It feels hard to let go of summer. Today I was wandering around the lanes with two small children. One runs ahead constantly putting the heart across me while the other holds my hand and is anxious about the shade of trees and the sound of bees.
I’m adding a narrator’s voice to the walk just to reassure her that all is well. “That’s a blackbird”, I say when there is a rustling in the ditch. “He loves the blackberries as much as we do!” The little one listens to me intently. She has no option but to trust me so I give full and factual information. How precious that she looks into my eyes and is reassured as long as I say it is so.
The bigger girl laughs at me, yet every so often asks for information too.
“Do any bears live in this forest?”
“Do spiders hide when they hear you coming?”
“Can you eat these yokes?”
It was surely the warmest, sweetest summer for a long time. The boreens are still alive with assorted butterflies; tortoiseshells, red admirals and painted ladies. The garden is full of them too with bees buzzing and the sound of swallows and house martins gathering every evening. These two girls are hungry for nature and are lapping up the sights, sounds and smells of the landscape.
While butterfly numbers overall are in serious decline, our community of house martins is growing every year. When we welcomed them back to their crumbling nests under our roof last April, little did we know that there would be more than ever arriving or that so many new nests would be added to the community. Now they gather in their hundreds every evening as the youngsters practice their skills for the long flight south.
What I learned this year is that after the young have fledged, the whole family returns to the nest every night to sleep. Their little heads peep out of their superbly constructed mud homes like a bunch of giddy toddlers tricking about on a top bunk. Even up until very recently this has continued.
At dusk the girls and myself watch bewitched as hundreds, maybe thousands of them circle the lake all the while chirping and cheeping as they skim by, sometimes very close to our heads. The girls are anxious about the departure. “Where will they go?”
I’m anxious for them too, so I’m talking to the swallows as they gather, wishing them a safe journey and trying to imagine the long flight taking “my little birds” thousands of miles away. “I hope you find somewhere warm and safe I say. Maybe southern Portugal or Morocco would be nice. Anyway, Bon Voyage, we will wait for your return in 2026.” The girls wave, dancing up and down with the excitement of their flight.
Then the darling girl, all of 9 years of age, suddenly shouts to the circling birds, “Don’t go to Gaza! Don’t be going near Gaza!”!” The 4 year old joins in “Don’t go to Gaza birdies!”
I didn’t know if Gaza was something that they knew about. Now they tell me about children dying in Gaza, about bombs, starvation and war. The nine year old explains to me what a famine is. None of this can be talked away or ignored. None of the images in their heads can be made into a cute story about a little family living in a nest made from tiny bricks of mud. Layered one by one on top of each other. Waiting under our roof for the safe return of the housemartin community.
We have to ask Google about the route that swallows take across Europe and Africa. It seems that the vast majority are heading even further south than I had imagined, across the Sahara Desert and all the way to South Africa. The girls are somewhat reassured.
I am not at all.
Most of the migration routes cross over what we would refer to as the Middle East. “Where is Gaza anyway?” the older girl asks. We find it on the map. So tiny in the scheme of things. The insanity of everything that is happening there is hard to imagine. I’m lost for explanations. Lost for solutions. Out of hope.
I’m sure they pick all this up. So sharp are their young minds that nothing goes unnoticed. Later when their parents collect them, I am banking on a report of lovely forest walks, butterflies and blackberries. And indeed when they come, the girls are happy out, talking about painted lady butterflies and hawthorn berries.
I didn’t realise how deeply and truly frightening the whole concept of Gaza could be for those girls. How sad and heart breaking for them. But it is the same for all of us.
And even as I try to imagine our world in 2026 when the swallows will return, I shiver because I feel that there is no certainty. What will have happened by then? Who will the so- called victors be? Where will be the next group of dispossessed?
Nature carries on. This evening the swallows, swifts and house martins gather for a flying frolic as usual. Wherever they end up, in spite of all our efforts, we haven’t killed them all off just yet.
I hope that my favourite young humans will grow up to enjoy their future world as much as we have enjoyed strolling through the last days of summer together.
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