Always and in All Ways

A robin is building a nest in the rhododendron just outside the window of the little bedroom at the end of the hall. I was on the floor stretched out on my back for an after-lunch rest when her movement caught my eye. If she follows through and all goes well, we’ll be able to watch as a new family of robins comes into being. The plant isn’t a dense one, but it affords enough shelter under the eave, where the nest will be out of the rain. And it will be blooming soon — an auspicious beginning, it seems to me. And of course once upon a time, it was this way for our kind — fraught with peril, too, perhaps, but always, and in all ways, we were born into beauty.

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