When the dam breaks.
On those sweet, complicated breaks from anxious living.
The goldfinches we’ve fed through the season have begun to bring their babies to our feeder. Last night, the lot of them sat on a power line and in nearby trees and sang. The young goldfinches sound much like a squeaky swing set, the weight of children at play making the chain looped in its metal socket sing that repetitive, melodic almost-song. Not quite the clear, elegant music of their parents, but charming nonetheless. Even heartwarming, full as they are of newness, of youth. Chatty and vital and warm.
Today, the father flits to the feeder while the little ones wait on the telephone wire. He fills his mouth with nyjer seeds he brings back to them to share. Male goldfinches are as dutiful caretakers as they are beautiful. I love this about them.
In my chest is an ache I’ve not felt in some years. Something like loneliness. Everything tires me, and it’s hard not to take this personally. I feel depleted, indebted. When my heart fills at the sight of their lemon feathers, I understand why a group of goldfinches is called a treasury.
For the first half of August, we were in Norway. It was breathtaking, breath-returning. I felt the beauty and the order and the quiet in my head, my hands, my lungs. I felt the hills in my knees.
In Bergen, we took Auden to the aquarium, to the park, to the woods. We introduced him to hooded crows and magpies (I am so enamored of the magpies!). We watched a wild hedgehog eat flowers in our side garden. We spent time in public places, where I had to frequently remind myself that gun violence in Norway is exceptionally rare. This filled me with peace and rage and dread of our homecoming. I felt the tension in my whole tired, hurting, American body.
We took a long train through the fjords to visit with friends in rural Mysen, where we fed apples to cows and took meandering walks between honey-gold fields of wheat. My son went barefoot through the dirt and the dewy grass, and so did I. We tried and failed not to track bits of cut grass into the house on our damp feet. I heard birds I didn’t know and couldn’t find. I found a shimmering blue-black magpie feather in the cemetery across the street.
Despite the generosity of my surroundings, I often was weepy, emotional, taut. Some of it, I think, was traveling with my entire family, which was lovely, if at times intense. But it was also having space enough from the bone-deep stress I’m so accustomed to in my daily life to recognize the toll it’s taking on me.
Years ago, when an utterly awful roommate moved out of my house, I bought a bottle of wine to celebrate. Then I spent the whole night in tears. When six weeks ago I decided to stop using social media, I did the same. This break from my American life felt not dissimilar—like a dam built from need and held together at great cost, which, in losing its usefulness, is finally allowed to yield, the waters to flow.
Now we’re home, and I suppose there’s a dam to repair. I am busying my hands clipping bindweed, pouring coffee, cooking rice. I want my normal life back. I do not want my normal life back. I don’t know quite what to do with this ambivalence, or these bends and splinters in my spirit that come from balancing the weight of it. I don’t know what to do with my fear, my anxiety. I don’t know what to do but let it come, let it be, do my best to get through.
Well, today I am letting my heart be tired, lonely, sad. I am letting it be uncertain, feel unmoored. And I am keeping it open, free also to rest, to lift.
Free to lighten, at least, at the sound of my little treasury, singing.
CURRENTLY ENJOYING |
Some affiliate links
Online | My brother-in-law’s Instagram account where he just films himself pruning trees. (He’s the lead horticulturist for our city’s world-renowned Japanese garden, so he’s really quite good at this, and these videos are so lovely to watch!)
Television | Bad Sisters.
Books | The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
Coffee | I am loving this one from Tim Wendelboe
I like watching and listening to birds, too, Torri.
AND I just FOLLOWED Ethan to watch him prune trees.
Am looking forward to more intentional presence.
Thank you.
Ahhhh… Norway is on my bucket list ❤️ Your descriptions brought peace to my body & soul, and sound so replenishing!
After having spent the summer in Scotland, I felt the same way about time away from the US. It’s just a different way of being. Yet, while part of me is nourished being away, it’s still the land of opportunity. My job literally does not exist in Scotland, and my quality of life wouldn’t be the same. (Oh the irony of that statement when I consider the emotional and physical cost that goes with maintaining that “standard of living”).