We live in Philadelphia, in what my mother would have dubbed an "old fashioned neighborhood." As I walk up to yoga class early in the morning, John and Julie pull out of the garage they added to their row house and wave proudly and Fred calls "Youse guys have a good day!" The man who sports a helmet with Viking horns rides his old three speed bike around. We're not sure where he sleeps but local merchants give him odd jobs sweeping stoops and cleaning windows so we all know he eats when he's hungry. The past few days the residents of the four attached houses that face our tiny garden courtyard off busy Third Street, have all bonded over a pair of cardinals we've noticed day after day in the Japanese maple just outside my front door. One of my neighbors, Brian, finally found the nest we all suspected they were guarding when they'd flit from window ledge to rooftop to maple tree branch, calling and waking us, early in the morning, drawing the attention of six cats who sit in a variety of windows in the houses, fixed on the birds' every movement.
The nest of course, is in the other tree in our courtyard, a lacy bowl of twigs that looks as if it would blow over in a single rain. When my neighbor, Sue, points it out to me (Brian showed Stan and Reena, Reena showed her,) the parent birds become agitated. It's in the nature of all good parents to protect, maybe even at times overprotect, their young. Still the little guys have to leave the nest sometime, often awkwardly, and we all know not all of the baby birds will make it. So our fifth family in the courtyard, our feathered family, has become the talk of the community.
Yesterday, two round, brown fluffy baby cardinals were trying out their wings and ended up hopping around in the hosta and impatiens in the postage stamp size flower beds beneath their tree. Sue and I were out with our cameras and our visitors. Her brother and his family are in from a small town in Massachusetts. My son and his wife are visiting for the weekend and will leave their cat, Rishi, with us for the summer as they head down to DC, to internship work and a summer sublet which, unlike their apartment building in the heart of Chicago, doesn't allow pets. Our two cats, Ukee and Chloe, are staking territory with the interloper and the fur is literally flying. The semi-orderly quiet of the urban empty nest my husband and I have set up has been tossed, probably for the duration of summer. The grown kids will come and go and the third cat will stay and stalk our two, loudly inviting them to play or fight.
When my daughter was little, she spent a half hour a day at least in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood which was populated by hand puppets, a small wooden train and a gentle postman who appeared and disappeared with a cheery "speedy delivery!" This was a place of pure safety where grown ups spoke kindly to children at all times. We lived in a very near in suburb of Philadelphia, an old suburb with sidewalks and a branch of the township library within easy walking distance, houses not large but detached and suburban none-the-less. I thought I would give all that up when I moved into the heart of Center City Philadelphia, that noise and anonymity would be the costs of our empty nesting change in our lives. How wrong, how wrong.
"How do the birds get back into the nest when they've hopped out?" Little Taylor, Sue's visiting nephew asks her now. "They don't want to, honey," she answers and though he's way too young to get what this means, he just nods as if he does, and returns to playing his drums.
No comments:
Post a Comment