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The Not So Empty Nest

by Liz Alley

September 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 OHKHUUV\UJLKHYHJLHUKHSS[OLWHY[PJPWHU[Z^LYLY\UUPUN[V[OLÄUPZO line but I hadn’t even gotten my shoes on yet. That summer I struggled to I\PSKHUL^OVTLIV[OSP[LYHSS`HUKÄN\YH[P]LS`^OPSL0^HZZ[PSSNYPL]PUN 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 MVY[OLÄYZ[[PTLPUT`SPML0^OPZWLYLKHWYH`LYVMNYH[P[\KL[V.VKMVY 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

up at their “vacation home” where they get busy expanding their family. I believe they have sister wives on two adjacent JVS\TUZ>OLU 0 JVTL V\[ [V ^H[LY T` ÅV^LYZ VY ZP[ [V watch the sunset, they swoop in like “I” am the intruder. They are like teenagers who leave a mess for me to clean up. One day, as I sat at the counter eating lunch with my Dutch KVVYVWLUVULVM[OLZ^HSSV^ZÅL^PUHUK\WVUZLLPUNTL OHS[LKPUTPKHPYHUKÅL^IHJRV\[0»]LKYH^UTHU`SPULZPU the sand with these birds which they have promptly crossed without a care.

Then comes September, where the skies seem empty without my acrobatic, teenaged, expanding bird family. In the late days of August, I see them congregate on the power line, all heads looking south as if they’re planning the route back to their winter home. By September, they have packed their bags, gathered their young, and left the nests. Again, I clean up the mess they’ve left for me and vow to remove the nest of these ungrateful and aggressive birds but I know I won’t. I know come March; I’ll be glancing out the kitchen window waiting for their return. “So” I’ll say “you’re back” and they ^PSSPNUVYLTLHUKI\Z`[OLTZLS]LZ^P[O[OLÅ\MÄUNVM[OLPY nests. I’ll watch them for a few minutes, my hands on my hips and then I’ll ask “Why don’t you install a bathroom ^OPSL`V\»YLKVPUNHSS[OH[ULZ[Å\MÄUN&¹>OPJOHNHPU[OL` will ignore, then swoop toward my head as a signal for me to go back inside, and I will smile at having my pesky birds back home.

Liz Alley was born and raised in Rabun County in the city of Tiger. She loves to write. She is an interior designer specializing in repurposing the broken, tarnished, chipped, faded, worn and weathered into pieces that are precious again. She is the mother of two daughters and one granddaughter. She divides her time between her home in Newnan and Rabun County

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