Aging

When did I become of a lover of birds?

When did the quietness of wing, feather, bone become enough to still me?

When I was a little girl, growing up in the heat of Florida, my grandmother had the most beautiful cement birdbath sitting amongst the oranges and grapefruits hanging from swollen trees. I remember the smell of the heat on the cement of that bath, the sweetness of your own picked and eaten orange.

Then legs grew long and up and a neediness for more replaced that heat and smell and sweetness.

Is this what becoming older brings? The remembering and reliving of those small moments we used to hold so tenderly in our young hands, and hearts?

I’ll take it.

I take these wings, feathers, and bones and let them quiet me.

I recently found a birdbath that looks just like the one so deeply embedded in my memory. My son and daughter and I watch the chickadees dip and splash, drink.

My children’s legs will grow long and up and they will soon need more.

But one day they might come back and find the stillness of wing, feather, and bone and see that it has waited for them.