I hung wooden decorative bird houses in my garden a couple of years ago. I attached them to the fence with screws through the back of them and have left them to slowly deteriorate. I liked how they looked. Occasionally, one would fall to the ground or a piece would give up the fight and blow off those ridiculous little structures. Still, I liked looking at them and thinking about birds.
Apparently, the birds didn't think they were just for decoration. This spring, a finch female decided to build a nest and lay eggs in one of those dilapidated houses. I noticed her one day, coming and going and when she ducked into the tiny opening of one of them, I admit, I was happy to see it being used.
Upon further investigation I realized that she chose the absolute worst one! The bottom was literally falling out of it. As her nest grew and eventually baby birds hatched, the base of the house did eventually fall. Luckily, I had been monitoring it, okay, actually, I was obsessed with it, so I noticed it within a few hours.
Those five hatchlings were tiny, and naked, their eyes weren't even open yet. I had to save them! I felt it was my fault after all, for being such a bad birdhouse landlord. I grabbed my screwdriver drill and, oh, so very gently returned the two babies that were out of the nest (how did that even happen?) and then carefully got the base back into the bottom of the house without crushing anything. I secured the whole thing with a few screws into the fence, which would support the base. Crisis averted, and none of the neighborhood cats were any wiser.
Waiting and watching, I have to say, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the momma bird return to the nest. I worried she might have given up on it after the great fall. But over then next few days, all returned to normal. I'd hear the baby birds chirping and I'd watch the parent birds fly in and out of the nest with their tidbits of food. All seemed well. Until the big storm.
A massive storm blew into our area one night. We even had a tornado touch down a few miles away. It was a rough night. The next morning, I checked out my garden and bird house, but it was eerily quiet. And, it stayed quiet. In fact, I have not seen the birds return to the house since that storm.
Part of me wants the check the nest. Remove the screws, drop the bottom of the house out and check that nest to make sure the baby birds were not victims of parental abandonment. But another part of me thinks that if I don't look, then I can imagine them out there, growing up, hunting their own food now. It's a Schrödinger's cat kind of thing.
I guess that nest has caught my attention so much because my last baby left the nest last month. My husband and I are living in our own empty nest. I simultaneously love, and hate it.
I love that my children are grown, healthy and strong and are out there, living their own lives now. My two sons and daughter are simply amazing people and I am so proud of who they have become.
I also love remembering them running up the stairs, decorating their rooms, playing with the Legos and building Lincoln Log forts. And the destruction of those forts was almost as entertaining as the building of them. I remember them lounging around in front of the TV and joking together at the family dinner table. I can see them, at various ages, like ghosts walking around the house, grabbing gear as they run out the door, arguing and doing all the things that children do as they grow. I actually miss the sound of them fighting and rolling around on the game room floor while my husband and I sat downstairs waiting for the latest war to end, hoping for no bloodshed.
I love remembering those days. But I also hate it. I hate living in the past with that constant bittersweet taste. I hate the contrast of how quiet and clean the house always is now. I hate the echos.
I don't know what to do about it. I want to leave, move somewhere smaller and easier to take care of, but for various reasons that's just not in the cards at the moment. Equally, I also don't want to forget this place or any of the things that happened here over the last twenty-one years. If I left here, how would I ever remember all those lovey memories. How do parents cope with this?
How do parents move on from an empty nest?