One Week Later

A Week Ago: Just Hatched Robin

This Afternoon: Robin Looking More Like a Robin

The top picture you have seen before. I took it about a week ago. I didn't want to spook the mother bird by going back too soon to check on the progress of the hatchling, but I did peek again today. From a little sack of red skin and hollow-stick legs, the baby now has a full beak, eyes, skin fuzz--even the beginnings of feathers on the wings! It is amazing to me that such transformations happen--and have been happening--before I was even aware of the world around me. Perhaps I got to watch while the process of egg to bird was being organized in the preexistence--no way, though, was I part of that committee.

Singing, yes. Trees, probably. Horses, certainly. Chocolate and whip cream--committee chairperson. Eggs to flabby pink blob to fuzzy red blob to scrawny pin-feathered wisp to gullet-wabbling-down to bad-feather-day plurf to flying and singing marvel--it doesn't feel like I was clued in enough even to begin to imagine such a transformation.

A week ago, when I took the first picture, I didn't know what kind of bird it was, but this time it was still light outside and a very agitated, very loudly chirping robin was hopping about on the fence near the holly tree. So . . . a baby robin. Unlike my grandchildren--who were both amazing from the first moment--baby song birds are u.g.l.y up until almost the very last moment before they morph into "real" birds.

Had I not known better, I would have thought that the newly hatched ducklings, chicks, and quail cheepers were a distinct species from baby robins, parrots, and doves.

I don't know why I'm still wandering on about this. Sometimes I take a moment and when I look--I realize that I have no clue what kind of place it is that I'm living in.

KR: Three Days of Age

This Afternoon: KR at Almost Two Weeks Old

What a strange juxtaposition that I should be able to see the first weeks growth of two fledglings. Kate, of course, growing from beauty to beauty--I am enchanted by her movements, her round-mouthed yawns, her tender-tiny-perfect ears and hands. I knew Kate's mother--I bore Kate's mother--and she was as magical and Kate is. I am still Megan's Mother here--but more often I'm known by those who live here as Jon and Kate's grandma. And Megan? She is the mother--Jon and Kate's mom. It's a title that passes from me to Meg with solemn ease.

She will never grow out of being my child, though. Crazy way of things--change that continues to stay the same even as it evolves: revolves--again and again.

I wish that my mom could be here to see.