Teaching a Bird to Make a Nest

There are new neighbours who have moved into the house at the end of the terrace. I say moved in but I don’t think they have moved in as yet. There are major renovations going on, inside and out.

There’s a fence gone up at the back. It’s a taller-than-me fence with not much space between the planks. Years ago we replaced our fence with what I called an egg-stopping fence.

Teaching attracts as many enemies as it does friends and a less than happy pupil had been hurling eggs at the kitchen window. There were gaps but the planks were close enough the deter the little vandal.

Trees and bushes have come down. I am tempted to creep in one night and ‘rescue’ the solar lights that used to surround the tree out front.

There is one wee bush that has been spared so far. It is festooned with berries that the blackbirds have been feasting on.

Inside is as busy as outside with old kitchens being replaced and carpets and so on. They are making the house their own and stamping their personality on it.

But for all that I miss the people who lived there. And the bench on the front lawn with the word ‘grandpa’ carved on it.

Home. When does a house become a home? And when does it stop being one? I have friends who are hoping to sell their house and move into something smaller, something without stairs. What was home, with the children grown up and gone, and with stiffening hips and knees, has ceased to be one.

I have just completed a six-week art course. Abstract art on the themes of home or travel. I have painted a nest. It’s a combination of watercolour paint and collage. I took a walk around the estate looking for small curly feathers and, on the suggestion of a friend, bits of lichen. The plan was to glue them on my picture. There is a limit to my painting skills. Birds are beyond me and I settled for an empty nest. No eggs. No baby birds. It was a happy empty nest with the idea that the eggs hatched, the baby birds got fed and they were launched out into the world successfully.

Question - Who teaches a bird to make a nest? A googled expert-verified answer - no one teaches a bird to make nest, but they rather learn it naturally from their elders. They also learn from their previous nest-making days of what worked and what didn’t. Nest building doesn’t seem to be built into their DNA. They learn it.

Nests. Homes. It made me wonder about home building, not house building. There are plenty of building sites in and around where I live. House building is what the workmen do. Home building is what we do with the house we purchase. How much have we learnt from our parents about making a home. My own growing-up home was, perhaps, not the tidiest and I went through a phase when I had my own home of keeping it spick and span. The years have gone by. With a strong inclination to hoard things, the spick and span-ness has morphed into comfortable, but mostly clean, pigsty-ness.

What makes a nest, or what makes a home are the people we get to share it with. It’s never the building. It’s the people that make the home welcoming, not the way the furniture fills the room or the pictures up on the walls. I have a vague issue with having to take my shoes off in a person’s home. I don’t always find tying shoelaces to be an easy task these days. My socks don’t’ have holes – apart from the ones I knit myself, but my feet become cold quite easily, I think that is what it is.

When we first moved into our house we kept a visitor’s book. It was a done thing among the friendship circle I was a part of. It’s somewhere. Part of the clutter. Not filled in anymore. But, if I had visitors pop around, and if I slipped the book under their noses, with a pen, I wonder what they might write. If I knew they were going to write something how would that influence how tidy my house was, or how quickly I put the kettle on or how graciously I relinquished ‘my seat’ to someone else. It may be worth digging out the book and finding out. I remember one friend coming round for a meal and falling asleep on the sofa. He apologised but we saw it as evidence that he flet that comfortable that he could fall asleep.

Rest

May I introduce you to this chair?

It has been waiting to meet you.

Sit down and get to know one another while

I put the kettle on for a cup of tea,

Milk, yes? Just a dab? And sugar?

I have switched off the television so

It’s just you, and the chair and a quiet moment.

If you are not at home with silence,

there's knitting in the bag there. A sock half done.

It will keep your fingers occupied and

the steady rhythm of knit and pearl rows

can be quite calming,

or if you like books, this one on the coffee table

has a decent plot and is well written.

It’s just the chair and I recognise stress

and it is written in the ear tugging,

the restless knee and the intense look

that says there is a puzzle to solve.

Put aside the urgent and breathe slowly,

fall asleep if you like, we don’t mind.

As you rest, all the disconnected

bits of you will find their way to harmony.

I like the last couple of lines. Isn’t that what homes ought to be? A place where all the disconnected bits of us find their way to harmony?