It's 2:15pm Eastern Standard Time, August 22 in the year 2012. I am 60 years old, soon to be 61. But that is not what this is really about, is it? Clock time. How many minutes, how many seconds do we get to live? And of those finite number for how many are we really alive and fully conscious as opposed to just functioning, respiring, digesting metabolizing. I could go down the path of what it means to be conscious, conscious of self, the entity that resides somewhere in this body? the head that watches, thinks, calculates and evaluates. I could speculate about biochemical pathways and synapses and chemical messengers being transmitted and received. But that's not what this is about.
Where I am in time. From a biological point of view I'm finished. I've reached adulthood, procreated, reproduced myself and my mate and raised offspring to adulthood. If we were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow they would survive, they have the skills. In a Darwinian sense I'm done. In a philosophical sense every day hence is a bonus. Each day a gift to be savored and enjoyed.
I was privileged to observe the nest of 2 wrens. They built it in 24 hours in a hanging plant directly outside my kitchen window. They abandoned it, or so it seemed for 5 days and on the 6th day I peeked in and spied an egg or two. In total the female laid 4 eggs. Exactly 15 days after hatching 4 tiny birds flew the nest. Those were a busy 15 days, a constant to-ing and fro-ing of adults carrying spiders and other insects. When the nestlings finally fledged 3 of them flew up and away into the trees but the last one fluttered down into the grass and chirped feebly. He had feathers fully quilled but there was down on his head. By my count one egg hatched 2 days later than the others. I hovered anxiously watching out for neighborhood cats and other predators as did Mom and Pop wren. They sat in the nearby bushes and trilled loudly and longly and aggressively. Wrens are tiny birds, smaller than a house sparrow with a voice that belies their size. This is what it feels like to turn your teenagers loose in the world - a 16 year old with a freshly minted driver's license. They are as vulnerable as this tiny wren. He blinked a couple of times and hop-hop-hopped into the cover of some hostas. A few minutes later the azalea bushes began to quiver. At least he was off the ground.
That's where I am today - a human being who has the time and the curiosity to watch a pair of birds build a nest and then observe on a daily basis as the family grows, develops and leaves.
Where I am in time. From a biological point of view I'm finished. I've reached adulthood, procreated, reproduced myself and my mate and raised offspring to adulthood. If we were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow they would survive, they have the skills. In a Darwinian sense I'm done. In a philosophical sense every day hence is a bonus. Each day a gift to be savored and enjoyed.
I was privileged to observe the nest of 2 wrens. They built it in 24 hours in a hanging plant directly outside my kitchen window. They abandoned it, or so it seemed for 5 days and on the 6th day I peeked in and spied an egg or two. In total the female laid 4 eggs. Exactly 15 days after hatching 4 tiny birds flew the nest. Those were a busy 15 days, a constant to-ing and fro-ing of adults carrying spiders and other insects. When the nestlings finally fledged 3 of them flew up and away into the trees but the last one fluttered down into the grass and chirped feebly. He had feathers fully quilled but there was down on his head. By my count one egg hatched 2 days later than the others. I hovered anxiously watching out for neighborhood cats and other predators as did Mom and Pop wren. They sat in the nearby bushes and trilled loudly and longly and aggressively. Wrens are tiny birds, smaller than a house sparrow with a voice that belies their size. This is what it feels like to turn your teenagers loose in the world - a 16 year old with a freshly minted driver's license. They are as vulnerable as this tiny wren. He blinked a couple of times and hop-hop-hopped into the cover of some hostas. A few minutes later the azalea bushes began to quiver. At least he was off the ground.
That's where I am today - a human being who has the time and the curiosity to watch a pair of birds build a nest and then observe on a daily basis as the family grows, develops and leaves.
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