JUNE 14, 2024 – Aboard the train hurtling across the American countryside for two full days, I’d been drawn to immediate and fleeting surroundings as if they were a full life compressed into fast-motion review. The oft-repeating train whistle seemed to signal my interaction with others along the landscape of our integrated existence. I’ll never be quite the same as I was before this latest journey of self-appraisal.
Last night I slept so hard that upon waking, I struggled to recover my bearings. Was I at home? At the cabin? Somewhere else? Only one thing was certain: I lay still, not swaying over the rails of the eastern half of the country. But where was I? Where had the early rays of a sunny morning found me, waking from a long, refreshing slumber? Ah, yes! I was in Connecticut, not in the old family place but inside the house of our son, his wife, and the center of their attention, our grandson, as new as fresh spring grass.
I slipped out of bed to a perfectly quiet household and crept downstairs to the kitchen, where the coffee pot was on but unaccompanied by any other sign of wakefulness. I poured myself half a cup, scavenged the well-stocked cupboards for morsels of breakfast and with the resulting find—some almonds—repaired to the front verandah to admire the new day.
Bursting with irrepressible song, a bird hidden high in one of the old oaks announced the latest turn of the earth into the bright light of our life-giving star. I’m neither a birder nor a naturalist; just a fellow passenger with that miraculous bird aboard this blue and green vessel of ours. I understood nothing of the bird’s language, impulses or nature except that it was filling the air with sounds that in those precious moments edified my senses. What miraculous power, I thought, hath that little invisible bird!
I listened as if hearing Beethoven’s Pastorale for the first time—not recognizing the masterpiece, not knowing the intricacies of its creation or reproduction. Nonetheless, as a non-expert I was as moved by its beauty as an ornithologist—or artist or musicologist—would be.
Just then appeared our son in workout attire, pushing the stroller and its center-of-parental-attention-passenger up the sweep of the driveway from street to house. I stepped down from the verandah to intercept son and grandson and exchanged morning greetings with Byron and smiled at the baby. In the latter’s contentment I saw disregard for the father’s sweating brow but instinctive awareness of the parent’s love; in the grandson’s responsive smile, the grandfather found delight. The bird sang on, now joined by others.
As the sun climbed higher, the mercury rose too, and trees stirred in the growing breeze. Soon the day was filled with the demands and bustle of independent and intersecting activities of the household’s members: attending to incoming, outgoing emails and phone calls; addressing the needs and wants of an infant; interacting with an interactive eight-year-old; coordinating the mechanics of the mundane—picking up the rental car, shopping for groceries, planning meals, calculating logistics, remembering medications; above all, savoring our time together and seizing time to hear birds sing, see trees sway, and admire stars and moon sailing across the celestial ocean after our side of this precious world again turns away from the sun—but merely as prelude to the day that follows, along with a new round of birdsong and the baby’s fresh morning smile.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
