Life Lessons from the Mama Bird

Last night, I took my children to the beach as we are on our annual, albeit socially distant, vacation to the Outer Banks.  I assured them if they just sat still, they could watch the crabs run around as they tend to do at night.  Sure enough, when we got there, there were holes all over the place, with plenty of crab tracks.  However, as with most things, this advice was ineffective.  A crab would pop out of his hole and my youngest two would go running with excitement screaming,"Look!  I see one Mom!"  I reminded them over and over, sit still, be patient and you will see way more than one.  This was to no avail.  The excitement was too much and like most forms of wild life, the big bad humans were just too scary and it was time to flee.

With this in mind, imagine my surprise when we discovered a completely different scene when  we returned to the rental house.  A bird had formed a nest on the supports of the back patio and was patient and unwavering in her guarding of the eggs she was surely perched upon. It was not just any bird actually.  It was a dove. No amount of excited squeals or vibration from children on the patio caused her to do much more than blink.  It would seem that her concern for her babies far outweighed the big scary humans invading her space.

As a mom of five children of trauma adopted from various places in the world, I can honestly say, this simple mom instinct is one I know well.  It's the setting myself aside to champion the fight to have the outside world understand the unique make up of each of my children.  I was quick to take on teachers and school boards who could not understand how spending three years in abject poverty on the side of a mountain, with English not being their first language, could make for a very different kindergartner than the affluent children from the suburbs occupying the same classroom.  I took on friends who could not understand that various orphanage behaviors based on living in "fight or flight mode" in the early years did not constitute simple rebellion, it was a deeper seeded issue that needed understanding.  I disregarded even some family who were not so sure five adoptions, including children of color, was the greatest idea I ever had, but so be it.  I was the mama bird, strong and unwavering.  No amount of noise or discord would stand in the way of me championing the causes of my children.

As far as we know that bird has been there at least 48 hours without moving, anxiously awaiting the magical arrival of her babies.  Studying this aviary symbol of hope closely makes me wonder about how many times we stand in the way of our own fears for everyone else except ourselves.  How many times do we let the slightest vibration, the slightest set back, cause us to give up and flee?  How many times do we let comments or behavior of other big scary humans knock us right out of the nest before the magic happens?

Maybe instead we need to realize we all have a little mama bird in us.  We all possess the ability to look fear and past failures in the eye and peacefully stand our ground to cultivate our proverbial life goal eggs until they can burst open and we can witness the magic that lives inside.  How do we know?  We do it for everyone else.  It just may be time to give ourselves the same priority.  I have a feeling if we do that we will learn the best is yet to come.

Biting the Dust on Dog Water

Are you ready, hey, are you ready for this?

Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?

Out of the doorway the bullets rip

To the sound of the beat

Another one bites the dust

Another one bites the dust

It's fairly ironic that this would come on as I made my maiden voyage on the stepper today after being sidelined for a week.  As the song played I relived the reality of last Tuesday night.  Here I was fresh off my latest insane work jag, and crazy speed training schedule.  It was late and I was spinning around doing odds and ends in the house before finally calling it quits and attempted a simple trip from the kitchen across the tile headed to the bedroom.  I had missed the water that existed outside of the dog's dish, I remember the sensation of the slip, the slow motion loss of balance, the flash as my face hit the pantry door and the sickening sound of my left knee hitting the tile.  I would get up, pace around, try to inspect my lip in the bathroom mirror as I knew it was cut.  Shit.  Light burned out.  I would then walk around the dining room assuring myself my knee was ok and once again, try to cross the same damn floor, only slower this time to my own bathroom within the bedroom.  It was then I noticed it.  There was blood on the floor.  There was a lot of blood on the floor.  I felt my lip, cut but not bleeding, knee already turning purple, also not bleeding.  Hmmmm.... I slowly became aware, my left index finger hurt.  I looked at it and found it was bleeding, and surely the nailbed doesn't normally look like that.  I would wrap it up just as the 14 year old would come down and trace the trail of blood to me.  I assured him I was fine, just a little cut, no biggie.

When I got up in the morning it was clear it may be a bit worse than I thought.  A band aid was not going to do it.  It had bled all night until I found myself in the midst of training two people at work that morning, asking a colleague to look at it.  By the time he was done, I found myself having a small procedure I won't get into, as it made me a little queasy, and some xrays.  The reality was I had an open fracture courtesy of my pantry door.  I had a purple lip too but thanks to the magic of COVID, I am in a mask all the time and nobody could see it.  Honestly?  I wasn't sure if I should be sickened by all of it or downright pissed that I can manage to run 14 Spartans with no injury, but walking across the kitchen was clearly a problem.  Yep, I bit the dust on dog water.

Are you happy, are you satisfied?

How long can you stand the heat?

I guess you could say in the days that followed I would have a little PTSD, as I now refuse to walk on that floor barefoot and every now and then my mind wanders to the flash of my face hitting the door. Every day I find other splatters of blood in places I had missed with the initial clean up.  Today?  Said light switch in the bathroom where the bulbs had been burned out now replaced and illuminating my blood perfectly.  I further had cause to hit the pause button on my training schedule.  I was not going to run and risk elevating my heart rate as my finger already had it's own throbbing heart beat.  I put in 60 hours of work in the week that followed my tumble seeing crazy numbers of COVID patients which was completely annoying as my finger did not fit in a glove easily.  When I finally took a day off, I was completely overwhelmed with the things to do at home and was having anxiety over paused race training.

So I did what I always do, checked in with the accountability partner, and when I say check in, I mean whine about my finger and how it is getting in the way of everything.  I committed to walk that day to see how it went.  It was clunky with the bulky splint on my finger but I even managed a light jog.  Following that was a successful trip to the hand surgeon, and other household errands.  Then it happened  I got a difficult challenge.  As I was busy complaining about the million things that had piled up on me when I was busy with work, I was challenged to a night off.  No work, no bills, no blog, hence this is days late, just breathe.  Oh ok.  A night off?  I wasn't sure I could do it.  I had charts from my work days, I had bills to pay, taxes to prepare, a blog to write, business related things to do, get my kid ready for his summer school calls the next day, laundry......and, and, and.....  a night off?  Damn accountability partner was killing me, now I was just going to be further behind, but I was doing it.

I would find myself on my back patio talking to a friend, admiring my flowers, and enjoying the cool breeze with an adult beverage.  Yes.  I felt guilty.  Yes.  I had so many things undone, but to take the time to be present, I found I suddenly could breathe.  I would later go to bed and find myself getting a full night's rest that night which is definitely a rarity for this card carrying insomniac.  In the day that followed, yesterday, I would break company records in actual number of patient's seen, and not even miss a beat.

Today, my finger was settling down and my lip is nearly healed so I was back at it.  Three miles on the stepper at a sub 8 minute pace, renewed from the simple act of taking the night off.  It makes me wonder how many times its going to take for me to learn the lesson.  I tend to live life at 100 mph.  I am driven to be the best I can be at all times at home and at work often pushing so hard I forget there are cool breezes, good friends, pretty flowers and this crazy renewal thing called sleep.  I suppose I should be thankful for biting the dust on dog water because it helped me to see that sometimes pushing hard is simply too hard and if I am not willing to slow down, surely the universe will find a way.

As for tonight?  I think I'll go sit on my patio again.  I will take a second night off in the same week, crazy, I know.  I'm pretty sure out there I will begin to see that sometimes biting the dust on dog water clears the way to see that the best is yet to come.