Birds, baby

Birds, baby.

Parenting in shifts so we can sleep, eat and play.  Of course there’s work too, and diapers and distractions all around us.  The world as a way in which we’ve never seen.  Your kid is the best, and ours is too.

Kate likened Santiago as he wakes up in the morning to the face that Jack Nicolson makes in The Shinning, when he busts open the door, madness in full regalia.  It can be 3:30 am, but usually it hovers around the 6am line that separates farmers and other brave ones from the rest of the world.  With eyes as big as they are beautiful, he takes you in his joy, even if it takes you a few courage-building breaths, some stretches and a dark cup of coffee to meet him there. 

I’m usually on the early morning shift, as Kate frequently pulls rough all-nighters cluttered with grunts and grunts.  He eats a lot, this boy, sweet boy as he sleeps.  We’ve been in Monteverde for some time now, and are in the process of moving out. One thing that has been with me early since our arrival there, and which I now share with Santiago and will continue to do so, is an early morning appreciation of birds. 

Those that have visited us in Monteverde know the beauty of the landscape, and have heard the tunes punctuate in syncopated song, the ever changing sky that brings light and rain.  All under one sun.  Birds in colors blue and so many others for you to imagine and realize.  The morning is gentle, as a start to each day.  Let’s call it a second chance, endlessly presenting itself anew.  Time to stretch your limbs, lungs and mind; follow a thought you couldn’t or wouldn’t let go on the previous night; see how a sentence you crafted sounds to you now that you are up on your feet.  Our baby feels it too, and is happiest in the early hours of the day.

We walk and listen, and there are many sights to see. 

“Mirá, el pajarito.  Vuela el pajarito y canta también.”

Spending these days in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, I’ve birded plenty with Santiago (and on several mornings, with Isabelle too).  I picture our friend from Monteverde, Sofia, walking along the neighborhood sidewalks in her tan color ecologist clothes, binoculars meeting her upward facing gaze to capture and amaze in sight the birds that sing in bright-tuned flight.  We are looking and planning on moving from Monteverde to Pennsylvania or North Carolina soon.  It will be sad to leave my family and my country behind, and to take my baby far from half of his extended network down there.  It will take adjusting for sure.  But one thing that assures me of good things to come, are the songs of birds I’ve heard these days. I’ll have to learn them as I have in Monteverde.  I’ll love to learn them, and teach them to my son, and share them with anyone who’ll walk with us in the morning.  You’re all invited, everyday, usually starting around 6 J.