The nest is empty.
Last time I checked, on Sunday, the cardinal chicks lay recumbent and unmoving, only their beaks open wide for food. This was evidently keeping their parents busy because the mom was no longer ever-present there, as she had been when they were turquoise eggs. Now I don’t have to worry about where to park and how to avoid that part of the path. Mom is gone now, and so are the chicks.
Monday and Tuesday I spent in New York City, still my favorite city. Broke my fast with friends in a Riverdale Jewish deli, looked in on Rembrandt’s and other 17th century Dutch painters’ depictions of scenes from the Book of Esther in the Jewish Museum (if there’s a Rembrandt within 1,000 miles from me, I’ll get there somehow), went down to the Village to hang out with a very dear friend, and then started the long way home. Got in last night, and this morning the chicks were gone. Flown the coop.
Am I an empty nester now? Looked forward to their growing a little more, scouting around, trying their wings, and always, always flying back home. Instead, they showed me that they don’t need me anymore.
It’s important for me to feel needed— for comforting words, clear-eyed advice, food or car rides. I took Lori for a pre-op scan today and on the way back we discussed what she’ll need after her surgery in several weeks. Food and drink? Laundry? Taking a bath? Feeding Henry? No one makes me feel as needed as the Illegal Chihuahua, with the huge eyes in his small face and large, upturned ears begging constantly for attention. Throw the tiger! Throw the ball! Drop some food when you’re eating! Much of the time (not all), I like it. Why? Because he’s cute. Because he needs me.
Of course, lots of times I ran away from that sensation, especially after Bernie’s stroke. You want to shake off the cares, the constant attention to minute details, the focus that excludes the broad panoply of life in order to zero in on one individual: the expressions on his face, how he walks, sits, or lies down, how much he eats and drinks, meds, food, clothes, showers. What he says and what he keeps silent about.
But today, going back and forth with Lori from the car to the building where she did her scan, I noticed how many people come and go with companions keeping them close, relatives guiding their elbows, or friends eking out a smile.
“We’re very different from certain animals,” I say to Lori, who’s riding independently on her scooter. “If someone gets hurt or is weak or disabled, we don’t push them to the edge of the herd to be an easy meal for a predator, we don’t toss a thin, weak bird out of the nest because the odds for its survival are low. We help them go on.”
A sign of our humanity, folks like to say, as if it shows some superiority over animals. Not sure about that, but yes, a sign of being human. Wanting to feel there’s something for us to do here, that I’m not just needed by a specific young or old person, but that there’s a place for me here in this world, some role that only I, with whatever qualities I possess, am needed to play. I’m not just talking about certain vocations which I give myself over to with enthusiasm and even passion, but that moment-by-moment certainty that I am meant to be here and now, alive, functioning, a channel, like everyone and everything else, for both past and future.
Perhaps for this reason I am more measured in response to the actions of our present government. Deep dismay over the dismantling of important agencies, horror at the expulsion of immigrants, and the terror afflicting many of those families that are so afraid of being separated from each other. But no fear. Everything has a cause, which in itself is an effect of other causes. The future hasn’t lost its infinite possibilities because of Donald Trump, everything continues to move with momentum, as always.
It teaches me the importance of how we act: with what spirit, with what determination, with what joy. You are no accident; neither is Trump; neither am I. In some way, the empty nest in front of the house is as beautiful as when it contained turquoise eggs sat upon by a vigilant mama cardinal. Promise is there continually.
Eve Marko is a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order and head teacher at the Green River Zen Center in Massachusetts. She received Dharma Transmission and inka from Bernie Glassman. She is also a writer and editor of fiction and nonfiction.
Eve has trained spiritually-based social activists and peacemakers in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, and has been a Spiritholder at retreats bearing witness to genocide at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Rwanda, and the Black Hills in South Dakota. Before that, she worked at the Greyston Mandala, which provides housing, child care, jobs, and AIDS-related medical services in Yonkers, New York.
Eve’s articles on social activists have appeared in the magazines Tricycle, Shambhala Sun, and Tikkun. Her collection of Zen koans for modern Zen practitioners in collaboration with Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, The Book of Householder Koans: Waking Up In the Land of Attachments, came out in February 2020.
Hunt for the Lynx, the first in her fantasy trilogy, The Dogs of the Kiskadee Hills, was published in 2016.
“When I was a young girl my dream was to be a hermit, live alone, and write serious literature. That’s not how things turned out. I got involved with people. I got involved in the world. Two things matter to me right now: the creative spark and the aliveness of personal connection. In some way, they both come down to the same thing.”
Thank you, Eve.
As a single grandpa, living alone, this piece resonated with me. The imagery of the empty nest, which sometimes leave me sad, beautifully conveys hope and the endless possibilities where I will be needed or where I may need others. I pray that I will always be present and ready when the call comes.
I love this line: “I’m not just talking about certain vocations which I give myself over to with enthusiasm and even passion, but that moment-by-moment certainty that I am meant to be here and now, alive, functioning, a channel, like everyone and everything else, for both past and future.” Thank you, Eve!