Fire Birds

Week 1
There are birds above our dining room table. Not literally of course, but their activity in the window is of such an intensity that it is hard to focus and jot down my thoughts over my morning coffee. So I stop trying, and start watching what they are up to. Twigs and moss, hair and feathers being stuffed into a corner space. They are building a nest, I guess. They have figured out that the bend in our screen leaves them space to fly in between it and the window, and make a place to raise a family of …?????

Week 2
I found a photo in my California bird book to verify the name of our new freeloaders: Carpodacus mexicanus. For those of us who struggle with such combinations of letters, they are also called “Housefinch”. The male is oak-bark brown with fire-red feathers on his head and chest, while the female’s brown is speckled with cream and traces of lemon yellow. The male loves to sing on the low slung telephone wire right within my morning coffee and evening meal line of sight, and it makes me feel as if I’m on the set of a made for TV, (Hallmark) feel-good movie.

Week 4
The eggs are hatching. The blue with brown speckled eggs the size of pistachios are breaking open to reveal little bouncy brown feather-fluff mounds. They wobble and squeak when the mother comes back from her food finding excursions. She stays most the time on her nest on our window, nestled between the glass and the bent-open screen. She lectures her mate when he comes bringing grubs… is he late? Not enough? Or is all the fuss really her complements?
The babies look fragile as moss to our eyes so we wait ‘til she flies to peak in and count heads. Three now! Or four? There ‘s at least one more egg. Will it hatch? Is it dead? We borrowed a ladder and placed it inside, right next to the dining room table. We argue and shush as we scramble our turn to the place where we peer through the glass. The scary part is not climbing above the ladder’s safety line—my whole life has been about finding my wings by falling off from some place of comfort or safety. I know my kids might get careless and break an arm sometime. But better that than a life of safe predictions and well-laid plans. I want them to learn at an early age to not shy away from climbing. Be it trees, walls, or the places in their minds and hearts where pain and loss can expand their capacity to celebrate life, with all it’s knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest moments.
We climb. We watch. We celebrate the life of the babies.

Week 6
Why is it so quiet? Is it possible the babies could have flown while we were gone over the weekend? Last I heard, they couldn’t help but peep like squealing piglets, at every little sound that might be food. Last I saw them, their eyes were straight dark lines on wobbly heads on skinny necks supporting giant beaks. Their wings were folded at their sides like feathered elbows. There is no way those alien peeping things could enter the cloud galaxy yet. So why is there no movement from that nest now? Dare we climb the ladder and survey a scene of disaster?

Week 8
There is a bird sitting above my head in the corner of the window. It is a second chance bird by the fact that the one who was there two weeks ago left, and never came back. We had watched her babies, hatch (my husband, kids, and I) and waited for the miracle of flight. A miracle it seems when you get to see the wobbly, huddled, helplessness of the chicks that look more like aliens than prodigy of finches. We waited with anticipation for the transformation to arrive one day and change them. But the mother was caught by a hawk. Or a snake. Or got lost or whatever else you might speculate. The nest grew quiet, and when we climbed the ladder placed next to our dining room table, we saw silent mounds of feathered fluff, and the single, solitary, bluish pistachio-sized egg that had never changed since it was laid. We mourned alone for two long days before the father bird returned. My husband was the witness to the male’s lament of the lifeless place in the corner our window. I don’t want to claim that I know the first thing about how a finch feels heartbreak (and annoy all you biologists) with my personified projection. Yet I have to report that Jason said it sounded like the cry of one who has encountered a sudden and significant loss, and can’t help but wail out in protest at the cruelty of such undeserved devastation.

How does one recover from such a loss? I’m thinking now of the folks whose houses turned to ashes in the fury of the Jesusita fire that swept across the front side of the foothills at my back while I watched finches in the wind. More than 80 homes devoured, and the ground in Montecito is still hot. Out of the more than 30,000 people forced to evacuate, only a handful of them were close family and friends, all of whom are now back in their houses intact. Out of these residences spared, I’m most grateful for the structures that came closest to the flames. Why is that I wonder? Do I take those places and the people they house less for granted now that I’m convinced they can be easily taken away?

I’m imagining the burden of compassion that I would feel if I lived across the street from someone whose house went down in flames. What a strange sort of “luckiness” that is, to be like the second chance bird in the window, while the neighbors return like the father Housefinch, and cry out in protest at all the devastation.

I think the wailing takes an immense amount of bravery. To decide to be vulnerable that way, and really fall apart under the observing eyes of friends and neighbors who want to help but don’t have a clue about what you are really going through… that is immensely courageous. We all are alone in our grief, whatever the loss, and to let others in is to let in the wind and the sun and the rain before the wreckage is cleared. In our perfect comfort-zone worlds, we would have everything organized and thrown away and the ground tilled before we invited the neighbors. Accordingly, we would live 900 years and have time for that. But we don’t. So we can’t wait—we have to be brave, and admit our dependence on other members of the human race to carry hope for us when we have no more faith. It’s not necessarily the “American way”, which calls for confidence and action. Quick reaction. Safe predictions, well-laid plans, and staying below the safety-line. Which doesn’t take into account the spark that ignites the flame that burns up more than 8,000 acres in less than five days…. it gives no blueprint for how we ought to behave when we are not “the lucky neighbors”. When we have been hit by a knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest-moment, we need something more authentic than a freedom based on what is earned or deserved… we need a promise that we will not only survive but thrive; we will grow more, not less, hopeful, grateful, wise. Then we can be brave in times of crisis, and not hide our fear-stricken alien eyes as we wait patiently for transformation.

We can choose this: to open our starved hearts and receive the freely given love that is offered to us in our times of great need. It’s okay if we are too blind at first to recognize the face of generosity, or too wobbly with fear to get past squeals of self-protection to expressions of gratefulness. As my friend Lorraine says, “It takes what it takes.” Meaning, of course, that we have to forgive ourselves when despair drags us under for a while, makes us close up to all the wonder of a world that gives second chances. Or third. Or fourth. Or infinity.

I’m banking on the infinity chances, especially for my friends who live on the streets of Santa Barbara. Most are folks who had homes to live in once, and now they don’t. Most had jobs and families. Many have lost not only possessions but also the sense of self-worth and self-ability needed to succeed in walking away from a seemingly endless cycle of tragedy. Despite this, many of these friends have bowled me over with their compassion for those who could lose the very things that they themselves live without day after day. While they are criticized and despised by many folks who have houses to live in, jobs to work at, and functioning families, they are praying and hoping and checking in with those of us who consider them friends to emphasize their desire to help in any way they can. They are grieving as people who do have a clue what it means to lose “everything”—they are interceding to hold up hope for those they think may be at risk for losing it.

I can’t even describe how humbling it has been to be a witness and a recipient in these conversations. Or how transformative it is to the areas in my belief systems where I am choosing to judge and be stingy, or to the places in my life where I’ve given only out of obligation or excess, vs. out of empathy. The more I grow in friendship with those I know who live on the streets, the more I curb my need to either avoid their suffering, or try to save and rescue them from their individual tragedies. I can’t rescue anybody, but I can spend time, share tears and laughter, and talk honestly. It’s refreshing to be with these “survivors”, because so many of them are more courageous and generous with the way they give and receive love than I can yet dream of being. They humble and inspire me. I’m guessing that the folks who’ve lost their houses, but not the people most dear to them, are becoming like those friends: holding less tightly to the false securities of possessions and titles, and more securely to relationships that sustain their happiness.

I want to be like that when I grow up. I want to be brave enough to accept the love of friends and neighbors when I am stripped of all the things that keep me feeling safe. I want to stay in my home on the edge of Paradise watching the finch chicks fly, safe from the fires of sudden and significant change. But as my rental contract nears it’s expiration date, and I remain without a guarantee of housing past July, I am aware that the important thing to believe in is this: there is a universe of love out there big enough to sustain me, whatever takes place. Like homeless friends who prayed for mansions to be saved. Like finches building life on top of death outside my window. It’s time to put the ladder up again, and climb above the safety line. It’s time to peak inside and see infinity.