Day 32

by Lindy

 

I have started to photograph birds this spring.  I don’t really have the equipment to do it justice; I need a lens that zooms a little further and a little faster, but I have had fun trying.

It started with my trip to Robert and Cynthia’s grave site the other day.  Vince and I were looking for big birds but instead a bluebird perched on a gravestone right in front of us, declaring beauty is precise.  It is contained in this small, compact, perfect body that sings and flies.  We also saw a yellow-bellied flycatcher that was acrobatic and keeping us occupied while other birds and turtles laid eggs, ate little eggs and occupied the small wetland.

The next big shoot was in my backyard, the cedar waxwings had left and not a lot of grackles or crows seemed to be around.  I haven’t seen the blue jays in a couple of weeks; however a cardinal and his wife have taken over.  Chickadee and sparrow family have found places to put their nests.  Goldfinch are nearby, bats fly over at dusk.  And today when I came out of the house four ruby throated hummingbirds were enjoying the quince.  I felt like I’d entered a miracle.

Why am I so interested in birds this summer?  I am not sure.  I mean I always have been but for some reason I’m driven to memorize their names and detect their calls.  Is it because paying attention to their behavior and their beauty is a meditative practice that allows me to release the heaviness of the attention to original mother stories?

Since I launched my Kickstarter.com project I have made really interesting contacts.  Women who need to tell their story have connected with me.  I have been so pleased to have those connections; I have also had women angry at me for using the label birth mother.  I have heard   anger from adoptees and moms about adoption in general and the awful acts that are done under the umbrella of doing "good.” I am being educated, indoctrinated into a movement that is complex and heavy.  I have been moved to tears every day since I began this journey.  I am thrilled by it.

I wish I could hear Desmond Tutu speak again.  I went and heard him in a church basement in Cambridge with Loren several years ago.  He was so freeing, he was calm and at peace and his gentle humor was so direct, precise.  I left that room knowing I had just been given an amazing gift  I had been in the presence of someone who was grace; he was at peace with all that he had seen and lived through.

That’s what I want for me.  I want the sense of peace, that gentle humor and calming connectedness.

And believe it or not, I think photographing birds helps me to find that state.  It is the act of completely focusing on something that is entirely free of tension, like practicing an instrument or singing in a chorus.  It is embracing something outside of one’s self.

I can take on this project riddled with sorrow and anger and I think it helps me and I can be of help to others.  But I need that mental balance.  I need to have a spiritual release and birds maybe my answer.  That could have been the message brought to me by the bluebird, lovely and precise.

 

 

 

Please go to Kickstarter.com and click on Explore.  Type in Greenfield, Ma. and you will see my project with Emma's beautiful Healing Motherhood symbol on it.  Give what you can.  It will be most appreciated.