Good memories....

May 5, 2011

May 2 was the 10th anniversary of my husband, Phil's, death. I lit the yahrzeit candle and let the memories flow. This one kept coming to the surface.

About 15 years ago ( I can roughly peg it because my youngest daughter, now 22, has a clear memory of this event) a pair of barn swallows decided to build a nest on a PVC pipe that runs along the ceiling of our garage. No one was more thrilled about this than Phil who loved nature and country living and I think he even took it as a sign that nature approved of us plopping ourselves in her midst. We all watched the nest grow with interest.

Phil was beside himself as were our young girls when the eggs were finally laid, but tragedy struck when the eggs hatched. I came home from work one day to find a very distraught Phil and no nest on the pipe. It seemed that once the parents had to sit out on the edge of the nest to feed their babies the weight was too much and the nest slipped off the pipe and fell to the garage floor. Phil had come home to the fallen nest and crushed babies.

We thought that was an end to it, but within a day the parents were back, rebuilding the nest. Knowing this would only end the same, Phil knocked the start down. The parents began to rebuild. Phil knocked the start down again. This sequence of events had repeated themselves a few times and my husband, a man with the kindest of hearts who absolutely hated knocking the nascent nests down, was sad and frustrated.

But  after a few days of this I came home one day to find my husband excited and smiling. He took me out to the garage and showed me a platform-like cradle he had built around the pipe to support the nest so it wouldn't fall again.The parents were already rebuilding their nest. The platform worked and we got to enjoy watching not one but two sets of babies go from egg to fledglings. Phil was ecstatic.

My husband has been gone for 10 years as I said, but the birds come back every spring. They build their nests in the cradle he designed for them. We watch with interest the two sets of babies grow and leave.

Here's what I think. Sometimes when our efforts are constantly frustrated we need to reevaluate our actions and look for other options. And... we are at our absolute best when we are truest to ourselves.