Fledging.
fledged; fledging
intransitive verb
of a young bird : to acquire the feathers necessary for flight or independent activity
also : to leave the nest after acquiring such feathers
Since our daughter was two, we’ve kept a small flock of chickens in a coop out by the garden.
We order a new batch of chicks from the Farmer’s Union every few years and have gotten into something of a rhythm: The birds start out fuzzy and cute, cheeping together under a heat lamp in the basement, become strange and awkward pullets - all stray feathers and long necks - and eventually, with as much gentleness as we can afford them, they join the older flock in the big coop.
N. is the tender of the chickens; she feeds and waters them, knows them, and also names them, which means the chickens are a kind of living record of her own growth.
There was the batch she dubbed Goldilocks, Angel, and Little Princess, the Harry-Potter-inspired Fawkes and Phoenix. The latest chicks are named after her favorite YouTube stars. Along the way - thanks to her flair for the ridiculous - there have been chickens called Paint, Pigeon, Einstein (uncannily, the smartest bird of the bunch), and… Chicken.
In an old video, her toddler body lumbers after the birds, opening her arms and calling out, “Hang on! Hang on!” As she tries to get them to hold up a minute and wait for her already.
Next week, that no-longer-toddler graduates eighth grade and I find some part of myself skipping along after her, crying, “Hang on! Hang on!” Couldn’t she possibly slow down?
Reader, she cannot.
As much as the changes ache my parental heart, there is also this: Fledging is essential to flight. If we are alive and growing, we will bust out of the earlier versions of our life, we will grow our capacity and our range. It’s as true for our kids as it is for ourselves.
There are certainly times when we’re pushed from the nest of our own comfort with zero readiness. Times I would personally have liked a feather or two, anything, really, to soften the fall.
But then, if we are lucky, there are moments like these - tender, unsteady, but supported - when we stretch a little further, summon as best we can a trust in those new feathers, and ready ourselves for flight.
(Not if we’re chickens, though. Then we just run around making a lot of noise :)