Children as Finches
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Brother and sister awaken in a semi-darkened bedroom at the same minute as the day before, when the window shade warms around the edges, aglow in a perfect box shape. Lying in beds side by side, they lazily study each other to see that the other’s eyes are open, wrestle with the covers a last time and in so doing realize they are awake to stay. Always the youngest – the little girl, Caroline – says the day’s first words in a hushed voice that she’s heard adults use while stooping to see that she’s covered by blankets and that her head lies on the pillow for the night.
Conversation is not a gift that three- and five-year-olds possess. After a few minutes, the talk dwindles and soft steps move toward the stairs. On most mornings, the pair comes down to the living room half-naked with footed fleece pajamas partially unzipped and their wet diapers flung out on their bedroom floor. This morning, the boy pulls a blanket three times his height down the stairs behind him. Draped around his head, he is the morning Wiseman rehearsing for a Christmas play. He has removed his pajama bottoms but not his shirt, and, upon reaching the living room, swaddles himself and his sister into a place on the couch.
Light has come to another day, the great triumph over dark that will gradually gives way to dark again. Children are oblivious to the sun and the moon battling in eternal tragedy, a fight that ends with one temporary victor at dusk and at dawn, but ultimately ends a draw. Something inside them, though, draws their bodies from sleep and to bed at the same hour of the day. Before the proprietors of other houses on the street have read fresh newspapers or brewed coffee, our children are awake.
These “strangers,” as they would dub them, do not yet realize it’s daylight. The house fronts are dark. The entire street is bathed in blue light. The only movement on the block is an idling front porch swing, but otherwise the wind is holding its breath. Flags dangle flaccidly from flag posts. Subtle layers of frost on car windows await the soft sunshine to turn them to beaded jewelry.
Outside the thin window glass bird song is drowned out by a train whistle, then the outdoor morning is returned to them. Singing from bare branches, seated in nests they built that withstood October gales and November rains. One glides above the stained glass window in the dining room – wings narrowed and level – shattering the painting of sky behind it. Gangs of finches swoop from bird feeder to bird feeder placed in the front yard bushes, until something sets them off, and lift together a few feet in the air, then return to their original places as nervous as they were and yet feeling as though they’d escaped something.
At 7:30, the children are already excited. Their mother comes downstairs and starts the coffee. She puts cinnamon rolls into the oven to bake while the children lift small spoons from cereal bowls at the dining room table. The light in the room is softened by stained glass, by the tree outside the window and the shadow cast by the rise of the house across the street. They dip their fingers into the frosting as their energy spreads through the house as fully as the oven even fills the kitchen with its heat. They were the first to rise and the first to push into the world another time.
Like the autumn’s last birds, our children sing the first song of the day.
