First Fruits…by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld

March 21, 2013 Whitney Farmer 4 Comments

Whitney ran a rock music club on the beach in L.A.. She has an MBA, and has family visiting soon.

The day before the first day of Spring, Mia laid two eggs.

She has no mate in her life, not even the big black crow who visits each morning and waits for Cheerios by where the boat is tied up. So there is no chance that the eggs will hatch into chicks. But Mia in her peanut sized brain decided that she wanted the full experience of life, and tore up her fuzzy store-bought bed and made a nest. In the morning, she was making a sound like a turtledove and wouldn’t get up for breakfast. And if you don’t have to gulp down coffee and race into the morning commute, then why not sleep in? Especially if birdseed and sliced green apple room service is included…

Using the example set by the exclusive birthing center at the local hospital that is built on a cliff with patient rooms that overlook the ocean waves, I made sure that the room was warm and beautifully lit, “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber playing softly in the background. She was sipping soymilk from a small silver cup as I left for work.

Mia experienced complications sometime in the night. The next morning, the bottom of the cage had blood in it. She was puffed up, too weak to perch without losing her balance, and her feet were ice cold. Phone calls with the breeder and the avian veterinary specialist (yes, they exist…) left me with the recommendation to keep her quiet and in familiar surroundings, encouraging her to eat. As I cracked open pistachios for her, I was struck by the paradox that in the midst of a common and natural process Mia was feeling absolutely miserable.

Difficult times are common. They are natural.  But pain still hurts. What makes it worth the effort?

Ask Mia. No matter what, she offered up eggs. Yep, they were sterile. But she can always say that she did it. It tore her up, but she was right on schedule for the first day of Spring.

In the Hebraic calendar, this is the month of Nisan, right? This was the time set aside for a First Fruit offering. One of the specifications about this ritual is that it comes from “..thy land”. Thy. My land. From my resources, not a field that I am sharecropping or gleaning. If the territory is just a solitary cage, By God mold the pistachios and soymilk and green apple slices into perfect little eggs, even if they are sterile.

And the First Fruit also is offered up right after the winter, before it is warm and before there is bloom and before there is evidence of proof for any hope that we have.  If we could see it, it wouldn’t be hope, right?

Hips and larynx and artist’s brush and writer’s pen are built to give birth. Soil and eggs and classrooms nurture seed.  And as soon as possible and before anyone thinks that it should, the fruit shows up.

It doesn’t matter if blood is shed, because it is the first time that anyone can see that the Winter is gone.

Quote of the Blog, from Charles Dickens: “The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this – that a thing constructed can be loved only after it is constructed; But a thing created is loved even before it exists.”

Image from my cell phone of Mia, who is recuperating.