A lesson from birds

In the early days of the Pandemic, when so much was unknown about this virus, we followed the governor's guidelines and stayed in place at home, stewing in our anxieties about the future.  As time shifted and slowed into this new non-routine, we spent a fair amount of time making things, drawing things, observing things.  Often, our subject matter was local bird life.  These birds were a lesson in the art of getting on with things, even on the hardest of days, and we took great comfort in them.  One day we honored them with an afternoon of good old-fashioned papier-mâché.  We crafted goldfinch, robin, wren.  They made delightful gifts which we then send along on wing and wind to friends far and wide whom we weren't sure we might see again any time soon.  While the world went mad, the birds outside our windows (and the wrens who set up house in our back room) simply got on with their little lives.  We didn't know then how very much we would come to rely on the quiet beauty of Nature in our Ohio River Valley.  We don't live near any grand vista or seaside, but we have our little birds, and our hands to make things in honor of them.  We are grateful for that still.