Live and Learn

I had an Ah-Hah moment this morning.  Interestingly it wasn’t as the shower water turned to an icy spray just as my hair was lathered into a riot of white bubbles and it wasn’t when my brain registered that in my new place I CAN’T run the dishwasher, the clothes washer AND a hot shower all at the same time!  No, the Ah-Hah hit after I had screeched; then blindly flipped off the water; leapt out of the shower; wrapped my head in a towel to keep the shampoo suds from dripping into my eyes and wrapped my shivering body in a warm robe then rolled my eyes, shook my head and muttered under my breath; 

”Well….Live and Learn!” 

And then….bling....

It occurred to me at that moment just what a gift those two things are to me.  Such a precious gift of still being Alive.  And amazingly, I can still LEARN.  It’s a flippant little statement, “Live and Learn” one that I’ve said and heard many times over the years but now, when I know how quickly life can be taken, and how there is still so much I want to do and learn that this good old throw-away statement changed direction and marched to the top of my motivational list as a highly valued mantra!

Like my water heater’s capacity, I often learn things the hard way.  I’d like to avoid that form of learning in the future as much as possible.

I’ll always remember a hard lesson learned the early autumn day when I was six years old while walking around the yard of my Grandpa’s old white farmhouse. I had picked up a twig and was dragging it behind me in the dark green grass when my eye caught site of a teeny-tiny bird falling through the air from the branches of the giant apple tree and bouncing abruptly onto the thick carpeting of lawn below. I ran to it, and oh it was so tiny, no feathers yet, just a bit of hair on its flesh colored body and skeleton wings. His oversized eyes were closed tight but his yellow beak opened and closed as if to say; “Whoa, what just happened!!”

I gently scooped him up into my hand and examined him closely to make certain nothing was broken, looked up to locate his nest and then tucked the trembling little body into the pocket of my sweater.  I climbed up on the white picket fence next to the tree and reached for a branch, pulling and inching my way up, up, up. My sweater caught on a sharp branch and R-I-P but that didn’t matter, I was on a mission to bring the little fellow back to his home.  I arrived at the nest, found a good branch to sit upon and felt inside my pocket…all was well there!  Whew.  I pulled him out and gently dropped him back in the nest with his brothers and sisters.  “Where’s your mommy?” I asked as I carefully tapped each one on their cute little heads and did some nest cleaning by pulling out some of the brilliant blue cracked shells.  Then I settled back on my branch chair and pulled a bright red apple hanging from another branch to munch, pleased as punch with my compassionate service.

I heard my Grandpa calling from down below.

“Up here!” I called back. Grandpa was a tall man, with hair as white as a baby lamb and eyes as blue as the broken robins-egg-blue shells that had been in the nest.  He was close to 80 years old but he was easily able to hoist himself up to sit by me in the giant 50 year old apple tree.  I told him what I had done and thought I would get a good pat on the back.  But instead, he said, “Oh dear. When a human hand has touched a baby bird, or a nest, the mother robin might not return”. The apple fell from my hand as the tears fell from my eyes. I didn’t know!

“What will happen to them?” I sobbed, feeling more miserable than I had ever felt in my whole 6 years of life.

“Well, I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ll watch to see if she returns but what I do know is that the Bible tells us that Heavenly Father knows and loves each and every little bird and he will protect those little birds or take them safely to live with him again.”

“Is Heavenly Father mad at me?” I asked Grandpa.

“I’m sure He knows that you were trying to help and that now because you know, you’ll do better next time…Live and Learn”. And he climbed out of the tree, lifted his arms and helped me down.

I prayed and prayed that Heavenly Father would forgive me and asked if He would kindly take care of the little birds and to please tell them I was so very sorry.

When I came back to the farm a week later, Grandpa didn’t mention the birds so I didn’t ask.  I assumed the worst and then pictured in my mind the little birds sitting by Heavenly Father singing Him a cheerful song.

So, today, I am committing to learn something new every day while I’m still alive. Never before has so much information been so readily available for learning and learning the easy way, not the hard way.  In fact, I think I’ll just start out every day by saying “LIVE AND LEARN” and have it be a ‘woohoo’ instead of an ‘oops, oh well’.