A Mother's Journal ~ A Bit of Birdsong

Each and every day we live is a gift, though it’s easy to take a day for granted.  I knew this to be true already, but after the close call we had Tuesday…  Well, it heightened my awareness of all that my husband does for us and how strong his presence is in our home.

My husband is a man who loves to be outside. I can honestly say he’s the hardest working person I’ve ever known. He does not like to stop. When he comes home from work, he works again. He loves going out to a dear friend’s land and observing nature and trying to get an idea of how the deer hunting will be for the season ahead.  He washes clothes.  He cooks.  He reads.  I’m so used to him that the sound of him is like a fan whirring in the background.  He’s my white noise, and I don’t even know it sometimes.

Joe puts out corn.

Bringing a man like Thomas home after a heart attack is like taking care of a caged animal. I do not say that lightly. He is used to going and doing, in a big way! Yesterday I knew he needed to get outside and would find a way to do so no matter what. A couple of the children and I took him out to our friend’s very beautiful land. We were my husband’s hands. He walked, observed, rested, enjoyed the sights around us, and gave us each chores to do to keep this little area he loves looking like a state park.

I think he looks great.  I would like to keep him around.  Oh, there are times when I would like to wrap a frying pan around his head, but aren’t all marriages that way?  We’ve had 21 wonderful years together and have four little carbon copies of us running around, so the 5% of the time when I think of, uh, the frying pan thing, well it’s small in comparison.

What are we looking for here?  Well, that’s a deer rub above.  See how the bark is rubbed off of that little tree?  A deer has been here.  Doesn’t it just give you goosebumps?  (You don’t have to answer that.)

That there’s a hickory nut.    They are everywhere.  Last year they were falling to the ground green in August.  Maybe due to the drought last year.  This year they are plentiful and more mature and falling at the right time.

I know the leaves are a sight up New England way, but I love our North Carolina leaves.  I love our North Carolina woods.

Ah yes, Thomas is coming back to life.  He hears something.  I heard it too, but he’s ready to determine exactly what it is and where it’s coming from.  There’s hardly a plant or tree or animal or track or rock that he can’t name.  He calls things by their common names of course.  It’s me who comes home and looks up the scientific name.  I know which one of us would survive the longest in the wild.  I would be found, bones and shredded reference books, under a tree somewhere.

Around this time of year you could spend your days picking up little boughs that have fallen from the hickory nut trees.  There’s a beetle called the twig girdler beetle.  It cuts a ring right around the branch, high up in the tree, but does not cut all the way through.  The beetle then lays an egg beneath the bark, out beyond the cut, because the larva needs dying wood to grow.  The twig falls to the ground and there you have it.  Hubby had us picking up these twigs and taking them to the brush pile.

Me?  I could spend all day looking at things like this lichen growing on dead wood.  Isn’t it beautiful.  It’s a world unto itself.  Well, almost.  It could be under the sea for how it looks.  It could be anything.  I get lost in it.

Here again, it’s just beautiful.  Some of this could be jade growing out from the dead tree trunk given its rich green color, but no, it’s some type of lichen or fungus, etc. 

I made a little twig doll with an acorn head and dressed her in a pretty fall-colored leaf.  She’s waiting under the tree while we work.  My sister and I used to make these to play with when we were little and we would set up house under big trees around the yard.

The hickory nut has an outer shell and then another inner shell.  A regular nutcracker will not break open this baby.  You need a brick and a hammer, so it’s going to take some time, but I decide to gather hickory nuts while Miss Priss and Big Joe carry out Hubby’s orders to get things done.

I have spared you by trying to focus in more on the grass, but one of the things some of us (I won’t name names) get very excited about is deer poo.  Just in case you wanted to know what it looks like.

The hickory nuts are so abundant.  I’m not sure which ones to pick up, but start to feel more sure as I check a few out and take off the hard outer shells.

Getting outside and doing things like this as a family is so relaxing.  It does something to the brain that being inside won’t do. 

Picking up hickory nuts may be the most therapeutic thing I’ve done all week.  It’s requires thought, but not any real serious thought. 

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
Where I left them, asleep like cattle…

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
And the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Wendell Berry

The picking up could be endless.  There’s something very satisfying about the weight of the bag.  At some point, though, my hickory therapy feels complete.

I have always loved to climb trees.  I climbed up one small one, as far as it would hold my weight, and then swung down with it like we used to do as children.  Miss Priss thought that was a grand idea!

Up she goes.

More leaves.  

Trees
by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

You know me, and my delight in wonders like this.  This hickory nut had a tiny hole in it.  Upon closer inspection…

Do you see the tiny little ants in there?  What a cozy little home they have.

Like I don’t already have enough to do.  Still, all the things on my to-do list are very man-made things.  God made the trees and their bounty, and I think if I can crack these and try my hand at roasting hickory nuts this week with the children, I’ll have something going that checking off everything on my to-do list can’t touch.

Every time I think of it, I’ll think of Thomas and the day we spent helping him get back into his routine.  I want to keep him around for a long time yet.

Lynn