Shells

I woke up to the sound of my son's voice. “Daddy, my heart is broken." I think I patted the bed and mumbled something like "tell me about it.” About two or three times a week he has a bad dream and joins us in bed. I had nightmares as a kid, and my parents always seemed exasperated by it. I always wanted him to feel like he could tell us this without judgment, but at 6 in the morning it’s not easy to convey all that.

“The bird's nest fell" he said, holding back tears. Danielle and I became completely awake at the same time and without pausing to collect ourselves ran out the door.

A family of American robins had moved into our neighborhood and made a nest on one of our gutter system’s downspouts. It was angled so it took them a few tries but it was dry because it was under the pitched roof, and high up enough they felt safe to be there. 

We watched from the window as the nest grew, then tiny baby robins began to squeak, and we watched the mother feed them and cover them when it was cold. I’d often look up and see Danielle leaning against the hallway wall at the stairwell to look out at them with a smile. 

All of this flashed through my mind as I struggled to ascertain the situation. It had rained the night before, so the nest must have gotten wet and the mud mooring it to the spout had given out. The nest sat upside down on our walkway, and two nestlings too young to try and fly yet were sprawled across the stairs. One was breathing heavily and the other wasn't moving. 

The older robins were squawking and jumping from branch to branch. Thinking fast, I ran and got a towel while Danielle comforted Wyatt and tried to hold back her tears. 

It felt like a full panic. Danielle and I both admitted that it felt silly being so invested in the outcome of natural occurrences. But we just couldn't stop trying. I gently wrapped the baby bird in a towel and brought it up to the house to keep it warm. I put the nest on a flower stand where it would be dry and kept hoping the mother would come care for this one baby. The other one was beyond saving. 

I couldn’t help but think about the shell of the baby birds when they were younger. So thin, but just enough to protect them as they grew. Then, they painfully broke free of them and left them behind to become the next stage: still dependent and weak but out in the world now.

Maybe it was too close to our front door for her comfort. Maybe she knew what I didn't. But the baby kept opening its mouth with feeding instinct and I kept just gently coping: trying to calm it as I looked for something to feed it. At this point, I became acutely aware of the fact I'd been hunched over without stretching in the rain for the better part of an hour. This was not due to a sudden bit of clarity, but rather an alarming explosion of pain from my sciatic region.

I blacked out for a second but when I came to I was in the house and comforting the wife and kid. The robins were still jumping from branch to branch, and one nestling was wrapped in a towel but still breathing fast. I tried to stand so I could go check on it and when I blinked I woke up on the floor. 

This is how our day started. The cracking of one shell. 

As it wore on, we struggled to keep the kid distracted and kept an eye on the remaining nestling. It stopped moving, and the other birds disappeared. After sitting on ice for an hour or so, I buried it along with its sibling in the backyard, deep enough to keep it away from scavenging animals, but only a couple feet because of the blinding pain. I felt like it was the least I could do for the other robins. I whispered a prayer I half remembered from my catechism, and added a pagan twist with some bardic lore that I’d learned about the cycle of nature. I knew it was all for me: the babies couldn’t hear me and the older robins were already searching for a new place to nest. I put the nest into a nearby tree as high as I could reach, hoping they’d start over somewhere better.

A few hours later, we discovered that American bombers had dropped a significant amount of ordinance on supposed nuclear sites all over Iran. We had expected something to come of all the saber rattling, but we sat in shock as we read the news. It felt like it was appropriate for how the day had begun. 

I tried contacting my parents, but they were likely busy with any number of things. As I sat there listening to the ringer go on for minutes until the default voicemail message responded, I kept thinking about the idea of shells. When my brother drew his last breaths, I could see his skin beginning to grow pale. It was somewhere between yellow and green. I don’t know why this suddenly hit me. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but I felt something cracking. 

I spent most of the day medicating with anything I could find and laying on ice while we tried to keep our son distracted. His fragile heart had such a thin shell. How could we keep him protected in this world? How could we make sure his nest didn’t fall? Was war coming for us? Would he be drafted to fight in this nonsense future?

That night I had vivid dreams that melted from one to another with vague meanings. My brother was alive again, and every time I questioned him on it he said it was all a mistake. He never died, he just fell asleep for awhile. Some starving part of my mind accepted this and I spent time with him. We talked politics, we argued like we used to. It was bitter and it was sweet and I woke up in a cold sweat to the sound of random music. 

Wyatt was listening to his favorite thing, this bizarre macabre children’s internet sensation called Sprunki. The characters are cute and singing and then they all become possessed and brutally attack each other. He can’t get enough of it and I can’t help but wonder if part of this is his coping with a variety of things: his uncle dying when he was so  young. A fall when he cracked his head open and bled all over the concrete at his school until I rushed him to the ER for stitches. 

We started our Sunday like we did most of them, just quietly watching TV and discussing plans for the day. I got onto Facebook and chatted with some friends. It was at this point that I got into a completely ill-advised argument with a friend with whom I pretty much completely agree. I don’t even know what the details were, I was in a fugue state of confusion and pain and I said a lot of things I didn’t mean. I apologized but they blocked me anyway, and I understood immediately it was the right move for their mental health. My therapist has said one of the big problems I have is that I have trained my emotional health for most of my life on the understanding that anxiety is a distant thing, and trauma and the natural process of aging had robbed me of my natural ability to cope. So, when I get anxiety attacks I don’t have the skills to deal with them, and I have to accept that some times I will be in a state where I should really slow down and understand my feelings and not just spit nonsense out of fear and confusion. But all I could feel was the shell around my understanding shattering. I kept seeing my brother’s face, and wondering what he’d say right now. Wishing I could talk to him, and feeling that sense of loss multiplied. I asked my amazing wife for a chance to catch my breath, and I walked in nature for awhile. 

I cried. Harder than I have probably since my brother died. Everything crashed out of me, and I curled into the fetal position as I felt my body shaking uncontrollably. Waves of fear and stress and pain shot through me like lightning. It was only a few minutes, but it felt as though a dam had broken. Suddenly the pain in my back receded. It was still there, but no longer debilitating. 

I could breathe, even though my nose was full of snot from ugly crying.

I could see, even though my eyes were full of tears from openly weeping. 

The shell was gone, but I knew another was waiting. I spent the day playing with my son and comforting my wife. I got off Facebook. Again (maybe for the last time, who knows?). 

I accepted that I cannot control what happens next, especially in parts of the world where I have never been. But I can control what happens here. I can build a home, and a community. I can create. And I’m going to be ready for the next shell: whatever it is, and whoever it belongs to. My son will survive: he gets all of this from me, and I have made it this far. With any luck and lots of work he’ll make it much further than I ever could.

It will hurt like hell. But I like to think I’ll remember that it doesn’t hurt forever, and that the pain is a release from something much worse: a festering rot of emotional baggage that poisons us while drowning us and turning us into what we fear most.

I don’t know if I’m a good person. But I’m going to keep trying. And that’s really the best I can do.