Bird's nest

Treasures can be found in the most unexpected places. Though a bird's nest is typically found in a tree, I don't always look for them in small trees and fairly low to the ground. But one day last week while visiting my mom at the nursing center, I was distracted from my visiting when I glimpsed a cluster of twigs in the lower branches of a tree that was only, at it's highest, ten feet. It didn't take long to determine that it was unoccupied; a film of webbing floated over top of the nest like its own private tule fog shroud. As I moved in to take pictures, I took care not to disturb the nest. Doves return year after year to the same nest. Five years of observing dove nesting in my own backyard has taught me that any change to a favorite nesting place can send the birds in search of a new home.

I'm a nester. I hate change. In a perfect world I would have been born in, grown up, and remained in one place. My perfect world would have had me travelling everywhere but always having that same, safe harbor to return to. As I approach retirement, I ask myself where and when I will find that perfect world. I'm still looking for it because my real life has been a series of moves - state to state, town to town, home to home, school to school, and job to job. My life has been more or less stable for the past 18 years, but the children have now graduated, they are making their own lives and planning their future families. And I find myself thinking forward to the time when I, with Don, can finally find that perfect place, a place where mountains meet the sea.

But there is a shroud over my life; an inhibitor which may keep me from making that final move until eventually it may feel too late. And that is when I see another nest, this one perched on an exposed windowsill of an old rock building. Is that me hovering on the brink? Will I find my way to fly from the aridity of this valley? Will I find that place where mountain meets sea, the water for me the mountains for Don?

For a while, it was money that concerned me. It is the eternal question. Will I have enough? Will the debt be diminished and manageable by retirement? But lately I've been thinking more about time. Will there be enough time to finally get to that perfect world? Watching my mother's slow declines tells me that anything can happen to me or to Don at any time. Our lives could change with a swiftness that gives me wiplash just thinking about it.

So, I don't touch the nest and I stand poised on the brink. If that perfect world is out there waiting for us, we will find it and when the times comes I will leap for it and not worry about money, time, or imagined ties to this place I find myself in now.

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