On the beauty of birds

Sometimes I wonder if the birds come up to the window so that they can listen to the music. It seems everyone here is musical, so why wouldn’t the birds show an interest in the sounds coming from my ipod?

Their beauty causes me to pause when I see them – beautiful blues and greens and yellows darting around. There are a few small birds with hummingbird-style beaks that come to the windows and cling to the screens to have a look. We thought one was going to come in the other day as it was about the same size as the small hole in the screen. I’ve seen them land on the bottom edge of the minivan side mirrors and stop and peer at their reflection.

Shortly after 5, the birds begin to awaken with the start of daylight. So close to the equator, it doesn’t take long for the sun to fully rise, but they cram a lot of singing in before it is fully up. It starts with one or two testing the air with their tweets and chirps and whistles… and then the symphony begins. It’s the quieter preamble to the noise the kids make as they get up and run up the stairs for breakfast… the first gentle alarm before the happy and loud kid chaos kicks in.

And the flowers too – such an extravagance of beauty. At night, I love the smell of the plumeria as it wafts in on the evening air. One of the little boys likes to take one fallen plumeria flower and put it on the windshield of the minivan. Almost every day, I walk out and see he has put one there. I find this ritual of beautifying the van (or leaving a present for us?) sweet and moving. If I am around when he does it, his face lights with a huge smile as he says carefully in English “Look!” and points at the flower resting there, before running off to school. Some of the other flowers last only a day or two in a burst of colour, before shedding their beauty or being washed free of blooms in the rain. When I stop and look around, or literally stop and smell the flowers, it strikes me again what an overwhelming amount of beauty there is in the world. It’s as if there is a continual opportunity to stop and rest for a few minutes by taking in everything that surrounds us that we often miss in our busyness or work or distraction. So I’ve been stopping most times when I walk by the plumeria bush; to stop and smell, or to look at and try to take in its beauty. It may not last long here but the moment I take to enjoy it will give me gifts of relaxation and rest and I’ll have one moment of beauty and peace to sustain me. I think we are meant to take these gifts as they are presented to us – why else would the beauty be there?