Summer's bluebirds
Because we live in a world that is see-sawed between the comforting confines of our backyards and the challenging immensity of the bigger world delivered to us in daily front page news headlines, we must never lose our balance that provides us small hopes among unknown fears. This summer of 2022 is proving to be a test of our child-learned confidences. Will the world be OK?
In late spring we discovered a nest of bluebirds high in a hollowed tree above our backyard. The couple came and went, doing food errands and awaiting the magic of what would come with the hatching of their four pale blue eggs. Their telltale singing (“kew, kew”) claimed our backyard as their own and we fell into their daily routine of expectant parents and soul mates. As evening dusk darkened and the birds’ songs waned, we lighted our night with the bigger world’s TV news. The California drought was worsening, local students were preparing for graduations and Congress remained in gridlock. The seesaw bucked and swayed.
The noises increased around the bluebirds’ nest as if excitement was near. The duller-colored male seemed extra agitated and increased his loops to and from the nest’s opening, offering bugs and other foods for his mate. In turns, she would flit to a nearby limb, always in careful sight of her backyard home. The bluebirds became the essence of spring and of summer’s hope. But the evening’s TV turned ominous and dark — the killing of 10 Black people by a racist gunman in Buffalo, New York, 2,900 miles from our backyard. Horrific. Ugly. The low-end of our seesaw.
The bluebirds did not know of the years of COVID-19 pandemic and teetering economy experienced by the humans who shared the backyard. Survival meant only following their nesting impulses without questioning why. For humans, survival is more complicated, distanced from our instincts by attitudes, anxieties and gods. The Buffalo killings mean our backyard is now less safe. Then comes the unthinkable, the next mass killing of 19 school children and their two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. How can this be happening again? We turn to our TVs, away from our backyard, and say, “never again,” knowing this will be false.
The spring rains are not coming this year, yet most of the backyard blossoms emerge, offering a leafy oasis that welcomes many other birds and a buzzing of rebirth, morning songs, afternoon quietness and evenings with a fading yellow light of cautious reassurance. Summer is approaching.
True tragedy happens when the male bluebird is found lifeless at the edge of the backyard, a victim to an invisible attack or accident. It was only days before when his nest of eggs had hatched and he had a new purpose of many new mouths to feed. For once, our TV news was not the saddest event of the day.
We become reminded that to achieve balance there must be ups and downs, the expected that always follows the unexpected, or vice versa. For birds it is nature’s cycle. For humans, it is this seesaw we force ourselves to ride. For many more days, the female bluebird calls for her lost mate from a branch above his last resting place, “kew, kew.” We turn off the TV news, click, click. We pray for the end of all the shootings, klack, klack. We wait to see what this summer of 2022 will next bring, this seesaw that we are no longer too willing to trust as simply or innocently as we “see” and “saw.”
— Rollie Atkinson
6-2022