This Birdy Life

It’s been raining, raining, raining here which is not so unusual in the Pacific Northwest and our backyard has become a lake. We call it Lake Robin, or Lake Vincent and then it got cold, cold, cold and the Lake partially froze. The birds skid across it. Rob would like to build a small dock about the size of a pack of cigarettes (remember those), and two or three rafts and sell tickets. I could make and sell warm drinks and treats.

For now, I watch the birds. The birds are hungry, fluffed out to keep warm so they look fatter than usual. Juncoes, Toohies, sparrows of all descriptions, chickadees. The bird feeders are swarmed like the opening night of a movie or the release of a new Harry Potter book. Lots of shoving, twittering, scolding and shouldering going on. Do birds have shoulders? Can they get rotator cuff injuries? Many questions. No answers.

We have about five inches of snow on the ground which for us qualifies as a foot or two back East. We aren’t used to this here, but it seems like we best be getting used to the unusual.

We are trapped in our house. Plenty of food, light, warmth and company. I’d like to fluff out my feathers and fly away.

Sometimes I think I should have been a nun in a nunnery where speech was not allowed. I love words, perhaps not the spoken word so much. I like picking sentences out of my head and putting the words down one by one until they make a music of sort: a swishing, twittering, exposition of sound and sibilance.

I love the world as it is. Let me amend that. Right now, right here sitting in my house well fed and content, I love the world . I know everything’s wrong and fucked up. Death and disaster and meanness lurk around every corner, but, I love the world. It is so magical in a way. It is such an outlandish proposition, maybe it could only be devised by a superior, playful, sometimes cruel being. Let there be light, color, noise, confusion, emotion, redwoods and tiny moss, saplings and thousand year pines, murderers and con men, saints and ratbags of every stripe. Let there be light and let’s see what it illuminates. Surprise me, dazzle me, destroy me, build me up.

Let the birds get on with their birdy lives and let us humans do what humans do.

The Heartless Bitch

Spent the day with my daughter and her husband and my husband and my two grandsons. Oh joy. The baby, who is seven weeks old has colic. Even when he is sleeping he writhes and grimaces. It is so horrible to watch. Nobody is sleeping very well as his shrieks and wailing fill their little house.

Emily, as with all mothers, takes on the colic as some failure of her own. Joe is just trying to survive. Both are exhausted.

So here comes 73 year old nana to the rescue. Not. I don’t give a damn if he’s writhing or screaming, or nursing or pooping. I think he’s wonderful. I don’t take it personally because I get to go home and sleep soundly for 9 hours. Then I get to wake up have tea and coffee and toast and sit in my quiet office upstairs and write.

What a heartless bitch.

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They are changing his formula to non-dairy and non-soy and Em is eating no dairy or soy products. Hopefully the new formula isn’t based on a petrochemical. We are trying to give up fossil fuels. Maybe Rowan will be able to calm his little digestive system down. Maybe not. We don’t get divine guidance about these things. But surely things will calm down and settle in. The little beast is gaining weight and boy is he interested in all the sights and sounds around him. He is so lovely.