Earlier this spring, I found myself at the local garden store in search of perfect hanging baskets for my newly acquired back porch. It needed to be full and lush, flowery and lovely, all at the same time. Not really a lot to ask, considering this garden store was absolutely mammoth! Little did I know, as I stood there in line waiting to purchase my matching hanging baskets of Lobelia, that I was actually purchasing a metaphor of life.
My next stop was the local home improvement store, where I selected the perfect hooks from which to hang ‘said’ lovely baskets from. I strategically place the hooks and thus the baskets equidistant apart on the back porch. Ahhhh…perfection! Perhaps a bit too perfect, as the Mourning Dove from the feeder next door began fashioning sticks and twigs into a cozy little nest…right smack dab in the middle of the flowering basket!
First one egg, then two. I gingerly watered around the nest, and the soon to be new family. Not long after, as I began my daily watering ritual, i discovered it was not two eggs, but two teeny tiny baby birds!
Watching this momma bird raise her little family was oddly similar to raising my own children. Devotion, commitment, sacrifice, only in time lapse photography. One day when the babies were grown, and the momma thought it time, she encouraged them to leave the nest. Fly. Just fly. I watched as they flew away…and flew back…and flew away again, and finally…they were gone.
My daughter left for Iowa today, grad school. I raised her, I nurtured her and i eventually encouraged her to fly. She left for college 5 years (and two majors ago). Even though she took great pride in being “on her own”, she was never more than a few miles from home. Today I watched from inside the house (and out of their site), as she hugged her little sister good-bye and climbed into the moving van… that the little girl who wouldn’t go to summer camp, was now moving to Iowa. And then I realized…much like those little baby birds, this was her time to fly.
Funny, I remember crying when she was seemingly swallowed up by the big yellow bus (first day of kindergarten), cried when she graduated high school, and again when she moved into her college dorm, and then again today (anybody see a pattern here?!) …as she struck out on her own for Iowa. But here’s the thing…not only do I think she’ll fly..I know she will soar!
