two things

I hate most phone calls, and I especially hate phone calls that force me to get out of bed for what seems like no good reason. One day a couple of months ago my brother called me from work and told me not only to get out of bed but to come rescue a baby bird that got blown out of a tree. I grumpily found a box and grumpily snaked under some stranger's car to reach this squawking walnut with a beak and grumpily missed a couple dozen times. By the time I finally got it into the box, it was a three-ring circus in the parking lot of Longs Drugs.

Anyway, we put him in the ex-"chicken coop," named him Julius, and like Otto the Seussian fish, that baby bird grew and grew and grew ... and ate and learned to fly short distances and ate and learned to fly from one head to another. He had a sibling for about three weeks ... his brother, Caesar, also blown out of a tree, wasn't as hardy as he, and he flew away a little earlier. Julius became a proficient flier and managed to escape death at the jaws of a jealous rottie pup at least once.

We kept putting off letting him go, mostly because he was so tame and used to being hand-fed. But the cage clearly wasn't big enough and he needed to fly ... so kudos to Mart for letting him go today even though he was so crushed when the little one died a few days ago. And I wonder if he's okay - does he know how to hide from the weather, find his own food ... does he know that he shouldn't land on other people's heads because they're not going to like it as much as we did? Letting kids go is hard.

And the second thing. One by one my kids have been coming down from JMS to visit afterschool. There are always the requisite "the classroom looks nicer!"s and the "you got so tall!" ... today I got an extra-special visit from one of my kids who got rescinded from SPED just before the year ended. Not only did his SPED services end but his counseling ended too, and despite the therapist's confidence in his ability to stand on his own, I worried so much. He's been through more than any of us know (and what we do know is horrible) but he still smiles and he still tries and he loves the people who have done him wrong just as much as he loves those who have only shown him kindness. These are the kids who break your heart, because they go forth, trusting and giving always. And when they fly you're so thankful that they can and so proud of them but you want to be there in case they fall or someone pulls them back down. And you can't. You have to give them to the next seat of teachers and just pray. Because sometimes teachers are the ones who pull them back down.

There are some things you have to let go of. People learn this lesson in so many different, little ways. It never gets any easier.