I saw a bird taking a bath this morning. It reminded me why we call those backyard elevated puddles of water what we do. Birds actually bathe in them.
This bird was a small female cardinal. At least that is what I’d guess, as my avian identification skills are fairly underdeveloped. She was by herself. At first tentatively, and then with increasing confidence, she ventured into the hip-high pool. It is a good thing I’ve been following my wife’s instructions while she is away. If I had not kept the concrete bowl filled with fresh water this week, my fine feathered little friend might not have exited her morning ablutions cleaner than when she entered.
But that is anthropomorphizing, I suspect: birds may take baths for reasons other than washing. Perhaps it feels good. Or maybe they are washing off unwanted scents. Water may even do something positive for feathers and flying. Regardless of the reason, this cardinal’s bath was complete, despite being brief. Everything was efficiently covered and then flickered off. When she finished, she hopped back to the edge of the public contrivance we have placed outside our home’s bathroom, surveyed the back yard (ignoring the man in the window behind her with a washcloth to his face), and unceremoniously flew into the day.
You have undoubtedly leapt to a conclusion or two regarding my nature report and the title of this musing. My dog and cat disagree with you, however. As I describe my unexpected observation of a two-legged flyer bathing in my yard, my four-legged companions who spend most of their days indoors are whining and meowing at my feet. Somehow they have sussed out my fascination with the natural world they themselves feel a different affinity for. They would like me to describe the majesty associated with their experience as well. When I shush them from my feet (and ear), they take to romping about the living room table, their movements a combination of dance, retreat, annoyance, and joy. Moo Moo (our dog’s nickname) usually does not see Pei Pei’s (our cat’s nickname) attention as affectionate. She likes to complain, sometimes pitifully, when the smaller feline makes fun of her canine companion by nibbling at the fur beneath Moo Moo’s chin or even licking her ears. Neither of them see much point in the bath of a bird. They have their own views on what counts in life.
Is that how it is for us biped mammalians? Do we each experience the world and its intermittent glory through the individual lens of our own sensation? Might there be something more to how we decide what is “best” in the days or decades of our waking worlds?
If you asked me what I would name as the best days of my life, I would immediately think of my favorite interactions – including introductions – to people I love: my wife, my children, my family, my friends. Do I do this because of expectation, an internal value system, or some hierarchy of experience emotionally burned into the circuitry of my brain? Does it matter? The days I met my wife, my younger sister, and each of my daughters are major markers in my journey. Images of those events splash across my internal memory screen, still life renderings of so much more than a snapshot from my retinae and optic nerves. They are suffused with touch, sound, a sense of glowing beneath and. across my skin. When I sit inside such remembrances, I live outside time. And perched on the edge of my own lifespan, I realize that it is not days I am recalling, no. It is meaning. Does meaning exist inside measurable cycles of sun and star? Is a moment of meaning able to be defined by the limits of our language?
Pei Pei thinks not. She has just completed her own morning’s cleaning and is feeling supercharged. Dashing across floor, furniture, and window sills, she is enjoying her ability to romp over and through my musings. I can’t tell if either she or Moo Moo worry why it is only me who sits idly in this wing-backed chair, tapping at some slab resting across my lap. What I do sense they understand, however, is that my attention is not turned to them. Such egregious disregard, for the period we label the present, is unacceptable. Because now is everything. And everything is now.