved that neither of them crashed and burned, either literally or figuratively. And I remember feeling the same sense of loss when they drove away as adults, leaving our home for the last time, going to make their own homes somewhere else. Unlike the robins, we do stay in touch, but the empty nest reminded me of the little hole that each son left as they flew the coop.

Life does seem to be a series of leavings. But as I’ve told hundreds of people with whom I counseled, “What matters is what you do next.”

Peace,

Jerry+