There is a quietude in the period of time following the Big Moments, when the curtain is pulled back a bit and Real Life™ resumes. It is the moment after moving but before furnishing—when the prospect of navigating an entire new city feels manageable, but there is absolutely no chance of being able to find your last clean pair of socks in the process. It is the familiar hum of the washing machine spinning your clothes clean of the salty air and suitcase wrinkles that accompanied you home from vacation—perhaps one during which you stumbled upon a version of yourself you wish you could have brought home, too. It is during this quiet that we often return to some semblance of childhood. In between the blank walls of new apartments and the rapid zzzzip of suitcases being unpacked, it is almost second nature to put on a familiar show or movie in the background to keep us company. Perhaps that is how, this week, I found myself thinking about my favorite picture book from childhood: The Best Nest by P.D. Eastman.
In the book, Mr. and Mrs. Bird go on a journey to find a better nest in which to live. They try out many different locations before, ultimately, ending up in their original home during a storm, with Mrs. Bird concluding that “This nest is best.” Out of all the picture books from my early childhood, this is the one I most clearly recall so many years later, long after its use as a bedtime story has been retired.
During visits home my freshman year of college, when I was in the throes of transfer applications, I curled up on the couch alongside my mom and sister. I buried myself under heaps of blankets and let all the stress bubble up into tears.
“This nest is best,” I hiccuped. It was the only way to verbalize the feeling of returning to my safe space when the world felt too heavy.
Just a year later, I came home from college again—this time, from a six hour flight away, after transferring to a school at which I was deliriously happy. I took my same spot on the couch, curled up under the same blankets, and let out a contented sigh. No tears this time, just jet lag and the giddy adrenaline of being with family again.
“This nest is best.” Another way of saying thank you to my mom for making home a place I wanted to return to, and to my sister for making sure she was always there waiting for me the way I was for her when the roles were reversed.
This nest is best.
The phrase has always been my favorite way to describe home—not just my childhood home, but anything that feels like it: the velvet seats of a theatre; the whir of espresso beans grinding in coffee shops; the dry, earthy smell of books; the arms of my favorite people wrapped around me in hugs. It is the perfect summation of when something feels completely and utterly right. And when I watched this week, through my kitchen window, a bird standing in the pouring rain, I once again thought of the bubblegum pink picture book and those four words.
New England weather is infamously fickle. Cold, rainy mornings do not preclude beach-going sunny afternoons. On one of these cold, rainy mornings, such was my thought when a bird with a mix of crimson and black feathers flew by and perched on a chair just by the window I was sitting beside. It was close enough for me to see that its feathers were wet, fluffed up by the rain. While it did not seem to be bothered in the least, I quietly hoped—for its sake—that the sun would come out and give the poor bird a warmer day.
Hours later, I returned home. The sun had not come out; the rain was still coming down in insistent, intense bouts of showers throughout the afternoon. Absentmindedly, I stood by the kitchen window, watching the tiny splashes the rain drops made as they connected with hard pavement and metal chairs. No squirrels or bunnies ran around the yard the way they did on the hot, bright days. The sky blanketed the whole world in gray, with humans and animals alike cocooning inside their dry spaces. Then, about 20 feet away from the window, I saw it: a bird. A bird I was fairly certain was the bird—the same one from the morning.
The bird stood in profile, its same crimson and black feathers fluffed and beaded with rain drops. It hopped, ever so slightly, moving a few inches this way and that, but otherwise stood completely still. With a hint of not quite rebellion or resignation, but something altogether like resoluteness, this little bird held its beak angled toward the sky—not just getting caught in the rain, it appeared, but accepting being rained on. I was taken with the image. It had been raining all week. Internally, it felt like it had been raining all week.
As the novelty of graduating alongside friends had petered out and the reality of being scattered from so many people set in, my phone had been lighting up with messages from people I used to be just a few minutes’ walk from, now in seemingly dozens of different directions. With each, How are you?? that was both sent and received, a hand was held out with a firm, almost desperate grasp, hoping to find friends in this murky, gray, rainy period.
How are you?? was more Are you also feeling this way?? was more I miss you dearly.
I’m good! was more Yes, 100% was more I miss you just as much.
And looking at the bird just standing in the rain, I understood the undercurrent of trepidation in the messages. We have been conditioned to smooth the transitions. In theatre, we get blackouts to mask the moving pieces; in film we get gentle fades to black or quick cuts right into the next sequence. No wonder in real life our transitional periods feel so vulnerable: they happen in broad daylight, where anyone at all may be able to bear witness to their imperfect in-betweenness.
A few minutes later, the quick downpour ceased. The bird flew off. But I was left with the mental image of it standing there stoutly, face to the sky. The bird could have flown away or sheltered somewhere, but it didn’t. And it didn’t seem so much to me that the bird was entirely enjoying the rain. No, the little robin was merely acknowledging the fact that it was, in fact, raining. It’s almost funny when I think about humans doing the same.
We have the cliché saying of life being about learning how to dance in the rain. I’ve always hated that little aphorism. The sentiment has always felt trite to me—wonderful on paper but too saccharine in its enduring positivity. This, though, this bird just standing under the downpour felt different. The setup lacked the performativity that the cliché dancing in the rain demands; rather, it had a quiet courage of admittance. The calm, unbothered awareness and acceptance that it was, in fact, raining. It occurred to me that the bird was probably better at accepting the rain than people are. All week long, weather reports found glimmers of hope for sunshine; in every text message, there were peppered in exclamation points before the I miss yous.
As silly and obvious as it sounds, humans don’t always accept the rain. We have been raised in a world where it can be pouring all around us, but we still pretend like it is sunny and warm. The bird didn’t do that—and how foolish would it have been if it had? If the bird had stood there, getting its feathers wet, and pretended like it was soaring? There was a liberation in watching it stand calmly in the open air as the sky itself unzipped like an overflowing suitcase.
It was there, in that moment with the bird—that quietude.
This nest is best.
Of course, Real Life™ is not always that clear cut. Everyone I know right now is figuring out which nest is, indeed, best. None of us really know where, in this next phase of life, we’ll find ourselves flying and sheltering and landing. I don’t think we’re as accepting of the rain as the robin is, but I think we’re trying to be. We are trying to be okay with standing there, head to the sky, vulnerable and exposed to the reality of being rained on and the horror that other people might even bear witness to it.
One of my first introductions to stories was The Best Nest, where two birds find their way back home amidst the turbulent chaos of a rainstorm. Sometimes, like the birds drawn in the book, sheltering and waiting out the deluge is where you’ll find the best nest. Other times, though, like the little robin in the yard and human beings after the Big Moments have settled, the best nest is the one you’re in—even when it rains; even when you get soaked through.
The robin’s wings weren’t broken. There were plenty of nearby trees it could have flown to. But it waited. It waited, and accepted the rain, and even had the gall to acknowledge it.
You don’t need to always dance in the rain, friends. But if you get caught in it? Know that you aren’t alone. There is at least one other small, mighty bird out there, with fluffed up red and black feathers, standing under the droplets too—and a whole bunch of humans who are probably doing their best to get up the courage to do the same.