A Morning Person's Observations #7: Nesting

I recently spent a week with some of the Blythes in Colorado, then a few days with my Aunt Angie outside of Denver, then took a long road trip with my friend Matt back to Seattle. The morning after we got to Seattle, I took Matt to the Pea Patch so he could see where the magic happens. We sipped our coffee and he identified all the plants (he's much better in a garden than I am!), and I saw the prayer flags dangling from the tree. They made me smile.

flags on fence, with flags in background

more flags!

There are a few flags in the Pea Patch. On the fence, on the trellis, but my favorite is that one hanging from the tree. It's my favorite because a few weeks ago I saw a squirrel bite it in half and then try to run off with one of the pieces, but struggling because there was still an end attached to the tree. Eventually the squirrel figured it out and gnawed off part of the flags from both ends, bunched all the flags together, then took off up the Douglas Fir, I'm assuming to pad its nest. It was hilarious to watch.

flag leftovers

While at the Blythe Spirit, I went out to the Peace Fort, a treehouse my cousin made, to write in The Pine (her log for the treehouse). The cabinet she made to store the log in had a massive pile of sticks leaned up against it, almost like a miniature beaver dam. It seemed too perfect to be made by a critter, so I assumed she had built it to keep critters out. But when I opened the cabinet there was a pile of green leaves to the left of the box that holds the log. The leaves were mashed to perfectly take up the space between the box and the other side of the cabinet, it was so memorizing to look at the way they had been sculpted it took me a good fifteen seconds to realize there was someone home. A critter that Aunt Angie and I later identified as a Ringtail Raccoon (but of the mountain variety, so incredibly small) was pressed as far away from me as possible, probably freaking out.



My Uncle David got the box out and we left the treehouse to Steve Ringtail (we called all raccoons Steve at IslandWood) to winter in. Looking through the log, I was able to deduce that Steve had moved in since the week before, when my Aunt Diane wrote in The Pine. Or possibly she interacted with Steve and his newly created habitat, but didn't think it was impressive enough to make note of it in The Pine. I'm going to assume the former, which means Steve only took a week to nest and secure his dwelling in the Peace Fort. I like that quality in a organism, because I can feel connected to an area after one cup of coffee.

hummers

Drinking coffee at the breakfast table for the past week with my grandfather was a treat. As he cycled through his frequent questions and memories, it felt like a reset to the day. Aunt Angie says there are four languages we rely on when our minds stop working for us and begin to work against us, confusing us, frustrating us. We can still relate to smiles, music, gentle touches, and chocolate. I didn't know this list until the week after cabin time with Grandfather, but one of the things he remembered during both of my visits this summer was the hymn, "Day is dying in the west," that he sang at two sunsets two months apart.

And then the following week would be full of travel and moving before I made it back to my alleyside Pea Patch for my morning coffee. I had my coffee some mornings on my aunt's back patio, watching the hummingbird feeders as the dogs came and went. I had coffee at a campsite in Wyoming. Matt and I drank it while walking toward the water. We stumbled upon a damp sandy expanse just soft enough to capture ALL the prints. It told a story of birds, herons, mice, deer, other critters scurrying across the opening. The next morning I sipped my coffee as we drove through a hazy, hazy Montana. They cut the power in one town as a preemptive measure so we had to go to the next town to get gas.

Whahatoya, one of my nests

And finally back to Seattle, to drink coffee in the Pea Patch with Matt, looking at the flags taken away by the squirrel. When EJ first put flags up at the original Alleyside, she hung them inside, then realized they needed to be rehung outside so as the shreds of fabric came apart, the prayers would travel out to the world. At this moment I like to imagine the squirrel was helping carry the prayers of those prayer flags forth, sending their energy and intention further into the world, so wherever I travel I can carry the feeling I have drinking coffee in the mornings in the Pea Patch, and nest as easily as Steve Ringtail.

The Greatest Job in the World

I was not in a good place last spring. Professionally, I was not being treated well. My co-workers and I went on strike for a week to address some major safety concerns and workers' rights issues, and we were condescended back into our jobs for a few months before we all left, got let go, or were bullied by supervisors into quitting. It really sucked. (Side note: that's the first time I've been able to talk about that situation in such a succinct way, instead of rambling on for hours about all the details of how the cards intentionally got stacked against us. I think that's progress.)

The summer was a time of relaxation and low finances. I stayed with SEA part-time, keeping an ear open for any alternative classrooms looking for Instructors.

I went in to interview with SEA's partner site at South Seattle Community College, wearing new slacks, a button up shirt, and my hair in "teacher mode", pulled back and held up in a clip, hoping to be taken seriously and look older than 15. The directors explained their program to me, I handed over a template for how I tutor math and a storytelling lesson I designed. They said they'd let me know, and did I have any questions for them. "How are the dynamics of the entire staff?" I asked, trying to sound as casual as I could.

The directors started explaining how they don't want people to sit alone in their office, the whole team really likes to know what everyone is going through and help each other. "In fact," said one director. "We don't actually want you dealing with any discipline issues. You're the teacher, your job is to teach. We're the directors, we want to handle any discipline issues you're facing." I almost started crying at the idea of a boss being so supportive, but held back and reminded myself I was in an interview and to be professional.

The second director chimed in and told me I wouldn't have many discipline problems anyway, the students were really great and really serious about their education.

I got offered the job, and I've been teaching Junior English and Pre-Algebra for several quarters. And that director is right, these are the greatest students in the world. There's hardly any apathy in the classroom, each student is incredibly engaged. I assign a persuasive essay, and I get emails asking if they can design a poster and present their essay to the class, it's an important topic that they want to share with their peers. I walk by the group of students known as the talkers sitting in the back of math, and see them explaining to each other how to divide decimals, jumping over one another to figure out these problems.

I hand out an evaluation and ask them how they feel about math. "Bittersweet," writes one student. That's one of the more positive remarks. "I don't have a problem with math," writes another student. "Math don't like me." Despite their anxiety and negative history with math, they put in 11 weeks of diligent note-taking and studying and piles of homework, and by the end they are multiplying improper fractions, then breaking them into number bonds to convert them to mixed numbers for final answers.

English is a little easier to goof off in, it's not going to help you figure out how to pay off your student loans someday. But still, the discussions students have after reading novels and plays are enthralling. My favorite question to ask them is, "How is our society different from this book?" followed by, "How is it similar?" Slowly they started to draw some similarities to The Giver, "We're told we can do what we want, but we're kind of set on certain paths in our education that lead us toward specific jobs." After we read A Raisin in the Sun, the comparisons flowed a lot faster. "People will still try to tell you where you can and can't live." The students hated Walter Lee at first, all he did was whine while the women in his family worked so hard. Then came the scene when he was finally going to invest the money, and he scooped Travis up and told him how things were going to be different. They paused. A few of them are parents themselves. "He wants his kid to be proud of him." Connections developed. Empathy was enhanced.

Their final assignment was to do a text response in class. They could write an essay on how the time period, author, genre, impacted the work. They could write a scene that wasn't in the play (What was it like when Walter borrowed his friend's car and drove and drove and drove? What was it like when Mama went around looking at houses? What happens when they move, and Bennie doesn't have money to finish school, and Mama can finally grow a whole garden, but the neighbors are threatening?). They could write a poem from the perspective of the main character. They could draw a scene that represented an important theme in the text.

One student had written his persuasive essay on climate change and greenhouse gases, which he had learned about in History that quarter. His text response was a picture of Chicago in the 1950s. The sun radiated dreams for the Younger family: school, investments, a house, a garden, a new baby, an office, travel. Then the greenhouse gases of bigotry and prejudice trapped their dreams, until they dried up like a raisin in the sun.

I pace around the classroom for hours, feeling like a hummingbird jumping to each student with a question. I run to grab lunch and pick up the copies before class starts. I stay late to get the student who missed class caught up, then finish my lesson plan and order my supplies for the next day. And I still leave more energized than when I came, feeling content and smiling to myself about something a student said.

I'm sorry to sound so sappy, but I have the greatest job in the world, and I'm so grateful to have found it.

A Blythe Spirit

There is something extremely comforting about doing dishes three times a day in a sink you took a bath in as a baby.  Sleeping in a bed in a room where you once slept in a suitcase.  Walking by a creek you used to dam up for a swimming hole.  Feeding chipmunks you used to swear you could communicate with by squeaking and moving your forefinger like a tail.  I needed this week, to remind me of the constants in life, myself, my personality, my spirit.

Lately I've seen my grandfather around the holidays, when we all come into town for a week.  It's busy,  it's confusing for a man already struggling with his memory.

Being at the cabin with him has been a nice, quiet, calm, refreshing time.  There are still lots of details he struggles with on an hourly basis.  Where did that jam on the table come from?  Where did all of his children get married?

My oldest cousin on the Goodman side, Gwen, started the tradition of creating scavenger hunts for the younger cousins whenever we got together.  One summer, my cousin Jessica and her immediate family were at the cabin at the beginning of the summer.  Jessica left a scavenger hunt for my sister and I, who were coming several weeks later.

It was exciting to do a scavenger hunt when the creator wasn't around, but it did provide some challenges.  There had been a few tenants at the cabin between Jessica's stay and ours, and a few of the clues had been moved or had gone missing by the time we started trying to follow the path of clues.  If the trail ran dry, we'd have to skip ahead a clue or two to find it again.  We ultimately did find the prize,  our names carved on a downed tree on the way to the meadow!

Talking with my grandfather at the cabin reminded me of that scavenger hunt.  I tell him it's a fun game to try to answer  the questions he asks, and use whatever puzzle pieces we have to figure out the answers, or make up our own stories.  (As my grandmother always said, "Never let the truth interfere with a good story.")  He laughs at my perspective on our story creating.  We decide the jam looks homemade, and is a berry neither of us know, so it was probably a gift from Christine who's from California, and it's probably a California berry.  We also figure out where all of his children have been married so far (Winfield, Ottawa, and Madison) by thinking of when they got married and where everyone was at the time.

I am impressed with how well he recalls the stories directly related to him.  How he broke his arm two weeks before marrying my grandmother.  How he parked his car ten miles north of her house, so Uncle Bob couldn't find it during the ceremony or reception, although he looked all over Superior.  How he was horrible at picking strawberries, and learned when he went to college that he was red/green color blind, which still did not impress his dad.  All the different churches he worked at, where he was associate pastor, where he was senior pastor, where all his children were born.

As we drove in the first day and passed the first car on the old country road, we wave hello.  At the same time, we both remember the same moment.  I used to sit in the middle of the front seat of the Great Grey.  One summer I learned about the country wave (you leave your wrist on the wheel but lift your hand in greeting) and the farmer wave (you just lift your forefinger).  I was so amused by that idea I used the dashboard of the Great Grey as my wheel and lifted one finger to each car we passed, which made my grandparents sitting on either side of me chuckle.

Remembering these stories, hearing new ones about my grandfather's life, is reviving me.  My grandfather hikes with me all the way to the meadow.  We go slowly and notice the flowers together.  The main thing he notices, of course, is how much good firewood there is up here.  I tell him my mom and I will walk up and get it when she comes, which makes him laugh.

We get to the meadow, and he decides it might be the last time he walks that far up the trail.  I remember one more story.  About 8 years ago, when my family, my friend Steph, and my grandparents were at the cabin together, my grandfather told us a story about a hike to the meadow he took by himself.  It started with some rustling in the bushes behind him as he walked back.  He finally broke out into a run, which is when a mountain lion jumped out of the bushes at him.  Without thinking, my grandfather stuck his walking stick up in the air, and pole-vaulted the mountain lion across the creek into a bush.  He went back the next day to check out the scene, and saw there were some berries on the bush.  My grandfather ate some of those berries, and they gave him just about the worst stomachache he'd ever had, but he never did find out what happened to that mountain lion.

My mother's reaction to this story: "Dad!  I can't believe you ate those berries!"

Goodbye Alleyside

My room at the Alleyside

The reverse culture shock from Haiti has been rough.  I made myself get up the first week every morning, drink my tea on the front porch, and think about how beautiful Seattle is, the greatest city in the world.  I want to go back, but I don't want to miss the moments now by obsessing, so I'm forcing myself to focus on the present instead.  There's been a move to Queen Anne with some new, exciting naturalizing to come.  In the meantime, the last of the sit spots from the Alleyside:

April 30, 2012

Windy.  Overcast.  High 50s.

"Look how lucky I am!" Chris said this morning.  "My car is covered with pink petals!"  I needed this, a reason why the wind and cold was so good and beautiful.

The wind picked up those petals and made them dance on the street, the way sand dances on a drum being played.

Each tree has a patch of color under it today.  Pink petals, green pollen.

The robin woke up even earlier than I did.  It looked well fed.  Plump, perched on the tree outside my window, which has bloomed substantially in the past week.  Chris saw it fly to our neighbor's roof, where its partner joined it.

A common Alleyside visitor! photo by Kate Maher

Weeks later Kate and I were sitting on the back porch at the Alleyside and saw a hummingbird perched on a telephone wire.  We commented on how exotic hummingbirds seem, but then there they are in the city in Seattle, sitting on the telephone wire like any crow, pigeon, or gull would do.

Birding and Porchin'

New camera!

Sit Spot - April 12, 2012 8:30 a.m.

High 50s, lower 60s.  A little cloudy.  Clouds are slowly moving NW.

The heron is the first sighting of the morning.  Darker than a Great Blue, slate colored.  It's heading west, working its way to the Sound.  Jake and I spot it two evenings later, same heron, same shade, same direction, different time of day.

On this morning of April 12, a mom is packing up a stroller to wheel her kid somewhere on Stone Way, right under the heron soaring west.

Two robins make appearances.  One of them flits about the yard, gathering nest materials, and stopping for juicy worms if it is so lucky to find one.  E.J. was working in the garden the other day, and one of these robins was busy working by the side of the house, tugging and munching on good worms.

The other robin sits up top on a telephone wire and keeps an eye out for its partner.  They don't chirp at one another, they stay within eyesight.  The robin on the ground poops on the curb then hops under Madden's car as some humans walk by on the sidewalk.  It's so funny to see it walk, and hard to describe.  It moves quickly, like a run, but with the pace of a walk.  Scurrying is probably the best word.

A chickadee flies in to sit on the lower branches of the Cedar tree.  It doesn't do the call that named it (chicka dee dee dee), instead it makes some short peeps.  I never realized how high pitched Chickadees were.

Then I hear the laughing birds.  Each time I see them, I think, "Finch."  Something about the beak, or size and shape of the body.  The truth is I'm not an expert with birds, really I just feel like they are finches.

They are also in a pair, everyone seems paired up by now.  The one I've seen make the laughing sound has a red breast.  This laughing noise sounds like a child on the piano learning arpeggios.  Jumping up and down across the notes, showing off how well it can hit them.

Two smaller birds who I don't know, and don't come close enough to introduce themselves, are also paired up together in the grass.  They are about the size of chickadees, maybe even a little smaller, but they don't have any markings I can notice.  They chirp back and forth as they go about their business.

The crows are soaring about up top, they don't come down to the street on April 12.  They are acting reasonably sane.  Last Saturday, the second day of Passover, when we had our Seder, they were going crazy.  One crow would perch on a tree or roof, and call out to the murder of 7 or 8.  As if the perching crow was directing the rest of them, the murder would dance, swoop, turn, and dive together.  This was around the time of the full moon.  E.J. thought they were acting out the story of the plagues.

On April 12, runners and young professionals move by, all in a hurry.  Their ears or eyes are shut out by earplugs or a smart phone.  I do not write this to judge them.  In an hour, in the middle of my work day, I am glued to the computer screen or absorbed with texting my students.  These are just more patterns I'm noticing.

A few weeks ago, there was a Hummingbird.  I looked at a Crow sitting on top of a house up Interlake, and a hummingbird came and hovered next to it for a fleeting moment.

When I walk up to my room after my sit spot on April 12, I see the Red-Breasted Laughing Finch sitting in the tree outside my window.  I think they are building a nest over my windows.  Fine by me.  I can't think of a better bird song to wake up to on Seattle spring mornings.

You can barely see their nest above the diagonal beam