Learning to sit on my nest

This fall my daughter started second grade, my son a two half-day a week pre-k program and I sold my jogging stroller (the last baby-related item I owned). I’m also thinking about getting a house plant. So it’s fair to say big changes are happening in my life.

Seven years ago, when I started my new profession as a stay-at-home mom, I would never have predicted how fast the time would go. Time crawled that first six months at home with my daughter, but as I adapted to our new world and added another child to the mix, time accelerated.

I’m currently reflecting on the past and remembering something that happened to us a couple of years ago.
The spring before my daughter started kindergarten a mother robin built her nest in a bush directly in front of our home. It was visible through the window of our playroom. After discovering this treasure containing three beautiful blue eggs, checks on the baby birds happened multiple times a day. 

We watched mama robin dutifully sit on her eggs day and night, keeping them warm and safe, only leaving for brief periods of time when daddy robin was close by. We watched as each egg cracked and out emerged tiny, pink little babies.  She kept these fragile little newborns safe and warm only leaving them to get worms.

Mama and daddy together took care of the non-stop feeding schedule and expertly worked as a team to keep their babies rapidly growing tummies full. The baby birds grew bigger and more demanding, more aptly expressing their hunger. Often opening their mouths wide when mama or daddy approached with a worm, aggressively gobbling it up.  

As they grew bigger mama bird continued to stay with her babies but gradually spent less and less time sitting directly on top of them. Giving them the space in the nest they needed to grow. Leaving them alone for longer periods at a time.

And finally, we watched as the last fledging jumped out of the nest and flew away on its own. Watching that mama robin helped me fully see what being a parent is in the big picture. Mama robin innately knew when she needed to slow down and devote as much energy as possible to helping her babies thrive, and then when it was ok to move away, give them more space and allow them to grow. 

This Eckhart Tolle quote beautifully sums it up…
“If you have young children, give them help, guidance, and protection to the best of your ability, but even more important, give them space—space to be. They come into this world through you, but they are not yours.”

In the current hurried, frazzled culture of our country, it’s easy to forget to just sit on our nests and warm our eggs when our babies are so young and fragile. To forget to listen to our biological instincts and realize it’s ok to slow down our lives for a bit, reduce our commitments to things less important and use the time as an opportunity to evaluate what really is important for us and our families. This time with our baby birds will end…sooner than we realize.