Incubation

One Spring day a year ago, with Benbo in belly, I stepped out the front door and felt someone's eyes on me. Adrenaline hit my veins--I was ready to fight or take flight.

I glanced to my right on the porch and met eyes with...a bird. Sitting nonchalantly in my hanging pot of red geraniums.

It was a dove, and it had decided to make a nest. For weeks following this initial meeting, each time I passed our quiet porch guest, I smiled.

When my brother in law Renato heard the story of our bird, he told us that in Peru, they say that birds make nests at homes that are filled with love. So apropos, I remember thinking as I patted my pregnant belly lovingly.

One evening, the bird was gone. A peek over the edge of the hanging pot revealed that incubation was over. Baby birds sat meekly in the nest that had been carefully constructed weeks before. Mama Bird returned - we spied from our bathroom window later that evening - with food for her little ones. Such a good birdie mama, doing instinctively what mamas do, no matter the species.

And then one day the entire bird family was gone. A practically perfect metaphor for parenthood, albeit incredibly condensed: mama creates nest; she feeds and loves and teaches and learns; babies leave nest to experience world on their own, lessons and love from mom tucked under each wing.

Summer brought a visit from a second dove (or could it have been the same one?!). And this time my own nesting was heavily under way. My letter of resignation had been turned in to the district office, and I busied myself in my human nest: redo a bathroom, paint, assemble a crib, eat a peach, rest, walk, eat another peach, anticipate birth and parenthood.

One morning I was out front watering my newly planted hydrangeas and peonies. Mama Bird Number Two was gone. The babies hung out quietly in the geraniums (a surprisingly hearty plant, given it wasn't watered much while entertaining guests). One baby flew away, then another, right before my eyes. The last bird eventually left the nest and landed on the fence separating our house from the neighbor's. It just stood there, unsure of its next move. Its mom and siblings were long gone.

Benbo kicked around in my belly. I watched the bird on the fence, but intermittently gardened, and when I looked up again, it was gone. Off to explore and experience the big wide world. My own incubation period would end a few weeks later when Vivian was born.

As I watered the geraniums the other day, my throat tightened and my eyes stung at the thought of all that's happened in the time since the birds were hanging in my geranium pot. Sometimes this knowledge paralyzes me: Vivian's here; I'm a mom; I'm feeding and loving and teaching and learning so that one day my daughter will take lessons and love from her parents, tuck them under her wings and fly. That just blows me away.