Exposed and Asking

Inquisitive Black-capped Chickadee Fledgling

The sunflower seeds rattle against steel and wood, an avian dinner bell. I press the lid down on the feeder until it seats with a satisfying thud. The morning is hazy and golden, the air still, and the dawn chorus vibrates through the cool foliage — a House Wren spilling its bright tumble of notes, a Gray Catbird running through its borrowed songs. The garden is calm.

Then a little storm arrives. They descend from the peach tree into the apple tree, thin darting flashes at the edge of sight, too quick to resolve, the air quivering with their calls. A family of Chickadees. I take three steps back from the feeder and stand under the arbor at the entrance to our garden. Both parents zip down to the feeder and back, shuttling seeds to fledglings that beg loudly from the apple tree, the branches shaking, the leaves whispering.

Then I hear a light fluttering, and the soft tick of tiny claws grasping wood. I look up. A newly fledged Chickadee is perched just above my head, fluttering his wings, giving an incessant buzzy call. But his body stays still, holding his place on the wood. His tail is short and stubby. Fuzzy feathers cover his whole body, so he looks rounder and plumper than his parents, a nascent version of them. But under the fuzz is the same bold chickadee attitude. He does not even look at me. He is fully absorbed in asking for and receiving food. When a seed finally comes, he goes perfectly still to eat it, and for a few seconds there is nothing in the world but the seed. Then he pauses and cocks his head, turning it this way and that, taking the world in. He does not yet know there is anything to fear.

Over the next week the young Chickadees change. They begin to notice me. I know where they are in the yard by their constant calls while I work in the garden, and sometimes they still come in close and watch me, especially when I am bent over a task and they seem to know I am not paying attention. The adults trust me, and it seems their young are learning to trust me too. But the easy nearness of that first morning is gone. I keep trying to get close, and now when I approach they bounce away through the vegetation, giving alarm calls. I have to be content with a certain distance between us.

If I am persistent, I can still have brief, intimate encounters. The Chickadee’s curiosity often holds him in place, staring at an insect, twig, or leaf. My curiosity pulls me into the same scene. My guard drops.

Fledgling begging for food as an adult drops to feed him

Time for a nap

This chasing and cataloging used to be my whole life, my way of being. I wrapped myself in the scientific method like armor. It served me. It is one way to get ahead. But it kept me at a remove from life, watching it through glass. The Chickadee begins his life in a cup, walled in twigs and moss, and then he leaves it for good. I did the opposite. I left the nest like everyone does, and then spent years building the walls back up around myself, one careful pane at a time. I have always been a slow learner. It took me the better part of fifty years to notice the glass was there.

Three decades of living behind that glass kept me at a distance. But the birds created a small opening, and the morning light came through. I felt the warmth in my chest. I began to notice new and different details. The glint in a bird’s eye. The way they turn their heads. How they look at me, how they look at each other. How attuned they are to everything around them, wary and at ease in the same moment.

Beginning to feel had the curious effect of softening my ego, and with it came the desire to share. But bringing myself into the story, putting myself on the page, was a bigger hurdle than describing any bird. For most of my life I treated my introversion and sensitivity as problems to solve. I brought all my logic to the task. The birds showed me I had it backward. What I had been trying to fix was the part of me that could see and feel. Once I stopped trying to fix it, I could accept the person I had been all along. That part of me, the part I had been hiding, is as beautiful as that scruffy fledgling Chickadee asking with his whole body.

As a way to continue this journey, to take the next uncomfortable step, I am putting my words onto a tangible page. A book, written for you, the thoughtful readers who have been so encouraging. You have shown me that I am not alone. I wanted to make something real and beautiful, as true to who I am right now as I could make it. And then send it into the world the way that fledgling launched itself off the arbor over my head — exposed and asking.