Renewed Energy

Well, sorry about my last depressing (depressed) post. I think it's funny that I consider myself to be a real optimist, but sometimes I just need to visit the dark side of things just to say "hello".

Then there's the point that a lot of the things that I think are funny are really pretty bad situations seen in laughing retrospect.

Take, for example, this weekend.

It wasn't exactly winter outside, but it was cold. It wasn't spring, but it was sunny and bright and the trees have started to bud. Just the kind of weather that tempts me to start putting my yard in order and cutting back the wilderness of rose bushes we have in the back.

It was in the process of this bushwacking that I discovered an abandoned dove's nest. Years ago, Fran had me build a trellis around one of the large windows and for a few years I took pains to weave the prickly rose vines through it until they now hold up the east wall of our home. When the rain falls and the season turns and the moon is right, we get beautiful, huge blooms of pink, antique roses outside our window. When they dry out during the winter, we should probably register them as lethal weapons.

It also probably doesn't help things that I have this pair of leather moccasins that are form-fit to my feet, which also happen to have a wafer-thin sole which invites rose thorns to peek through at any opportunity.

Back to the bird's nest, which I had seen empty throughout the winter. As I spied it in the trellis, I realized that it had three tiny,white eggs inside. On closer inspection, one of the eggs had hatched open and there were two duds (to paraphrase the mother goose in Charlotte's Web). I carefully lifted the nest and brought it down the ladder--it was woven together in an incredibly durable fashion--it was really hard to believe. I decided to keep the eggs in the nest and take it inside to show the kids, who were delighted and wanted to touch, hug, pet, taste, and wear the whole thing, jumping up and down as I hovered the assembly just out of reach.

Then what? Throw it away? Surely not. Maybe Ryan would even want to take it to school or something. At any rate, I put it on the patio table while I finished the task at hand and then...well, forgot about it while I put the ladder away, perforated my forearms loading the lawn bags, and put away my shears.

Later that day, I took Kaitlyn outside to play on the swingset and we even set up a little croquet course. I noticed her standing, thoughtfully, at the patio table but I had completely forgotten that the nest was still there from our morning naturalism course. If I had seen it, I could have moved bishop to queen 3, or something like that, but I was probably staring at the pretty colors on the croquet--I didn't realize what I was up against.

Kaitlyn grabbed one of the mallets, scandalously, and while waving it and giggling, ran to the other side of the swingset. Like a dopey dog that chases moving cars out of instinct, I followed after her, halfway expecting her to hammer-throw the mallet over the fence. Surprisingly, she dropped the mallet and, turing with a wizened look of calm which comes from knowing that victory is shortly at hand, she bolted past me, dodged between the swings like a bullfighter, and, before I realized we weren't playing "Daddy, come stop me from destroying something with this mallet", she was halfway to the bird's nest.

After clunking into one of the swings left fluttering in her wake, I caught up with her...two steps too late. She had seized one of the eggs and cradled it delicately in her hand, examining it's beautiful, white, slightly-speckled shell.

"Oh, Kaitlyn, let me have that, please."

And she squeezed that little egg for all she was worth. Rotted dove fetus, stored under pressure for six months had been unleashed from its walls and was now expelled in a two-foot radius, including poor Kaitlyn's dress with the purple flowers. And an overpoweringly, indescribably putrid stench descended on our patio and on my poor, not-innocent three-year-old. I scooped up my daughter and ran inside in that reckless, floppy-kid way usually reserved for trips to the emergency room. She soon started gagging from the smell as I rinsed her off and changed her clothes, and I must say that I got a little criticism for leaving the nest within reach. The lesson was over, my nerves were frazzled by the whole incident, and the nest and its contents were unceremoniously disposed of in the trash.

After decompressing (almost typed decomposing...), it made me think about goofy things I did as a kid, and how, although they seemed traumatic at the time, are more like badges of honor and discernable time points of interest in an otherwise unremarkable childhood. I'm not wishing for any more rotten egg incidents, but once it happens, I guess we may as well laugh at it.