It happened in stages, as most things do in a garden, though at the time it merely seemed a happy story, the sort only nature could provide. Through the back window, flowers bloomed. Bees buzzed. And Mrs. Robin, internally tuned to her own pregnancy, began building a nest. 

Purer forms of enchantment might only exist in movies.

The piecemeal process left detritus scattered beneath the back porch light, bits of straw and grass that would soak up water in the rain and bake in the sun while the inchoate dwelling, tucked under the eaves, dried and turned brown. The ingenuity at finding material was more noteworthy than any attendant mess. 

I hadn't been paying attention until the base of the nest, perched atop the light, firm against the painted house, became a bowl. After that, it was only a matter of reshaping, tamping down straw that refused to sit. So the mother sat, patient. She sat intentionally, waiting for her eggs, just as she would sit to keep them warm, and sit on her new chicks to stow them safely in place. I spent serious time watching, truant in writing home and other cold-weather endeavors.

Despite her patience, she startled easily, worried as any expectant mother would be, especially in America. If anyone opened the back door, she flitted away to the safety of the apple tree, but no one could accuse her of neglect. There she glared, squawking until the intruder retreated. There was nothing musical in her noise; the warning tone was clear. 

She, as much as the inclement climate, imprisoned us indoors. But everyone is someone’s neighbor. When area cats strolled through the yard, Mrs. Robin eyed them silently. Her home was too high–they had no way to climb up, no landing from which to jump. Besides, after a winter of nomadic drifting, the cats were gaunt. Impoverished. Mrs. Robin was robust with fire in her eyes.

At least she was when she wasn't fretful, flying hither and thither, her swollen belly a special veil between her and the world. In anxious hours she seemed to have a clarity of vision I lacked. Foolishly, I still believed in a story that would go on and on. She had learned, however, to measure each stage. To resign herself to what she was given.

The last time our house had hosted birds, they made a nest inside the body of a guitar nailed into the siding, painted bright red. What happened inside was noisy, but mysterious. This nest lay in plain view and had a few secrets, only theories. We wondered for days when the eggs, which Mrs. Robin dutifully attended, would hatch.

After a bout of foul weather, a storm that can only arise in the contradictions of Spring, we had proof. No one could see the chicks, but with open windows we heard them. Mrs. Robin stood peering into the nest, regurgitating some pabulum, poking her beak down in a mixture of threat and custody. Noises collected around her. Life had its moment.

Soon we grew accustomed to the sight of small mendacious beaks. Not long after, we saw tufted heads, eager eyes. The power of ardor. As the view changed, so did the food.

Mrs. Robin took feeding in stages as well. She'd fly out, hunt up a worm from the wet earth, and land on a metal lawn chair, the kind marketed as impervious to rain and sun, which we left outdoors all year round. She held the worm halfway in her beak, pausing the world so we could use it as a mirror. The visible part of the worm hadn't received the fatal message from the hidden end, or ignored it, for it still lifted slowly, like a flower drawn to the sun. The poor breakfast did not have long to wait. After turning her head, watchful for predators, Mrs. Robin hastened to the nest and lowered the invertebrate to her famished brood. 

There were three chicks, initially. Being human, and at best amateur ornithologists, we had no qualms about interpreting–even creating–the drama. We ascribed motives and tragedy to simple feedings.

Our species has a way of ransacking narrative, making every story ours. Watching the birds, I told my wife about times I’d been left at campgrounds while my parents dealt with my older siblings. Forgotten birthdays. Sweaters the wrong size, intended for my brother, given to me. Years where I got used to being moved to the margins or told to wait, one palm on the front door, while my parents dealt with my sister. As if I’d be foolish enough to run away deliberately. Exclusion was built in to the busy house, though we were safe. The world beyond the cul-de-sac, the concrete bowl where we lived, was painted with trouble.

Mrs. Robin first fed the biggest of her chicks, its size dictated by early days of greedy consumption. Or perhaps she knew it had the best chance of survival, some avian version of Sophie's Choice. The second chick was fed in due course and ate uncomplainingly. By this time, little was left to satiate the third bird. It kept its insistent beak upright and we pled on its behalf.

Eventually Mrs. Robin would seek more grub, pull life from the earth, and return to feed again. She still served the largest chick first. When the third and smallest ate, it was, we thought, never enough.

In the coming days, the newborns transformed. Stronger, curious, they sat up, peering over the edge of the cramped nest, sometimes on the point of falling out. Their feathers were light and scraggly, but it was not difficult to imagine them taking off, shyly testing their wings as they mastered their legs. Flight seemed no difficult business. After all, the air was full of holes.

When we could, we took pictures from behind glass, and invited family to marvel at this brief nature film just outside our living room. In all seasons, but especially changing ones, people depend on novelty, cheerfulness. The outdoors was a moving wonder, while indoors stagnated and sometimes smelled of disinfectant.

Prompted by our documentary thinking, we expected to catch a few practice flights before the family moved to some inchoate summer home. We didn't fool ourselves with thoughts of permanence. Nonetheless, mundane fluctuations took on the hue of miracle.

The next day offered the world more routine, an inevitable, mute condition. We could not warp nature to suit our demands, no matter how proud or pleasant. It was a Sunday, and an open schedule meant we could linger over breakfast or coffee and study our near neighbors. Sunday is the week's innocent womb, when bravery seems simple, less frail. By lunchtime though, having caught no sight of Mrs. Robin or her children, we opened the back door and ventured outside.

No fluttering on desperate wings. No angry chirping. In fact, no reaction at all. Making our way to the porch light, we saw beneath it a mass of infant feathers, something that might have been a flurry in motion, except it was pushed haphazardly into a corner where even the wind dared not touch it. Seeing the discarded plumage, it was impossible not to think of a worm, still elevating its head toward the sky, listening to the sound of hungry newborns, the language of mortality.

By midweek, another storm, Winter’s last distraction, had toppled one of our deck chairs, making it less than ideal as a perch for wary birds. When the sun returned, with the usual juncos and jays, we righted the chair. My partner carefully moved the empty nest to the shed where, safe from meteorological surprises, it would hold its form and become decorative. One of our children swept the deck. Without traces of our former tenants, it seemed pristine as a calendar. I felt weighted down by loss—for people like me, it’s the only thesis.

We carried on without mathematical certainty. Mrs. Robin was gone. We would never see her again. The neighborhood cats traipsed through now and again, destined to be disappointed. 

It was to be a charming Spring in most aspects. Even in the absence of an avian family, the world had a music all its own. Still, I kept wondering whether Mrs. Robin was alone when she decamped. Or had she managed to take her first and second feeders, the largest of the brood, with her? Her secret granted her sovereignty. As a third child, it gave me pause. Perhaps the youngest and smallest chick had fallen from home, as we all must, and had the misfortune to meet a cat before it could patch together the mechanics of flight. Just as likely—I knew from experience—in the interest of the burgeoning eldest, the need of the family to abscond, having stumped its way into life, it had been pushed. 

For those of us who are third children, there’s no other way to picture the world.