The Not So Empty Nest by Liz Alley
S
eptember is a melancholy time of year for me. Although in the south the hot days of summer linger, they are dimmer and shorter in September than in the dog days of August. The evening cicadas’ song seems heavier in September, as though it is meant to pull us away from the brightness of summer and into the soft amber light of fall. Five years ago, I went through what I think of now as “the summer of divorce.” I’d been married 27 years and the undoing of this felt like the undoing of me. I remember those long summer days that seemed to sap whatever small amount of energy I had. There were so many changes going on that year, I could hardly keep up. It felt like someone line but I hadn’t even gotten my shoes on yet. That summer I struggled to for the old one. Finally, at the end of August, family and friends helped me move into my new house. When all the boxes were in, the furniture placed, the moving over and the reluctant good-byes said, I stood in a house of my own. I was left with the realization that I’d be living alone taking care of me, but also that I sure could use a sign that everything
was going to be okay. I walked into the kitchen and sat at the table. I heard the chirping before I saw the nest and the blue swallows that had built their home at the top of a column on the patio. It looked to me like they had moved in way before I had, their family of little birds already hatched, their mouths opening and closing like tiny doors on dark compartments. Against the dusky night sky, I watched as they put on a show, trying, it seemed, to cheer me up. They dipped and dove like acrobats using the power line as a high wire. Their furry feathers were the same color as my house. At the table where I was making a list of things I needed, I wrote at the top of the page “Bluebird Cottage” and knew, this was my sign from God that my nest was not completely empty. Since that day, everything with my swallow family has not been bliss, as they are a bossy bunch of birds. Every spring they show
66 GML - September 2020
