An American goldfinch perches on a feeder.
An American goldfinch perches on a feeder.
Now that our Christmas decorations are back in the closet, the biggest attraction in our living room is a monstera we brought in from the cold. We set ours near the hearth, but it seems poised to colonize the rest of the floor, its huge foliage spilling from the fireplace to claim half the rug.
We have a big monstera variety, one with leaves the size of fish platters. The curious thing about these plants, as many gardeners know, are the big holes in the leaves, which can make a mature monstera look moth-eaten. But botanists say these holes are a clever way for monsteras to thrive in the tropics, allowing light to reach through upper leaves to ones below.
Sharing a room with our monstera each morning as I have my first coffee of the day, I’ve been moved to wonder if we might all be better if we made more space in our lives for light to get through. That kind of space can take many forms, I suppose, and for me this winter it’s been the few moments I try to steal each day for watching goldfinches from my front window.
Goldfinches arrive in my Louisiana neighborhood around Christmas each year, and they usually stay until Mardi Gras. They’re lovely birds — a bit olive in the early part of the season, then more vividly yellow as winter fades from the calendar. Their gradual change of color thrills me. It’s as if, through some inner magic, these tiny birds are discarding the dullness of dusk and blooming into the fierce brilliance of noon.
There are a dozen goldfinches at my tube feeder right now, their white wing bars and saffron breasts like something out of an illuminated manuscript. My daily connection with these birds answers an especially sharp hunger I’ve felt this month for the consolations of beauty. It’s been a brutal January, with a tragic act of terror in New Orleans and wildfires in Los Angeles.
The news is full of other grim tidings.
In the midst of such deep suffering, does watching something beautiful do much good? Author Barbara Kingsolver offered an eloquent answer in an essay many years ago, her words often quoted in online conversations.
“In my own worst seasons,” she wrote, “I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again.”
Kingsolver isn’t arguing for escapism but engagement, an embrace of the gifts that sustain us as we undertake the hard work of healing a broken world. Hers are words to live by as an anxious winter slowly warms into spring.
Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.
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