Hawk and Crow

Sometimes I think of bird calls in phrases. You know what I mean, right? The cardinal often says, "Peter, Peter, Peter!" "Pretty, bird! Pretty bird!" and "What cheer! What cheer!"  The robin sings, "Cheerio, Cheerio" during the day or "Sleep! Sleep, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck!" in the evening.

For the uninitiated, the barred owls cry, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?" Last night their noise cut through the stone walls and glass windows of this house to hinder my sleep. However, it didn't disturb my children. I guess they know who cooks for them. They feel no burden of responsibility nagging them as they hunger for sleep. :)

Early this morning, as I rocked my nursling in the dismal dawn, I witnessed a hawk trying to catch a crow for breakfast. They swooped and dived and flew at ungraceful angles no bird flies at willingly. The aerial "dog-fight" maneuvers were amazing, set off by the steel gray sky, the emerald hay, and the dark vertical tree trunks that seemed to connect the two at the horizon line. Eventually the battling birds flew out of my field of vision, which was bounded by the window, so I do not know the outcome. I think it's best that way. 

I was beset by hungry mouths too. There was the greedy, suckling baby, as well as my three year old to contend with. The preschooler resents the delay of breakfast that our new one often causes at daybreak. And yet despite his perpetual hunger, I find myself often "fighting" with him over food these days, as his continually fluctuating whims and ideas rule the food he fancies. Thankfully, he threw no fits about the rice pudding I made, just the wait for it, and the temperature of it, and the lack of enough of it, and who sat by him while he ate it. :)

All day long it threatened rain. It was perpetual twilight. Rain fell at intervals. At midday, I noticed that two deer had bedded down in the hay, seemingly oblivious to the water. I wondered why they didn't seek shelter under a thick bush or in the lee of some tree or building. I envied their naps, despite wondering if water was getting in their eyes and why they didn't mind.

In the late afternoon, there was a deluge, our gutters overflowing, and a gray curtain of water shrouding the lake and woods on the other side of the hay field from view. Or maybe it was like a heavy blanket for the deer. I'm a little nap-obsessed. :)

This evening in the twilight, as I was rocking in the baby's room again while three of my children frolicked in the room above me, the newly-greened grass seemed to glow with its own light. The rainfall was light and misty. It seemed more like a fog. And it humored me to think of the weather matching my circumstances all day. There were my young children upstairs- vibrant. There I was in a sleepy, mental fog.

At bedtime, the thunder kicked in. I made a bed-tent for my three year old on the floor next to his sister's bunk beds. His fourteen year old brother was gone to an evening event in a neighboring city, and my little one had complained of "sleeping alone." Despite my husband being gone for two weeks on a business trip, I couldn't comfort him in my bed due to the fact that I'd be up and down with the baby and would disrupt his sleep even more. Hopefully he sleeps well, because the forecast for tomorrow is the same as for today- and probably in more ways than one. :)