Two nests of crow chicks fledged on my city street this past week. I wonder if the high-rise humans down the block noticed the chicks’ noisy beginning of life in the urban wild. Everyday for two weeks, I looked up from under the trees while walking Elsa. I saw the chicks poking their hungry beaks out of the nests, then stepping out to  bounce from leafy limb to limb to rooftop to balcony, squawking away. The parent crows flew farther and farther, screaming at their offspring as encouragement to get those wings flapping and join them in pursuing edible horizons. And then, quiet. They’re gone. They’ll be back, of course. But for now, the daily racket of new young crows has flown the coop.

How comforting to observe the steadfast natural order of things. These days, the built world I’ve known my whole life is breaking down so fast that I half expect the natural world to follow;  Lake Michigan to dry up and all the birds to drop from the sky. That bad? Sometimes. Experts say old-age limits short-term memory, exaggerates long-term. My long-term emotional memories are thus resistant to age-related decline. I’m in my 80th year, having just celebrated the 79th. The fear I felt watching the original Mad Max (1979),  Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Blade Runner (1982) bubbles up without reference to those movies. It simply presents itself as the world we know is over.

On the other hand, I’m convinced The Wizard of Oz gave me a love for birds, if not a curiosity about an unearthly world. Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow; why, then, oh why can’t I? 

Yeah, why can’t I?  

Every time a crow chick leaves the nest, some transcendental part of me follows. My earliest dreams were flying visions. I willed myself off the ground and flew around the neighborhood spying on people. God help me, if I had a drone. I’d probably be peeking in the windows of high-rise residences. 

There’s no question movies have influenced my core. They’re not saving me from worry, nor diverting the fear of living in a militarized police state. That long-term memory perverts itself into real and present danger. Can the now-pardoned Jan 6 insurrectionists show up as a Mad-Max-type private army? Would there be a search and rescue operation if my transatlantic ship capsized like the Poseidon? And worse, will there be an antidote for experimental robots gone bad as in Blade Runner?

Fortunately, the clouds of knowing break open every morning to a normal reality.  Recent shoulder surgery grounds me in pain. Friends gather for coffee. My granddaughter is marrying a super guy. Regulars show up at church. The same 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are read at every meeting. The “No Kings’ protest is actually a movement. The rabbits are back in the park. Elsa goes for walks. 

Normal and abnormal live side by side.

For now.