Flight Plan
Posted by thirtysomewhere on March 19, 2010
As spring has sprung in Austin over the past few weeks our apartment has suffered an auditory assault. We live in a two-story loft that sits on a steep hill, the back of which is nearly completely glass offering an absolutely stunning view of downtown. Trees fill the space between our living room and the city streets to the north and we have taken to considering the birds, squirrels, raccoons, and occasional possums that live in the trees outside of our balcony as part of our family. Over the past few weeks new life has flushed into the trees that shape the landscape just outside of our windows. Babies, with their expecting and overly protective parents, have overtaken this space. It has become a sort of training ground for baby animals to learn to do the things that adult animals do, including flying.
Between the hours of 11:00 am and 4:00 pm when the sun is shining brightly the trees just outside of our upper-story windows become the flight center for fledgling chicks. Every thirty minutes or so a baby bird launches itself, or is shoved by its pushy mother, out of the nest with the hope that the wings will spread and the chick will take its first flaps in the act of flying. Sometimes this lesson in leaping goes terribly wrong and the confused chick, trying to feel out its wings and find its way, crashes into the glass of our second-story bedroom windows. Inside it sounds as though someone is periodically and randomly shooting cannons at our bedroom.
I feel bad for these fledgling birds. I imagine that they are pissed at their parents for thrusting them out of the nest too quickly and in desperation they head for the comforts of our home with the hopes of nestling into our pillows and chirping for our dog Pia to bring them a bottle (which could be beer or milk I believe, depending upon whether the bird has a genetic propensity to seek comfort in alcohol).
When the cannons, a.k.a baby birds, crash into the windows two things usually happen. (1) Pia, unable to figure out why someone is shooting at us, puts her ears back and retreats upstairs to her bed or to the interior bathroom floor, constantly looking upward in fear of the next blow. We worry that by May she will be suffering from PFSD – Post Flight Stress Disorder. (2) I usually run to the balcony and look over the ledge to make sure that the baby bird is not two stories below, writhing on the ground in pain and confusion. (As an aside, I’m not sure exactly what I would do if I found such a baby bird. I don’t particularly care for birds – a result, I am sure, of being bitten by an aggressive, demonic goose as a child – and I find the idea of actually picking one up absolutely terrifying. Thankfully, I have never found a wounded bird. They seem to crash into our windows, scaring Pia and I to death, and then they change flight plans and fly away.)
I can’t seem to get these baby birds out of my mind. They make me think about all of the dreams and the goals that we pursue, all of the markers of success that feel like they are just in sight, and all of the times that we unexpectedly crash into a wall, or a closed window, pursuing them. They make me think about careers and relationships and all of the conversations I have had with friends and family about “knowing” when it is time to change our own flight patterns. They make me wonder about how many times we can bear crashing into the glass and still muster the strength to continue on a particular flight plan.
The bird doesn’t have a lot of choice about learning to fly, or really about where it will fly. It always needs to adjust to the dictates of mating and migration. In order to survive birds have to fly with their flocks. (That is unless the bird is an ostrich or a penguin which, I am certain, have to learn to do adult penguin and ostrich things such as looking dashing in a tuxedo or snapping at innocent ostrich farm visitors in order to live.) But we humans choose, over and over again, in the face of disappointment or defeat whether or not we will try to fly again in the same direction or if we will – for reasons of ease, sanity, reason, duty, faint-heartedness, or sometimes foolishness – change course.
There is something about thirtysomethings, or at least myself as a thirtysomething, that leads us to have a deep kinship with the fledgling birds. Sure, we have been out of our “nests” for a while now, but in many ways we’re still learning to fly in our careers, in our relationships, in finding those things that make us happy and fulfilled and satisfied. And within our own particular contexts and arising out of our unique dispositions we thirtysomethings seem particularly prone to subjecting ourselves to crashes. Often afterwards many of us seem to find ourselves wondering when it is right to dust off the wings and try again (this time praying for an open window) or when it is time to radio the tower and change the plan of flight.
