Ammi Midstokke: The nest empties
This spring, a pair of Canada geese nested in a field near my house. The field has a small pond in the early months, and just beside it, a tall pole with a nesting box built on top.
It is for the ospreys, but this year there was some lease agreement mixup and the geese moved in, laid eggs, and watched as the coyotes and deer raised their young 30 feet below.
“Look at all those reckless new parents down there with the predators and speeding Subarus, eh!” they said.
I remember the day I knew I was incubating a life in me. I had gone for a run after a suspicious emptying of the bladder, and upon my return saw the previously invisible blue line on a stick in the trash. No one warned me that love begins like this, with validation and too much pink packaging. I rode my bike to work beneath the verdant green of August leaves, carrying a secret power and knowledge and a sudden, biological urge for caution.
Life took a new shape, just as my body did. I ran until the nausea floored me, mountain biked until the globe of my belly could no longer fit between seat and bars, and washed, folded, refolded, organized, refolded yet again the tiny clothes that would be my child’s future (and fashionable) wardrobe. It included the smallest pair of Adidas running shoes.
When B came, something in me felt whole for the first time and I looked down the dark kaleidoscope of my memories to filter out the things that had harmed the child I once was. It’s hard to make sense of; how the best intentions can cause great damage.
No one warned me that love is not enough to keep a home. Or handmade clothing and homemade organic baby food or wearing an apron and heels when my husband came home from work or books on love or books on parenting or marriage counseling or crying.
I’d built a nest 30 feet off the ground, not recognizing the nest itself was a threat.
Maybe that’s why I panicked all spring as I drove past the geese, always one or both heads peering out over the box, dried grass piled up in a barrier never tall enough to keep those babies in.
Couldn’t the geese see the obvious? Once those babies hatched, they’d not be able to contain them, and the fluffy goslings would set out to see the wide world only to plummet to their certain demise before even making it to a pond.
I tried to be stoic and think in Darwinian terms: perhaps the geese had some genetic mutation (beyond their obvious stupidity) that needed to be bred out of their lineage. I watched for other goslings to appear in the wetlands I ran through, to see if it was time yet. I thought about some kind of hammock I could build around the pole to catch the babies when they fell.
Perhaps the ospreys or owls would eat them before they had the chance, whether out of retribution or the discompassion of nature.
Our family of three became a family of two and I tried to salvage a new nest from the scraps I’d brought with me back to America: A few stuffed animals, my bike, Kazantzakis, my broken-hearted child. Plus a bunch of stuff I got at the thrift store, a couch I pilfered from my mother, the generosity of others.
No one warned me that love will make me work 60-hour weeks to survive, or force me to seek treatment for my addled mind, or humbly ask for tuition assistance, or fuse me to the only redeeming achievement of my life, this child I’d somehow been allowed to steward. Or that maybe all of this would still not be enough to keep them safe.
Year after year, we repaired the fissures of our broken selves and our broken bonds. The story is told in thousands of photographs as evidence: Climbing at Smith Rock, reaching the summit of South Sister, backpacking around Mt. Hood, pop-star birthday party, biking in Oregon, biking in Idaho, biking in California. Eating marshmallows from a fire in at least twenty different locations. Zion, Bryce, Rainier, Burning Man! Christmases with always a different set of teeth missing. Mountains, lakes, trees, trails, and us.
People come and go from the pictures. But we are always there, me and the living proof that I belong to someone. It is not, as often presumed, the other way around.
One day, the geese were gone. Just like that. I didn’t know if they left as a family, or as despondent, bereaved parents. I raced home to search “how far can a gosling fall and survive.” The internet told me goslings are surprisingly resilient. Their down feathers and soft bones cushion them in a fall, as would the grass and soil below the nest.
I cried with relief.
“Are you okay?” asked B through my office door.
B who taught me that tears deserve inquiry, not rage. B who taught me about patience and boundaries and self-care. B who taught me that loyalty is not determined by the number of secrets you keep, but by your willingness to be the antidote to shame. B who taught me to laugh, to slow down, to watch more pointless movies, to listen, to stop fixing, to trust. B who taught me that love is the softest landing of all.
B, who leaves for college this week.
I hope the grass is thick wherever I fall.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com