the nest

i had planned an at-home spa day. my landlord had planned a new roof.

i’m not sure the universe has ever been more literal with me.

there is a bird living just above my front door between the porch light and the paneling of the house.

every time i come and go, she does too.

i watched her build something to call home — piece by piece, twig by twig, perfectly cut pieces of grasses, leaves chosen with intention. together, they danced in this making, scouting the location, returning again and again.

and then the wind came that afternoon.

when i got home, their very foundation was spread across the ground. the twigs. the perfectly cut pieces of grasses. the leaves. i was so sad for them. i picked up the bits and placed them on the table in hopes they would find them with ease and start again. but they didn’t.

every time i would come and go i would say — it’s ok. you are safe to come back here. my home is your home.

except it’s really their home that became mine.

i wonder sometimes if that’s true of all the spaces we occupy.

we arrive.
we tend.
we build.

and slowly the place starts to hold us more than we hold it.

a few days later, they were back. i would watch them gather and then rest on my trumpet vine as if the journey to the home had to be sacred and precise.

and now the nest is here — fully intact.

there’s a part of me that wonders why they chose this space. we are surrounded by trees. and then the other part of me is not lost in the irony that the lesson — the nesting, the tending, the giving of life — this isn’t something i’ve been receiving. not fully. not yet.

not every season is one of becoming. some seasons are for wintering. for turning inward. for becoming the container rather than the thing being created. when we consistently pour outward, we starve the very source we create from. it’s the same way a woman who is pregnant creates the structure, the safe container, in which new life can grow. the embryo doesn’t rush. the womb doesn’t apologize for needing nine months.

i have always measured my worth in productivity. rest has never felt like enough. it still doesn’t, not entirely. society doesn’t make it easier either. rest doesn’t look like output. it doesn’t look like progress. it looks like stillness, and we’ve been taught to be suspicious of stillness.

and yet here is this bird who builds and rests and builds again. who zooms away and returns. who tends without needing it to look like anything.

she doesn’t apologize for the pause. she just takes it.

so here it is. the lesson arriving in its most delicate form. at my own front door. in the middle of hammering and nailing and a spa day that got interrupted.

the duality is almost laughable.

i even have syringes and food on my to-do list. just in case they need support. because that’s what i do. i tend to others. i prepare just in case. i leave the pieces on the table hoping someone will find them with ease.

and she is present, showing me what i keep forgetting.

she is my reminder of the tenderness in being, the necessity in resting, the pause before the creation.

at the physical threshold between my home and everything beyond it…

i am her. she is me.