Hummingbirds

Hello there! I hope you had a good week. Why would I want you to have a bad week unless your name begins with P-U-T-I-N?

Wow, it is somewhat daunting to think I am supposed to love that guy like I love myself.

If that is how I am supposed to live, Putin makes a good case for the virtues of self-loathing.

But I digress.

Let’s take a look on the bright side of things.

Let’s talk about good news, about positives:

This is the third straight morning where we have awakened to the temperatures in the 60s in Atlanta, Georgia… in the middle of August! This is a miracle! This is enough to make one toy with being a climate change denier, but there is too much data that says yes, the world is getting warmer, and there are all sorts of negative repercussions of that, and that we all need to do whatever we can to reduce our carbon footprint. Yes, on Monday I thought I was going to melt when I was returning from the Atlanta airport while driving on the Connector. But these past three mornings are a reminder of the goodness of the immediate, the joy that can be found in the “here and now.” Just sit on your back porch, write an email, and take it all in. It reminds me of other glorious August mornings in places like Jackson Hole or Hanover, New Hampshire when it was 95 degrees in Atlanta in August, and you awaken to 56 degrees in those places…
This has been a great summer for hummingbirds in our backyard. Yes, we work very hard to attract hummingbirds to three different feeders of all different styles; some of the potted plants that we have are chosen with the thought in mind that “hummingbirds like them.” You could say that hummingbirds are running this place, and you would not be incorrect. What I admire about hummingbirds is the brilliance of their colors, and their maneuverability. The sheen of their green looks phosphorescent. And wow, the way they jet here and there, going from 60 miles an hour to hovering in the air, all in an instant. It could be that the hummingbirds are so hyped up on sugar water that they are behaving like crazed addicts, but then again, I take in too much sugar in my diet and you don’t see me flitting around the house, starting and stopping in midair. What puzzles me about the hummingbirds is their petty jealousies, the way they can’t stand to see another hummingbird feed at the same feeder. They divebomb one another, and even when a hummingbird is at the feeder, they seem to be looking over their shoulder to see if another hummingbird is going to rocket in to try to knock them off the perch. And then I am reminded that, yes, we are heading into a presidential election year, and we saw a lot of this behavior recently at the Iowa State Fair.
I am reminded of the joy of just being with one another, of enjoying one another’s presence. My daughter decided to come home for a few days from New York, to sleep in her own bed and have a few home-cooked meals as well as do takeout from her favorite Atlanta restaurants before she starts a new job. During her time here, we traveled without passports, airplanes, cars or even maps or GPs or Waze. We ventured all over the world; we traveled for over two decades, all in the space of three days. We traveled from her elementary school to Vienna to New York City to Wake Forest University, and we visited with all her wonderful friends while never leaving our house. We jetted from here to there, hovered on a topic, and then we took off for another subject. It was an epic, game-changing time, as we invented new dances, with steps and moves and movements that had never before been combined in the history of humanity.

All of this happened this week, in this time, in this place.

And yes, it is bittersweet that I will now drive her to the airport, and she will fly away, but it was great to have her hover here in these special, cool August days in Atlanta, Georgia.

And it is OK that it will never happen again because we captured it in our hearts and minds, and we will have it forever.