The sound of a bird singing out the window, early this morning.
So you will have to forgive me for this late Thursday post. When I say early, it was actually around 3:00 a.m.; which, at the time, made me wonder what type of bird was awake and signing at that time of the morning. It also reminded me of the lovely, but very loud, nightingale that used to sing outside our window when we lived in England many years ago. I could tell this bird was no nightingale though, much quieter and not enough range. Have you ever heard a nightingale sing? It is an amazing, if eye opening, sound. (Check out this Soundboard site for their song). Although I think it is a lovely song, the nightingale typically heralded my morning wake-up, so it isn’t necessarily associated with happy feelings for me. My schedule at that point in my life was crazy… fun and interesting and challenging, but crazy. 5:00 a.m. – Get-up, trying not to disturb my husband (while sort of wanting to because I was so jealous he still had at least two more hours of sleep ahead of him). 6:20 a.m. – Catch the early train from Sunningdale station to Waterloo (It was worth running for this train because it was marginally less crowded and I had met a couple of travel friends would would entertain me on the 45 minute trip into London). 7:45 a.m. – Stumble from the tube, hyperventilating from holding my breath for the last 40 minutes. (There is nothing so horrible at 7:00 in the morning than breathing in someone’s hangover breath.) 8:00 a.m. – Arrive at my office in Barclays Bank near Tower Bridge. (The walk was actually more like 10 minutes, but I never did get over the idea that I got to walk by the Tower of London on my way to work. Once I even saw white deer on the grounds, as if Arthur himself might appear at any moment.) 6:30 p.m. – Head pounding, leave my office at a run, trying to catch the 7:10 train. (The head pounding thing was aggrevated by the decision to pain our wide open office space a bright arrange and yellow…. I can’t imagine who thought that would be a good idea <picture me hanging my head in shame here>). 8:00 p.m. – Text my husband to beg him to pick me up from the train so I wouldn’t have to walk home in the dark. (Dinner waiting, we would talk briefly of our day, mine developing a content strategy for the bank’s online presence and him… uh… riding his bike around Windsor great park and watching a polo match which he swore the Prince had attended). 9:00 p.m. – Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Good morning lovely nightingale. Thank you for humoring my trip down memory lane.
0 Comments
“It must be spring.” The birds are singing. The crocuses are blooming. The squirrels are friskily playing in my daughter’s fairy garden… Oh, Wait! That’s not playing. They’re practically setting up a house of ill-repute in our backyard. Great, just what we need, more little baby squirrels looking for ways to get into our attic. Animals, no matter how cute, are messy. They dig where they shouldn’t, leave fur and feathers and all kinds of debris behind them, chew on stuff (like wires, ahem), and taunt my dog (who is clearly more person than animal). They represent the natural world, where things do not go according to plan and chaos seems imminent; a natural world from which modern society has created distance. Disney solved this by hiring bunches of employees to sweep up after nature and by anthropomorphizing animals. Our food chain contains more cello wrap and Styrofoam than animal product. There are multitudes of sites whose whole purpose is to convince us to rid ourselves of spiders, moles, mice, and pigeons while others show us how to create elaborate indoor homes for rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, and snakes. I dream of someday living in Italy for a year. I picture myself picking olives and learning how to make olive oil to pour over the fresh heirloom tomatoes grown in my own orto, garden. But nowhere in that vision do I see myself picking spiders out of my hair after shaking the olives from the tree; nor fighting with slugs intent on eating my tomatoes. In my idealized version of Italy the dirt of the natural world is contained to the ground, and not on my hands. At 10,000 feet I imagine the messiness of the world blurs into perfection. Time allows me to see that the cycle of life might look chaotic but is actually an amazing choreography of interconnected dependencies. So while my first instinct is to call the squirrel whisperer from blog posts past (link), as I stare out at the squirrels making a little love nest, I know my only choice is acceptance. |
Subscribe to my blog:
About Me...Deanne WilstedLink here to Betting Jessica on Amazon.com Archives
June 2020
Categories
All
|