Hummingbird's Year

A year had passed before Hummingbird could even name her yearly resolutions.

• Fly at least 33 mph 5x times a week to tone up
• Explore different foods sources such as a nectar feeder
• Visit Hum family in lands of warmer air
• Organize nest
• Try and spend more time at Cardinal's
• Pause

Few if any of these were accomplished. Where did the year go? What did she do?
As she entered her third year with Cardinal things were strong. Their time together was constant and consistent. She awoke, made a nectar latte, did some half-moon and wing stretches, and then began her daily work of humming, flying and deflowering. Sometimes mid-day she would hear from Cardinal, a chirp across yards, or maybe a seed a message left on earth as she made her way from garden to garden.
“What up, Hum? How’s the slurping? I just had an amazing fried sunflower seed. See u 2nite. Luv u.“

Each night before she went to sleep she either heard from Cardinal or saw him; her constant, was constant. Certainly sometimes they went out with other bird couples, some inter-breeds, some same’rs . Other times they might be adventurous and travel to a whole other eco-system, but most of the time they stayed in their terrain. This constancy gave Hummingbird a sense of something. Maybe freedom? Maybe security? Maybe freedom as a result of security? Having someone to fly with, to nest with gave her a sense of ease, of peace. But did it also stagnate her? Make her less willing to fly fast? To fly backwards even?

That seems a little unjust. For the first time in Hummingbird’s little life she breathed (though still super fast) with a certainty . There was another bird who loved her despite her frenetic flightiness. Hummingbird with Cardinal in tow would often have to backtrack as she would leave a feather, her seed pouch, or forget where she made her nest, etc.. Cardinal would calm her as she desperately searched for her nest..

Hummingbird: I swear, I swear I made it next to this elm!
Cardinal: Okay..are you sure, maybe that was last year’s nest.
Hummingbird: No,last year’s was in more of a willow!
Cardinal: I think you wanted to be next to sunflowers this year…so let’s check those out.
Hummingbird: Maybe the wind took it.

And that is how many days would end, Hummingbird searching for something she lost or left behind and Cardinal calming her hyped up self. It was in these moments that ‘she’ became a ‘they’ as they located her moss-covered nest full of trinkets and treasures left-over from her pre-Cardinal life. This dichotomy of something so constant and secure searching for something that was ephemeral, fleeting, always changing was intense. Hummingbird thrived a little on chaos sprinkled with a little despair but with Cardinal such sensations were muted.
With Cardinal the unfixable became fixable, the lost became found, and fires dissolved into smoke.

Maybe that is the story of this year, the rolling stone meets the mountain and there Hummingbird just settled finding her place amid strength and equanimity.