Empty Nester
The tenacity, patience and devotion that birds display when raising their young never ceases to move me. I remember watching a little grey mourning dove that had chosen to build her nest in the eaves of a small second-story porch on the back of a house we once lived in.
Her nest was right at eye level. Yet, when we walked out onto the porch, she neither flinched nor moved a muscle.
We could get so close that we could clearly see the beautiful turquoise ring of color encircling her dark shining eye, and her soft buff and grey feathers.
Seeing her stillness and ease, even when we approached very closely, made me realize why doves are considered to be such symbols of peace and grace.
Once her chicks had hatched, I watched them, over time, move from the safety of the nest, to sheltering as fledglings under a close-by shed in our backyard, to eventually graduating to the lower branches of a nearby pine tree.
Step by step, bit by bit, they ventured further from their home.
This was an especially poignant experience for me because I got to observe this progression during the same spring season that my own firstborn had just graduated high school and was about to “leave the nest”. She would be attending college many hundreds of miles from where we lived.
It was a beautiful reminder from Mother Nature that as difficult as it may sometimes be, letting go of our young ones is all in the proper order of things.