Right outside my office window a Red Robin set up her nest in the elbow of some old antlers that are there by my back door. For many days she would fly each time I came out the door but gradually we developed a level of trust and eventually she would perch on the edge but not fly. Later she didn’t even bother to get up. Then came the hatch and three hungry mouths could be seen, wide open waiting to be filled. A male robin came to help with the feeding chores and the chicks grew fast. For a few days the dragonflies were active so the birds had plenty of food.
About two days ago she quit feeding the chicks and I thought maybe something had happened to her. But then I would see her out in the yard and I put two and two together. The chicks were ready to leave the nest and the only way she could get them on their own was make them hungry and want to leave. It was time for them to be on their own. She knew if she kept feeding them they would never leave.
Is there a lesson in this story? Look around us at the people who have never learned to fend for themselves. Someone has always provided food, shelter and medicine for them. There are more jobs then there are people and still they go unfilled. Businesses have had to shut down or curtail activities for lack of help. Yes no one ever kicked them out of the nest. We talk often about the greed at the top in this country but talk little about the greed at the bottom. This country will be great again when everyone who is capable, pulls his or her own weight.
When I was fourteen I was invited to a dance at the school by a girl I liked a lot. I accepted but then started to fret because I had no money to spend on her and no dress up clothes. I asked my dad if I could get some new slacks and shirt. He told me he had barely enough to put food on the table but he would help me get a job. He also told me that when he was fourteen it was 1929 and his family was as poor as church mice. In fact his father was a minister. No pun intended. He said it was a great learning time to grow up in because you knew where the bottom was, and how it felt to be there, and nothing motivated you more then having nothing.
I did get a job after school in the local drug store. I also got some new clothes and something called pride. I never stopped working until I retired. I remember job-hunting once as a machinist. Jobs come and go in that trade. I asked the owner of the shop if he had a job for me. He looked at my resume for a second and then he said. “I always have a job for a man who wants to work.” He was the best boss I ever had. He never laid me off. When my kids were growing up I watched them struggle sometimes. I wanted them to try and find a solution before I offered one. I never picked out their career for them. I never told them they had to go to college. But I was there for them. “What does that mean,” you say? It means I wanted them to be successful but I wanted them to be self-made people and find their own way in life. I knew if they wanted something bad enough they would find a way. They would fly out of the nest-- and they did.
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