Hope and Fear

Christy Lorio

A pair of finches took up residence in an abandoned nest in my front porch light fixture. We  watched them as they made a little home in the sweet olive tree in our front yard. They scoped out a good spot and they began to build trust not with us, but our physical space. They tolerate when I sit on the porch with my neighbor most evenings, eavesdropping on conversations from passerby and shaking our fists at drivers going too fast.

 At first, it was three finches claiming space in the tree. The two females got into fights, especially if one got too close to the other. If they were humans, I imagined them ripping each other’s hair out, cursing at one another and causing a scene. Why they fighting for the male’s attention? They, along with the red-chested male finch, would perch on the power lines and declare our front yard their own. They chased off other birds if they got too close, not unlike our dogs barking at other dogs on their evening walks.

As the temperature changed from a mild, New Orleans spring to the cusp of an  unbearably hot summer, we noticed the finches inching closer and closer to the abandoned nest.

The male and one female padded the nest with anything they could find, mostly sticks and tired, old cushion batting they plucked from a trash pile. The light fixture is too high for us to peek inside, but we tried anyway. My husband grabbed the ladder so we could get a closer look, but we didn’t get so close that we disturbed anything potentially growing inside. It wasn’t our space now; it was theirs. We left them alone as we watched and hoped from afar. I pulled out the long lens on my film camera, using it like a pair of binoculars to spy on our potential new neighbors.

One morning, Thomas let the dog out and there were new sounds emanating from above. The eggs had finally hatched, which made us positively giddy. We had just lost our other dog to cancer after months of treatment, including a leg amputation and six rounds of chemo. Our hearts were still heavy and my head was still bald from my own cancer treatment, which has been ongoing for the past three years.

Mom and dad guarded the nest and I imagined, like any new parents, that they were full of hope and fear. Every day the babies got a little bigger and a little stronger. I take delight in the tender caretaking. When dad feeds them,  I can hear the high pitched chirps they emit from my living room. If I’m lucky enough to be sitting on the front porch while they’re being fed, I watch them crane their necks, reminding dad they are still in need of his care.

The fledgling’s heads are now covered in feathers and my hair is starting to catch up to their heads, although I have a long way to go until I have more than a veneer of near invisible strands covering my scalp. I imagine the babies are approaching the avian equivalent of teenage hood— getting stronger and more independent but not quite ready to fly.

My husband and I don’t have kids by choice, just my two year old niece that I’m enamored with. Like watching the momma and poppa finches, we are on the periphery of my niece’s upbringing. I taught her how to trigger the shutter button on my camera, snapping a photo that I have yet to develop. I taught her my dog’s names, Izzy and Beignet, while Izzy was still alive.

I hope to live long enough to see my niece become a teenager. I hope she loves me as much as I love her. I often joke that when she’s old enough to spend summers in New Orleans away from her parents, she’ll sneak out of my house and head to a bar but, jokes on her, Aunt Christy is already there, two drinks in.

I’m awaiting the day that the baby finches are big enough to fly. I wonder if they’ll hesitate, unsure of themselves, or if they will have the confidence to trust their wings. They’ll falter before they succeed, but they’ll go on to soar through the neighborhood. Perhaps we’ll see them again as adults, ready to use our nest once again.

Christy Lorio is a writer and photographer based in New Orleans, LA. She had the distinction of being a Fellow at Arizona State University's 2021 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference. Her writing has been published in Had and Nurture Literary, among other places. Most recently, photography has been selected for the 2021 Louisiana Contemporary exhibit at The Ogden Museum in New Orleans. @Christylorio