Just Fledged
There is a baby sparrow our garden fence. It has been there for more than an hour and I keep going to check on it. It inches a few steps one way and then back and it is alternately cheeping and twisting its head to look up into the sky. I know what has happened here. This new sparrow has hop-fluttered from the nest box in our holly tree as far as the fence in its quest to become a fledgling. And now it wants it parents to feed it outside the nest while it experiments with being independent. But the fluffy littleness of this sparrow is making it difficult for me to get on with my household chores. The young bird is terribly exposed on top of the larch lap, several metres from the nearest shelter. I pace around the house, clutching a duster, getting more agitated about the wee thing. I want to tell it to go back inside for a few more days: “Stay cuddled up and safe for just a bit longer.” On my fourth trip to the window, I feel a bit grumpy with the sparrow, “For goodness’ sake wait until your brothers and sisters are out and about before you try this fledgling malarky.” And then I feel a distinct urge to bellow at it, “This is sparrow hawk territory you young fool. TAKE COVER!”
My maternal need to protect all young things drives Liam to distraction and makes spring a somewhat fraught season in our house. I have been known to stop on dog walks to check peer up at the top of the elderly sycamore where the herons nest in order to see if any of the chicks are too close to the edge of their nests. “What are you going to do, love?” Liam sighs, “Lay down a crash mat for them?” I have been known to get tearful at the realisation that a mother duck has lost several tiny ducklings overnight and then I spend the rest of the walk stalking along the riverbank cursing the predator.
This gets worse when the ewes and their tiny lambs are released into the field behind our garden. I zig-zag back and forth past the windows checking on the lambs. And then I fret: “Oh no! That little one is limping. Perhaps it has dislocated its leg.” Or, “Liam! Liam! Look. That small one is being head-butted by its mum. It won’t survive the night.” Once my fretting reaches fever-pitch, I tramp up the lane and haunt the farmhouse until I can locate Ian, the farmer. It is a great mercy that Ian and his family are immensely tolerant folk who listen to my worry and invariably reassure me that they are already on the case. And they hide any frustration at my desire to parent their livestock behind nods and kind smiles.
I have been known to spend blisteringly hot days worrying that there is not enough shade in the fields for the young calves and I spent several nights last autumn worrying about the screeching from the tawny owls in the wood. I knew what the noise meant: the parents birds were chasing their owlets off the territory so that they could prepare to breed again. I felt so sad for the young owls suddenly forced to be alone in the dark. And then it started to rain, heavily.
The positive aspect of my rather bonkers concern for all small things is that it reminds me of the loving agony experienced by parents when their children seem to be suffering or at risk. My mum, normally a balanced, wise person with decades of experience as a social worker, becomes a savage predator when one of her three children is under any sort of threat. “I’ll eat them,” she says in response to anyone who has been unkind to one of us. And this is despite the fact that we are all Very Grown Up (even middle-aged, in fact). My mum has said that she can only be as happy as her unhappiest child and Maisie, one of my lovely ex students, explained her own parents’ version of this. “We have a family worry spoon,” she told me. “My parents say that whichever of the three of us is in trouble is carrying the worry spoon.” That image, she reported, helped her parents to visualise which child needed extra care at a particular time.
There are times as a teacher when it can be really difficult to remember the motivation behind some parents’ behaviour. There are a few genuinely horrid parents who treat teachers badly and there are some parents who harm their children. Mostly, though, parents become sharp, critical, demanding, overbearing or needy because they are suffering their children’s pain. I always try to hold that knowledge in my mind when answering a strongly worded email or when a parent takes me to task at a parents’ meeting. Worrying about youngsters exposes adults’ own fears and weaknesses, our own difficult memories and personal failings. One of my close friends confessed that she was a nice person until she became a parent; my sister says that becoming a mum means that she is now permanently worried about everything.
This awareness does not prevent me from feeling upset or offended by a challenge from a parent but — more often that not — I will be able to empathise with the strong emotions that drive a dad to send seven emails in one afternoon about his daughter who is being bullied. Or a mum who demands weekly updates on her Year 7 son’s spelling and punctuation. “It is the baby sparrow on the fence,” I say to myself as I make my way to the ‘phone to ring a concerned parent long after sunset on a winter’s evening when I long to be at home with my own family.
