TIVOLI JENSEN

I am the proverbial baby bird.

I recently leaped from my little nest, and I am now watching the branches fly up past my face as I fall toward the ground.

The desire to fly is in me.  I was trained for flight, I was made for soaring.

But I am also quite the expert at falling.

At a certain point, this falling, or spiraling, or “gliding toward the earth swiftly” could become almost comfortable.  I understand this air whipping through my feathers, this chill berating my stinging eyes.  I am one with the leaves that brush my cheeks.  I am at peace with the branches that snag at my wings.

But I know the ground is rushing up.  And I know I need to fly.

Of course, I am not truly a bird.  Nay, I have not that luxury.  But I am a graduate.  My nest was that twenty year period of schooling, that sometimes regurgitated diet of facts and myths, that comfortable place where I could stay tightly wrapped in my constant essays, sleepless nights, and want for perfection.

But then, I graduated out of the nest.  Twenty years of the dreaming for the end and the plans were all of a sudden bursting from my chest into the real world and I could not snatch them back quickly enough.  My feathers of dreaming fluttered down before I could catch them.

I know that if I fly I can get those feathery dreams back.  I can do all the things I planned, be the bird I imagined, and love the world in the way I know it should be loved.

It’s almost anticlimactic, this leaving the nest thing.  You spend so much time sitting there dreaming of it being no more, but then, when you get that which was so desired mere days earlier, the onslaught of reality and “Real Life” makes one jump back into the nest.  Or perhaps the bird finds another nest adjacent to fall into, and one can make a very fine living if one is not risking at all and accepts the disillusionment for what they wanted all along.

My feathers have changed over the years, yes, they’re not washed as frequently or preened.  They get tugged out at times, sometimes the wee birdies pluck them out and put them on.  Sometimes I give them away.  I suppose in growing up one realizes that not all dreams are possible, or just not a possibility at that moment, and that some birds have a harder time than others.  But the nice thing about dreams is that they can change; they can evolve to what is attainable.  Dreams can grow with those that make them.

But, I want to get those feathers back.  I need those dreams, those goals.  I can make them happen.

I stand at the edge of my little nest, ruffling and re-ruffling myself.

And then, I leap.

I’m sure there are some birds who do this with more finesse, who already have their flight plans lined up prior to soaring, who know exactly which direction they need to go.  And I am sure there are some birds who spend an eternity thinking about going down, but never do.  Or some who, for decades, need one last course to properly get that prized piece of paper.

And then there are some, like me, who flounder on the way down, trying to remember the tenets of those Flight Classes and resume building, and what the point of a cover letter is besides awkward self-glorification.

Here I am with the branches falling up, and me going down.

I do wonder if I’ll make it.  I do wonder if it can all be done.

For the moment, though, as I’m halfway from the ground yet with my eyes on that clear sky above, I find a nudging of peace for having leaped at all.