To Keep Something Alive

And stay to whatever end we find.

7/8 year old me!

I used to walk home from school from kindergarten through 5th grade, off and on depending on my mom’s mood. On these walks I experienced everything from being followed by creepy boys, snarling dogs, and upset girls, to daydreaming about crushes and … baby birds falling out of trees in front of me. Yes, one day as I was walking down the sidewalk, I passed by the neighborhood house with trees that hung over me and provided shade, and a baby bird dropped from its nest and fell right at my feet. I immediately looked up for the momma bird, but there wasn’t any other birds nearby. So, my seven year old self picked it up and carried it home cupped in my hands.

The little baby bird was brand new, it didn’t have feathers yet and seemed barely alive. I thought I could help it get back to its mom after I took care of it. I reasoned that if I could get it to eat or drink then I could help it become strong enough to get back into the tree. As soon as I got home, I laid it down gently in the grass in my backyard, ran into the house and grabbed a Payless Shoes shoe box that used to be my Barbie’s house and put the baby bird into it.

I spoke to the little baby telling it what I was doing and that I hoped it was okay. I made it a little bed in the box using leaves and clover that I yanked out of the ground. As I laid it down on its little bed its beak was very slowly opening and closing, no sound coming out. I murmured some more to it.

Hoping that it might be hungry, I tried feeding it grass (typing that makes me cringe). I’m sure you can imagine how well that went. I won’t go into details because I still feel bad about it 40 years later. When the grass didn’t work, I tried to give it water using a spoon. Very quickly I realized that it wasn’t responding to anything I was trying and had gone still.

Poor baby bird didn’t last long in my care, it was dead before sundown. I had done everything I could possibly think of. No adults were present so I really couldn’t alert anyone to the baby’s existence, so I’d sat with it and tried to keep it alive.

If only the internet had existed in 1986 for me to have Googled what to do.

I watched that baby bird die and I cried because I didn’t really know what else to do. I felt this profound sadness that its mom would always wonder what happened to her baby. I also felt a tremendous amount of guilt. When my mom and grandma finally came home, I told them what happened and showed them the box with it still inside. I was inconsolable. No matter how many times they told me it wasn’t my fault, that I’d done the right things to help it.

They helped me hold a small burial for the baby bird. I shared with them that I hoped it was in a better place where it could fly and be free. I thought maybe there was a heaven for baby birds, but I wasn’t quite sure, I hoped though. I carried that guilt with me for a while.

Thinking about it now, all I wanted was for this little life to keep going. In my child mind, I knew the basics of survival- food, water, shelter, comfort. It felt like instinct and I didn’t question it until it hadn’t worked. As an adult, I know now that to keep something alive, it takes all of those things and more.

I know the mechanics of keeping something surviving, even though I suck at it sometimes (RIP to all the plants that I’ve lost). But truly being alive is something much more. The same mechanics with the added layer of will. At least for us humans.

I think about how that experience with the bird shaped me. How I see life and death. To learn so young about survival and also how quickly life can end.

I didn’t want it to be alone in the end.

Just like all of us.

I hope we all have someone who will pick us up when we fall, and who will stay with us to whatever end we find.

But mostly, I hope we each have someone who will always root for us to live.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash