Fledged

She recalls vividly the scene played out in a bird’s nest one spring, Mama and Papa Robin sending their two babies over the edge. Baby number one jumps without hesitation, furiously flapping his wings.  He falls to the ground, of course, but picks himself up and tries flying again. Baby number two struggles to make the leap from the nest.  Poised on the edge, he appears to be ready for take-off, and at the last second stands down, like a scared child recoiling on the high dive.  The most memorable aspect of this show is the earsplitting noise from the nest. Mama, especially, relentless in chastising bird-speak.  It’s clear she believes it’s time.  But is he ready?

Is he ever ready, is what I wonder. A similar scene is playing out at my nest. I’ve served the eviction notice to all three of us, myself included.  I’m pushing us all out of this well-worn, familiar nest and into new parts of the world.  Some of us are more ready than others. 

It’s an unbelievable amount of work to dismantle a home sixteen years in the making.  I’ve uncovered old photo albums full of smiling babies, elementary school projects diligently completed in uncertain longhand, diaries with surprising content scrawled in sloppy adolescent prose:  Glimpses into moments in time which, when pieced together, make up the circuitous journey we’ve traveled up until now.  While there are many, many happy memories, it’s hard to be back in that space without a tinge of regret.  There is so much I knew at the time should be done differently if only I could have figured out how to do it, so much I would have done differently if only I knew I should have been doing it. Have I done all I can to prepare them?

A friend tells me that the mark of good parenting is not the outcome, much of the outcome is attributed to luck.  Good parenting is about responding to the people we’re given. And it’s about continuously showing up, even when it’s hard. It took me a while, admittedly, to decode who I’ve been given, to determine how best to respond to two disparate personality profiles, especially the one that doesn’t match mine. There is no user’s manual.  And then it took some time to heal my own soul, to demand the respect I deserve and to conceive the unwritten manifesto we can now all recite in our own words.

I’ve been described as persistent in many areas of my life. I will raise my hand for the hard jobs.  I will hang in there for as long as it takes.  I will identify road blocks, investigating any and all ways around them.  I will maintain a positive attitude, and spread renewed hope lavishly on every new option implemented in the quest to win whatever prize I’m seeking.  What I’ve learned is the journey is fluid; the rules and the players change; the time to exit and get on another path always presents itself. Outcomes are only final if you’re at the place where you choose to stop. 

I look at where my little birds are today on their journeys. I try to remember that while opportunities for me to show up wane significantly at this stage in life, these birds are not done growing. They get to define their own criteria for happiness and success, where they deem their final destination in life to be, when or if they will ever “arrive”. Life does not present an endgame to us, we create one and allow ourselves to surrender to it when we decide to measure ourselves by standards other than our own.

Is the bird ready?  He has inside of him everything required to live outside the nest. He needs only to unlock his courage.

They are learning how to fly. And so am I.