56. The Nest

“That’s a nice haircut, Chris.”

Iris notices things like this. She’s all about being on time and minding your manners and being proper (insert quasi-British accent here). But that doesn’t mean she’s mean or even cold.

“Yeah, decided it was probably time. Mom cuts it, so that’s always a bit scary.”

“It’s nice to not see bangs dropping in front of your eyes. You have pretty eyes.”

I’m not sure how to answer that one, so I nod and smile.

“I assume that means you have big plans this weekend?”

“Not really.”

“Is that a genuine ‘not really’ or more of an ‘I’m not feeling like telling you’?”

“No—neither—I mean, I have a date tonight, but it’s nothing.”

“Your date is nothing in terms of how you feel toward it, or rather how little you’d like to discuss it?”

“I’m doing a guy a favor—he likes this girl who’s friends with another girl who kinda—well, long story. No big deal.”

Iris is holding that leather journal again. It’s thick and looks like it’s from the Civil War or something. I always see her carrying it around. Occasionally I see her writing in it. She places it on the table as she sits across from me. I’ve only now stopped sweating from clearing weeds and bushes outside with a sling blade.

“No big deal for you, or for the girl you’re going with?”

I start to say something, then suddenly feel this is one of her insightful traps. She does that every time we speak, trapping me with some idiotic thing I’ve said and making me eat those words.

“Do you know something, Chris? I met my husband on a blind date.”

“Really?”

I knew that Iris had a son but had never heard anything about a husband.

“Stanley. He was tall and skinny and looked absolutely wrong next to me. We could never fit into a picture together, so how could it be? I did the same thing you are doing—a favor for someone. So you never know.”

“That’s a pretty big leap,” I say, chuckling more out of nervousness than humor.

“Nothing is a big leap in this world. Nothing.”

I nod. I know Iris well enough now to recognize this as her opportunity to share a little more with me.

This is the routine. I work and she feeds me well and pays me well and then we end the day with these chats. Usually I’m trying to suck in air because the elevation is high here and because I’ve been working my tail off. I’m drinking something, and Iris comes in her stylish pants and dark shirt, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail and those wide eyes staring at me in wonder, and then proceeds to tell me a story with an insight.

“If this is but a tiny drop in a vast ocean, isn’t it sweeter if you get to share it with someone you love and trust?”

“I’m sixteen. I don’t think Mom is going to want me to run off and get married anytime soon.”

“I’m not talking about marriage. I’m talking about love and trust. I’m talking about the journey.”

“Okay.”

“Do you know how old I am?”

I shake my head. Mom has reminded me it’s not polite talking about women’s ages, including hers.

“I’m just a month away from turning ninety.”

For a second I don’t believe her. Iris looks old, but not that old. She still walks around with energy and life. Her face is full of wrinkles, but not that many.

Is she somehow starting to look younger the longer I’m around her?

“I’ve always been told I looked young. I can see it in your eyes—even you thought I was younger, though what’s a decade or two when you’re this age? I’m thankful for my time here. But as every day passes, I grow to understand that this is like a nest for a baby bird.”

“This inn?”

“This world. This life. We’re born, and we’re warm and secure, but one day it’s time to fly away. And some make it. Some birds are able to soar. Others aren’t so lucky.”

I think of that bluebird that bit me. I still see it every time I come here. It’s like Iris’s pet that guards the house.

“When you’re sixteen, you don’t think in those terms.” Iris places a frail hand over the journal and brushes it as she might the head of a child. “But when you’re older, you have to. When you’re older, it’s inevitable.”

“What is?”

“Remember what I first asked you a couple of months ago?”

I nod.

“It’s easy to put off deciding what you really believe when you’re a teenager. Or when you’re twenty or even thirty. By then, you’re too busy living life to stop and figure out exactly what you believe. But when the shadow of death lingers, you are forced to think of it. And either you believe there is more, or you believe that this is all you have.”

For a second I’m wondering how a double date turned into an exposé on life and death.

“Stanley died when I was almost forty. I couldn’t believe it then. And even now, I can’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We’d tried so long to start a family. Times were different then. If it didn’t work then, it didn’t work. And that—that was painful. I was finally able to have Jason. But then he died. I still wake up wishing and wondering. Even though I know that this little nest will soon be gone, I still wake up wondering what it would be like to have birds of my own, babies I could have nurtured. But life doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to.”

“Yeah, I know.” 

Iris nods. “I know you understand this, Chris. Did you know that Jason and I came here after my husband died?” 

“No.”

“I decided to take the money we got from the will and from selling every single one of our possessions and build a fortress that was far away and high enough to get away from the world. I believed we could escape. I believed we could get away from everybody, including God.”

“I thought you said this place was already here.”

“Yes. It was. But I decided to make it my own. Yet the truth I learned—and I learned this the hard way—is that nothing in this world is our own. Everything we’re given, big and small, is a gift from God. The moment we first see light when we’re born. The oxygen we breathe. The food we eat and the water we drink. Everything is a gift.”

“He gives more to some than to others.”

“You’re right,” Iris says to my cynical comment. “And it seems random. But it doesn’t matter. In the end, I’m not going to think and wonder what it would have been like if I had owned this or been given that.”

I think of her husband and her son.

“I do think of them,” she says, as if reading my mind. “But even if we only get a small chance to walk alongside someone we love, even for just a moment—isn’t that a blessing? Isn’t that in itself a wonderful gift?”

I think of Jocelyn.

Yes. It is.

“Tonight might be something fun and ordinary. It might be just another experience you will have in high school. But, Chris—it might also be the start of one of the most blessed and beautiful things you have ever known. So don’t judge and don’t dictate. Let whatever doors open swing open and then walk through them.”