I was blearily eating my cold spag bol breakfast at the dining room table this morning, reading my paperback, sipping my coffee, when it suddenly occurred to me that my father-in-laws' cremains were about a foot or so away from my place. I looked at the box. "Oh!" I thought. "That's right! Ed's going in the ground today. Dang."
Ed has been in the back bedroom on a shelf for the past few months in a cardboard box. Today we drove him out to the graveyard and met a small group of older people, cousins of the Bikers. None of us knew one another. They were there with their own small box, full of Ed's sister, and we all stood around the family plot and made small talk. Then the Biker took a piece of plywood and an orange traffic cone off the small hole in the ground and we put the boxes in, stood around making more small talk, and then replaced the plywood and the orange traffic cone and went our separate ways.
It was a lot like waiting at a bus stop.
When I got home I opened up the house to let the breeze through. It gets stuffy fast, with the damp weather we've had. We have no screens, door or window; just never got around to it. As I was sitting here trying to make my computer into a tool of FirstNations instead of a tool of the State, I kept noticing a flickering out of the corner of my eye. Not too unusual. The sun was peeking in and out, and the light glances off passing cars and makes a sparkle on the wall sometimes. I let it go. Until the bird flew into the window, inside the house, and I had to open the window to let it out.
The flickering? Swallows. Swallows have been flying through my house, from the back kitchen door through and out the front room door, around and around like a game for the past five hours.
What the heck. Let them have fun.
The swallows have been nesting on the same beam in my little metal shed out back for close to twenty years now. I have to whack the side of the shed if I don't want to get a face full of startled bird when I go in. But once mom bird is sitting on eggs, she'll just look at me placidly as I roam around, and when the hatchlings emerge, I'll have five little fat, bald birds watching me over the side of the nest, which is not more than six inches above my head. Then one day they will simply be gone, done, flown away, and I will leave the nest there. This years hatchlings fledged a few days ago, and have taken their first flights around the yard. It's kind of nice to have them playing in the air through my house, to tell the truth. I feel like a bird grandma.
They say that swallows will always nest in the same place every year. I wonder if I have the great great great great etc. grand-swallows of the original pair sitting in there, telling their kids not to worry about the hippie that shows up occasionally.
We've had skylarks nesting this year, though I don't know where. They nest on the ground so it must be on one of the meadows. I've never had them singing so close to the ground before, they were surprisingly loud.
ReplyDeleteI love swallows! They are beautiful acrobatic birds. And they eat mosquitoes!! I once found a dead one on a bridge in the city. It had probably been hit by a car. Such a gorgeous deep blue back and russet breast. I felt very sad about that.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago, some bird kept trying to make a nest on the light fixture right over my back door. Now, normally, I don't bother birds at all, but having to deal with dive bombing parents (I suspected it was a robin and they can get very protective) plus all the bird poo that would end up being tracked into my house because I would forget and step in it. So I kept sweeping the nest off with a broom (it was still being built) until the bird decided to take up residence elsewhere. I was relieved!
This is beautiful. I love them.
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