The Heron and The Thunderstorm
What I've Learned About Motherhood From The Birds
Squally. In Texas this means a specific kind of weather, but it’s all related to orientation. It comes from when there is a squall line in the clouds that usually produces bad weather.1 Being in the granite-uplift woods gives a special kind of space for relating to this kind of storm.
This is the kind of storm you can see coming in. Sometimes you wait almost a full day watching it brew up and move closer. Sometimes it won’t hit the ground you stand at all ~ a living prayer it does with safety. The barometric pressure changes, the temperature drops, and the livestock will tell you a lot about the squall before it hits. The wildlife will tell you even more.
Last springtime, still regenerating from historic drought, we wanted to witness and participate in an incoming squall from the safety of our covered carport. From here, told in present-tense, is where this knowing-story takes place.
The Patio
“Is it gonna rain, mama?” she says, in the voice she uses when she’s delighting in orienting to what is, a grand explorer of Creator’s creation.
Dark cumulonimbus rolling in from the south, almost to the rhythm of a march in our bird’s eye view. Winds blow gusts through ancient live-oak trees, as if saying, “Just wait and seeeeee,”….
“I don’t know,” I say, “We’ll have to wait and see.”
The Scout
A few pillows from the couch and a pink thunderbird blanket laid out for comfort on hard concrete, she invites us to rest and watch and be with the squall on the covered concrete patio. It’s a favorite past-time of ours in present-timing. I breathe in the negative ions moving in and begin expanding.
Feeling inspired by her creating, I gather a few things myself. A well-used basket holding a journal, pen, and the eyes of a scout. The items take their place on the blanket, which is on the patio, which is on the largest formation of granite this side of the equator. We take our place.
I scout the tree-line, noticing the different cadences of cedar-elm, cedar, mesquite, and persimmon in the wind and how they relate to the pending storm. Watching the waves of a tree-line is more than a past-time, it’s a way of relating to place, to being with and part of nature and creation. The notation of such a witnessing, much like scouting birds, for us living in relatedness, has become less of a notating, documenting or bird-watching, and more of a living prayer.
Living in prayer this way, breathing in and out, I now scout the skyline, curious about how other signs of life are acclimating and orienting to what we are hoping becomes a thunderstorm. Mostly, we listen, because scouting is a sensing practice, a listening practice, a knowing practice, too, which includes a good bit of mystery.
The Heron
It’s not very long before I notice a Great Blue Heron flying in from the north and landing on the north edge of the tank, beginning to fish. We’re familiar with this creature. He blesses the land here often with his dance of fishing, existing, and right-oriented action of helping to balance the ways of nature.
The flight of a great migratory bird in such windy weather is pure majesty. I admire heron’s stability, determination and trust of his process. Could he be a he? One must not be overthinking, I think to myself, then continue allowing the knowing to arise.
I look down at my child, laying back on a pillow, humming a tune, flipping a book, watching the clouds.
“Mama, it’s thunderin’!!” “Did ya hear it?!”
“I did,” (smile and soft eyes), “It’s a lovely sound.”
We go on this way a bit with a lot of space between words. I don’t write much because I’m watching the bird, noticing the sky, breathing in the good, clean air and feeling into the belonging ~ there is something to learn here.
Heron is fishing, of course, on a stock tank my great grandfather made with the earth over 75 years ago. There is a knowing here, passed down in cellular and ecological memory that water is life, no matter who or what you are, where you live or what you do.
The heron eats a fish, or a snake, helping to balance out the population that increased because of human intervention. Although mostly a solitary bird, Great Blue Heron likes to stake it’s claim, to fish without their mate and will continue to come to a habitat that serves them well.
This one bird, in particular, seems not to mind our walks, our chatter, our singing.
The Chatter
Back to center - on the carport, there becomes, of course, more movement and sound, as one who is keen on child development would expect from a small child who has just had a short rest and now chooses to further delight in outdoor play with a storm coming in from the south on the safety of a covered patio.
Feet puttering this way and that, laying out old pots to catch drops for potted plants and garden beds. Her knowing is that rain is precious here and catching the drops we are praying for is part of our belonging - part of participating in life.
The beginnings of a bolder thunder begins to rumble, as if to say, “Watch out now,” mirroring the rumble in our tummies.
My knowing here exemplified in the relatedness of mirroring with nature. The thunder rumbles. The land rumbles, our tummies rumble. Everything must be fed. My truth that it is love and kindness, good stewarding and family healing are what we are feeding the land. The meaning of what it means to be a good shepherd continually emerging in my bones.
The Mothering
There is a lot to think about, to know, being a mother, in the practicing of mothering in a thunderstorm2, not sure what’s for supper (yet), but we always eat well, so back to delighting in space of gratitude - for the beauty and the truth in this moment, a smiling child, moisture in the air, and the rejuvenating ions that dark clouds bring.
There is a sense of well-being I don’t aim to define, but to feel in present-time. It is only looking back as I write this past-tense knowing-story in present-tense that I still know that wellness is itself a living library, a way of relating, a present moment presence.
This is the greatest gift. Neuroscientists call kindness an integration3. Mothers, fathers, parents healing intergenerational wounds in present-time call it showing up, remembering how to feel, centering needs, holistic regulation…the list goes on.
What I know to be true is that we can’t fill a cup full of love with a hand full of hate. Whether we’re talking about a lineage or a landscape, the truth in the teaching is the same. Mothering happens in real-time. Mothering happens with love.
The Heron and The Thunderstorm
We make our way inside, tending to needs of dinner and a pending bedtime. The timing is right, as the rain begins pelting down a chorus on the old but sturdy tin roof. The lightning and her now-boldest thunder partner coming closer to the porch.
From a collection of windows facing east, I’m consistently remembering to take lighter steps than the women who came before me, who did their best, who knew a different kind of survival and perhaps did not quite yet get to finish the wisdom of understanding the distinctions between reading and being,4 between trail and tears.
My awareness is 360◦, focused but calm, aware but not overwhelmed. There is no need for television, because we are watching the storm. We are becoming part of the storming, in our relating with it.
A happy child playing behind me, I begin preparing a simple meal and continue to watch the heron. Even with rain coming down hard in diagonal lines from the southwest, he stays - a still-slowing marching along the bank of the tank, like herons do, and continues to fill his belly.
I’m amazed and curious at his knowing - his ability to know that he is not in danger in present-time. My knowing is that his knowing is in present-time orienting to every moment with cellular cohesion ~ he will know when it is too risky to fish and he will then choose to fly away.
He stays for a long time, and then he finally flies out. The moment of witnessing this is exalted. Heron is not scattered, scared or chaotic. There is nothing boastful about the strength, confidence and majesty of this bird taking flight during a lighting strike.
This creature knows exactly what to do, not just to stay alive, but to exist in balance, in beauty, in truth ~ to thrive with what Creator granted him.
The Mirroring
I heard an indigenous scholar5 once say that you can only time travel with love. In the moments after witnessing the poignant and interactive intelligence of heron and storm, I’m carried away in cellular memory, reflecting to times backwards as mother - to when we were in danger.
Some memories point to the innate swiftness of survival heron mirrored, when I didn’t get us out until the exact timing my knowing showed would grant us the greatest relief and security. Could it be that it was something more intelligent, or divine than just independent nervous system survival that kept us near dangerous waters6 for what seemed like too long?
Maybe a lesson, or two. In the kitchen my knowing shifts to now-time and the cohesion in my system’s knowing that there is always a lesson, or something we get out of a difficult situation. Perhaps in each storm, we grow a little softer, a little wiser, a little stronger and a little more related to our surroundings, a little more grateful, a little more forgiving.
How did heron know exactly when to fly away? He listened, he found a knowing, or a 360◦ awareness that orchestrated a movement, a flight, that was not an intervention for himself, but a recognition that his truth in time-space is interconnecting, interactive and participating in something greater than himself.
Squally.
Here we are on ancestral lands, living in present-time, teasing out the pain from both sides, catalyzing the wisdom in all the spaces in-between, loving the knowing that emerges living in God’s country.
There is a great blessing, an obligation, to being a mixed-blood mother. I have a knowing our Choctaw ancestors from Mississippi knew a different kind of squall than the Germans who settled here, and none of it is wrong.
From the living library of my father, a German-American elder.
Although thunderstorm here is not metaphorical, it can be applied as a metaphor for teaching purposes.
Dan Siegel, MD, The Pocketbook Of Interpersonal Neurobiology.
Proverbs.
Tyson Yunkaporta.
Dangerous waters is used here as metaphor.