Welcome to the May issue of Wild Greens.  

The Fledgling issue is all about transitions, new beginnings, growing up, trying something new, moving out, and, of course, baby birds.

In Maggie Topel’s digital logo, a fledgling makes a successful leap from the nest.

Tracy Whiteside’s photograph, “Vacation,” captures the artist in her very first self-portrait.

“Until They Let Go,” a short story by Jillian Schedneck, follows a mother’s perspective as she spends time with her children, and anticipates a moment when her children become independent. Dea Meissner Ducci’s photograph, “Rocks,” depicts a child exploring on the ocean rocks.

Riding a bike is likened to soaring in the sky in Paul Hostovsky’s poem, “Flying.” Scott Tierney’s drawing, “First Tries,” depicts the first flight of a baby bird in stages. In the poem, “Sparrow Nest,” by Dustin P Brown, a group of fledglings land, and then live, on the speaker’s head.

In “The Phoenix,” Julia Naurzalijeva paints a legendary creature of rebirth and renewal. Sarah Voight writes “A Spell for Transitions” to help us navigate change.

Dave Briggs and Avy Hattingh’s stone creation, “transformation,” shows the process of creating a bonsai bowl out of rose quartz, a new way they found to create that they've now honed as a craft. Kristin Bryant Rajan’s poem, “Spring in Cleveland,” enjoys the change in seasons after a Cleveland winter. Melissa Lomax’s drawing, “Bee Kind,” displays an uplifting and punny design as a vinyl sticker, her first foray into this new product line for her art.

Edgy Sack’s personal essay, “Lift the Lid,” recounts a tender moment with her children, when they watched the transformation of a butterfly.

Hayley J. Boyle’s watercolor cover for the issue depicts a very grumpy baby robin.

Falling can turn to flying; how will you know what you’re capable of if you don’t take the leap?

-Rebecca

Until They Let Go

by Jillian Schedneck

The girls take a bath in the morning. They just fit in the tub and don’t yet mind the squeeze, or the interminably long time the small tap takes to fill the narrow bath. They play with figurines in the water until their fingers wrinkle so deeply, I worry they’ll never smooth out again. But at night, when I kiss their hands, the skin is soft and new.

I check on them while they’re in the bath, but I have my online meetings, my drafts to read, and teaching to prepare, new platforms to learn and set up and streamline. They won’t drown in such little water. They won’t slip as they get out. They always call to me so I can hold their hand.

In the afternoon, I cave, and they watch TV while I have more meetings. They send me paper notes, or messages on a sketch board, asking me to change the channel, or if they can watch another episode. They don’t know how to change the channel; they haven’t figured out that I can’t tell how many episodes they’ve watched, that my time, working and concentrating, passes differently than theirs, sitting in passive entertainment, bodies still and warm and wrinkled from the bath. They don’t know.

In the late afternoon, when I say work is done, we walk in the hills near our house. We almost never see anyone else. We make up stories about sisters trapped on an island, or sisters who must cross a dangerous sea, or sisters who save each other from a pair of sister-witches. I don’t even need to steer them toward tales of danger and survival, and then I think, at some level, they must know.

We read at bedtime, an endless repository of more stories on another platform, so different from our made-up tales. They are tidy fables of a bygone era the girls know but don’t understand that they’ve missed. We say good night, and they hold me close, then release me bit by bit, until they both hold a hand, laughing because they won’t let go.

We joke about cutting off my hands so they can have one each. These are strange times.

Tomorrow they will bathe and watch TV, and we will walk and make up stories. I will read to them and say good night, offer my hands in mock noble sacrifice. We will do this again and again until they know—really know. And when they let go, I’ll have to decide what happens next.

Flying

Sparrow Nest

A Spell for Transitions

by Sarah Voight

It’s natural to be afraid of change. Look at the new growth of spring. It’s bright, fresh, and exciting. However, up against the strong old growth of comfortability it has a frightening fragility. A flower can fall apart in your hands, and the tender greens are prime targets for herbivores. In spite of this, we must remember the strength of the summer. The natural world shows us every year that, with time and care, the tender leaves become stronger. So, if you feel nervous about a new endeavor, try out this little spell that reminds us that change can be beautiful and, with time, will settle into something stronger.

Ingredients:

Ritual:

1. Thank each of your plant friends for lending their energy
2. Anoint the twigs with the dew from a thistle
3. Arrange the twigs, clover, and dandelion in a small vase
4. Fill the vase with water 
5. Arrange the catkins around the vase
6. Recite: “I will embrace change. I will honor new growth. I will support the new growth as it grows strong.” (Or whatever words feel right to you)
7. Place somewhere you will see and recite daily to give you strength and reassurance

Spring in Cleveland

Lift the Lid 

by Edgy Sack

My oldest child, Nathan, was in the fourth grade when I homeschooled. I had six children under nine. On one of our daily walks around the neighborhood park, my six-year-old son, who normally picked up cat poop, came toward me cradling something in his hand. Whatever he was holding, I was pretty sure it wasn’t cat poop.

As he approached me, he held out his hands and asked, “What is it, a cocoon?” 

Our brightest child so far piped up, “No, it’s a chrysalis.”

Who had taught her that I wondered, certainly not me. Maybe she had read it on the back of a cereal box. We all did an about-face and trekked for home. The kids picked up sticks and leaves along the way, tenderly holding them up to me. I admired each of their finds—oohing and ahhing over them. Letting them know how important each of these things would be in making a special home for this in-between creature.

When our oldest girl got to the door, she pushed it open and rushed to be first to get a container to put the cocoon into. She picked out one of the gallon-sized jars that I used to can dill pickles in, from under the sink.

The children took turns putting their special finds in the jar. One of the kids ran and got our Golden Book on insects. The six-year-old still gently cradled the cocoon in his fist.

“Let’s put it closest to the longest stick,” I said. Nathan leaned the branch in the jar and our six-year-old ever so gently placed the cocoon up against it, the way it was pictured in the Golden Book insect guide. Eventually, I had to stop them all from adding grass.

“That’s enough grass,” I said. “Let’s just let it have its space.” I found a small Philips screwdriver and hammered “breathing holes” in the jar’s lid. We left the jar on the back screened-in deck. 

Every day, the children looked in on the tiny insect. This was well before the days of Google, but we did own a Child Craft encyclopedia set. I read the pages out loud to the children. “An adult butterfly’s average life span is two weeks. No adult butterfly can live more than a year. When butterflies emerge from the cocoon, they fly off to find flowers and trees to shelter in and nourish on…” 

I warned each child. “As much as you might want to, don’t mess with the cocoon. Leave it alone. It knows what to do. It can find its own way.” 

At night, as I did every night, I lay in bed thinking of my day. I thought, how much we are like butterflies. We have to work our own ways out. We have to flap our wet wings and find our own flowers and trees. Like butterflies, our lives are short. 

I was a young mother, even though I had six children, I still felt I needed a mother myself. I especially needed soft grass and hand-picked twigs. My mother was an alcoholic. She drank herself into oblivion nightly. She hid in blue pills and tiny Dixie cups full of Vodka. 

She never padded a glass jar for my siblings or me. Instead, our existence was fragile, our wings were wet and floppy, unsteady in every way. 

Maybe Mother was torn from her cocoon before she was ready—her wings ragged by the time I knew her. She had not found safe trees and pretty flowers, she survived amongst carpenter ants; her trees were eaten before she even flew to them. 

But I could help my children to be gentle with life’s creatures—to tread softly—to treat life with wonder and awe. 

One afternoon, about two weeks after we brought the cocoon home and made the jar for what now looked like a butterfly under the thin cocoon skin, I was fixing dinner.

Nathan yelled from the deck. “It’s a butterfly it’s a monarch!”

I quickly washed my hands of raw chicken breast and hustled to the deck along with the children. Sure enough, it was a beautiful monarch. 

I spoke quietly. “The only way this butterfly can make it is if we lift the lid and let it fly away on its own. Nobody can touch it. It has to make it on its own or it will die.”

I have thought of that butterfly throughout the years. It was beautiful and it was magical to watch it come to life. I was so happy when it flew away from us that day. It was what it was meant to do.