Seasons of Motherhood

While at Lowe's buying mouse traps, I found that the same aisle that sells devices to kill one kind of nature (mice) sells devices to feed other kinds of nature (birds).

The new blue bird nesting box

Our next door neighbor (the wife) is what one might call a Bird Fanatic.  Their back yard contains many (many!) bird feeders and the wife diligently keeps them fed: really, a daily job in spring and summer. I get to sit in my back yard and enjoy all the song birds flitting around her back yard over the dividing split rail fence.

I used to envy her bird feeders but have come to peace that that is her season and not mine. She has grown children while I have tiny tots all around my ankles, using up every last bit of energy I might have. It isn't my season to feed birds because I have to feed babies.

The sock of nyjer seed

But I didn't come to that so peacefully.

I used to be a Bird Fanatic. I remember when Chris and I first married, I studied how to make one's back yard a bird and wildlife sanctuary. I filled our yard with bird feeders. I would take Baby John with me to specialty wild bird stores to buy the best bird seed.

Chris suggested that we put a line item in our budget plan for bird seed (and he wasn't saying that because he loved birds but to point out to me how much I was devoting to our winged friends).

Regular bird seed hung at a level probably too low to be ideal for birds,
but at an ideal height for a seven-year-old boy to refill the seeds for his mother

But by the time we moved to Charlotte and I had this beautiful back yard next to the Bird Lady, I was pregnant with #2 and already fading fast in what I could accomplish. By the time Mary was born, I had to face up to the fact that I couldn't take care of wild birds, nor even house plants. It was actually very hard to throw away the house plants, and I think I might have cried. By the time #3 was born, we had to give away our family cat, my beloved Missy whom I'd had for 17 years at that point. I couldn't take care of anything more. That was survival time. That was my season.

Hummingbird nectar as well as a My Spy Birdhouse on our great kitchen window

I was reminded of survival time recently when making a new friend at church. Her children are four, two, and six months. At first I thought, 'oh see, this is so neat! we have kids the same ages.' But then I realized, no, not really, my children are older in an appreciable way. In reality, I am a wonderfully important three years ahead of her. So while I also have three children roughly the ages of her three, I have this wonderful thing called a seven-year-old. Plus my second is five, not four, and that year makes a difference!

Pondering this, I was reminded when I had my third child and a friend with five children said to me, "Oh, you couldn't pay me to go back to three kids, or two. Five is way easier."

Think of all the help, all the chores, that children learn to do between ages four and seven! Think of the much increased obedience and self-mastery they achieve!

Hummingbird nectar outside my kitchen sink window

Standing there in the mouse trap aisle, looking longingly at those bird feeders, I realized that I'm seeing a twinkle of the sun rising, shedding light on me, that the survival years might be slowly fading to black while a new kind of years are ahead of me. I don't know what those years are called, but I'm thinking they involve a lot more ability. Sure, a lot of work. Children create work for homeschooling mamas, there's no arguing that. But more freedom? More competence? More confidence? I look ahead maybe two years from now and have real hope for coming out of these survival years.

Today I realized that my seven-year-old can competently take care of bird feeders. I can be busy cooking dinner with the five-year-old, potty training the toddler, changing the baby's diaper, and I can send that seven-year-old outside by himself with instructions to fill the nyjer sock, the seed feeder, and the hummingbirds' nectar . . . and he'll be able to do it, with joy in his heart and eagerness in his step!

So . . . the Crazy Bird Lady is back! I bought a bunch of bird feeders plus a blue bird's nesting box. Oh yes, I did! We called that morning off of text books Nature Home Schooling.

Honey, you can add back into our budget that line item for bird seed . . .