Nest Building

OK, it's Spring. Or it's trying to be Spring- desperately. I came to this realization in between winter storms last week. That's right, it is still really winter-like here. Every other day another squall of semi-snow, "sn-hail", even a dumping of heavy wet snow. But it is Spring, and bits of green grass and sprouts of leaf buds  prove it.  And the robins are back.  Those who know my robin story know how this goes, but I sort of had an introspective moment recently, and I think there's more to the robin story. 

Last year, a young robin started to make her nest on the gutter pipe just 3 feet from my kitchen window. She was a newbie robin, probably her first nest ever. Somehow her inner-GPS told her that this was her homeland, and she should built her nest-HERE. On the gutter pipe.  Not in the tree where she probably was born, but on the crux of the gutter pipe.  So the whole mother nature drama played out over three to four weeks right out my window where I spent my time by my kitchen sink.

She was busy building her nest; furiously getting it all ready and it was a pretty good one...she sat on it  for hours readying herself for her eggs; when the BIG STORM hit. We always get one this time of year, but this one was a pretty severe wind and angry winter storm warning.  It blew in; typical  and slammed the fierce wind up against the front of the house-where of course her nest was.  Her nest was blown to the ground   more or less intact but yards away from where she built it. She was like "what the hell?"  I felt so sorry for her, I fixed it. And that's what I am. A fixer.

I put the nest back up on the downspout, and she returned after the storm, re-inforced it with some more twigs and dirt, and soon within a week; there were little babies.  Couldn't see them at first, but the the following week, three little yellow beaks appeared from the narrow nest. She and her partner visited, fed them grubs, and she sat on her brood. Soon it became apparent that she favored one over the other two.  Soon there was only two little hungry beaks quivering for food.  Then the weaker one was thrown out of the nest and never seen again.  So she came back to her one surviving chick-let, and he was a pig. She spent hours and hours feeding it, hovering nearby, attending to his all consuming greedy diet of worms.   In a few weeks he was brave enough to launch himself to the tree branch, then to the ground, but he couldn't fly.  She just hopped around leading it to somewhere, hopefully he made it.    I never knew. I wondered, and soon we took the hose to the nest, bird droppings and all and power washed it off the spout.

So two weeks ago, she returned.   She started building the nest again, on the downspout. She had trouble again, because just like last year, she started building in the middle of winter/spring squall season, and the wind was giving her a lot of trouble.  She started to build it and started to sit on her nest-like mess of twigs that wasn't a nest.  The wind was blowing everyday, and it was a challenge to keep her twigs anchored in the downspout. And again, I thought; well I should help her?  I went out to the bird feeder that was empty from a month of sparrows that had polished it off last month.   I filled up the bird feeder, thinking; well if she likes the suet thing she's been picking at... she'll want some food nearby.  Wrong. The sparrows honed in, and then my robin was gone.  Gone for good.  Too many treacherous other birds, too many threats, too much wind, too much of everything. Too much of my fixing. 

I learned a lesson.  The nest story had me thinking about a lot of things about my nest.  My nest that had been blown to bits by  too many traumatic things over the last few years.  My now empty nest. My nesting instincts that try to fix other nests, much to my detriment. My world-my nest that had taken a beating by employment challenges, financial challenges, family challenges.  But in all, my nest is intact-still.  I reinforce it with twigs and support, borrowed or otherwise lent from family and friends.  I was also reminded of this lesson last week when it seemed like the entire Dixie South was beat to HELL by huge tornado's and those people lives, their nests, will have to be rebuilt.   I swore I would never complain about the weather again.

So it's spring, and unlike some other years, when I think spring is just another season; I actually am seeing it for the first time as a New Year-a new start. I get to rebuild my nest. My daughter is coming home soon from her first year away at college. My husband will have a new career. We'll get an opportunity to rebuild connections, maybe restore some hard edges, even financially, and I may stop fixing things for everyone, and just focus on my nest.