The Makings of a Mother

Why is there a Christmas tree wreath on my front door in May you ask? Mother's Day. That's why.

You have to admit the weather has been a bit nutty this year (why should anything be predictable and civilized in the current state of the world?) and so when we noticed a very industrious pair of wild birds building a townhome in the wreath on the front door we decided Mother could use a hand and so we left the wreath up on the front door. 

Too tall for me to look inside, I tried to hold my phone over my head and aim it at the nest and was able to catch glimpses of the perfectly symetrical human hair lined crib nestled amongst the brittle pine needles.

One day my photo revealed 3 bright blue eggs. How DO they do such a thing? Momma bird would sit on the nest, but each time we passed by the glass front door she would 'fly the coup' and return once the coast was clear.  

Determined, I scotch taped cardboard packaging sheets together to shield the soon to be family outside from being scared by my family inside. I left a small gap where I could check on her sitting patiently, expectantly, and she tolerated my nosiness with a watchful eye.

Next, I enforced a NO EXIT policy making my family enter and exit from the back door and walk all the way around the house to further protect the eggs from being jostled. I mean how long can it take from egg to chick, right?

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Soon my photos showed three half fuzzy half dinosaur looking creatures with long fingers and pointed nails face down in the bed of hair and twigs. No peeps yet, but things were really moving along. 

Mother's Day eve my own chick came home to the nest needing some mothering before the last push of final exams and filling up my heart with pride and joy. But then I noticed that Momma bird hadn't been back to the nest that day. The crazy temperatures were dropping again it had been raining straight for days. 

My husband and son tried to comfort me saying that Mother nature told the momma that she would not be able to protect her babies in the unseasonable weather and she knew that it was time to move on. The babies could not be saved. I went to bed thinking about the instinctual pull of nurturing and motherhood.

This Mother's Day morning I descended the stairs darkened by the cardboard lining the glass. I tiptoed to the wreath just to check one last time before switching to a spring themed decoration and there she was. Her watchful eye seeing me, seeing her. A moment of recognition that mother to mother, we know... the pull is so much stronger, the commitment so much greater, the love so much deeper, and when the time is right to become a mother, a mother can do anything.