little nests

Before Brandon I was unaware of all the different types of nests one person can make. I really thought the practice was "handled" fairly well by birds, and that nests were primarily for holding small families of birds until everyone was too big to fit. Then all fly away and the nest is no longer of use…to the birds. I was frighteningly informed once that sometimes snakes use old nests to shed their skin, and if a person happens to be trimming shrubs in which a such squatted nest contains said shedding snake, the snake will quickly make its presence known before slithering (eeeeeeeeeeeeeek) off into some nearby grass. I didn’t like that moment.

Nests made by people. Having been married for a few years I’ve learned a great deal about nests and human behavior. Nests can be made of just about anything a person is continually in contact with: socks, undershirts, books, envelopes, and sadly dirty dishes. Not to be misunderstood; a nest isn’t just a pile of stuff you left around, it’s an unusually specific pile of stuff you leave around, in a place that stuff wouldn’t or shouldn’t normally be left, i.e. a pile of dirty dishes on the floor of one’s office.

Recently I’ve discovered that our sweet little family has begun to make nests together. Tonight I found a shoe nest in the middle of the floor of the kitchen. I’m really not sure how there happened to be a shoe nest in the middle of the kitchen floor, but I loved that nest and recorded it here. The shoe nest seemed just as sweet a recording of our family these days, as a portrait taken by any glamorous photographer. So here is our family, according to the little nest we made together.