Sunday from the Porch

Bluebird

Bluebirds used to gather outside my apartment window every morning. The first apartment I had here in Austin. And, not one or two. Dozens.

They’d fill the branches of the tree outside my second-floor window and chatter away while I made coffee. Sometimes I’d catch myself staring at them longer than I intended, mug cooling in my hand while they carried on with whatever important bluebird business had brought them there.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then again, we rarely recognize symbols while we’re standing inside them. Only later do we look back and realize something had been trying to get our attention all along.

I’ve been thinking about departures lately. Naturally. Not the kind with slammed doors or impossible decisions. The quieter variety. The kind that come disguised as acceptance. The kind where nobody has done anything wrong. The kind where the ending isn’t a surprise because you’ve been watching it creep closer for weeks, feeling it approach from miles away.

I think we’ve been taught to believe that certainty should make leaving easier. It doesn’t. Sometimes certainty just removes the argument. You stop debating reality. You stop trying to negotiate with timing. You stop pretending there is one more conversation capable of changing the shape of things. And then you’re left with the harder task: Accepting what you already know.

For most of my life, I’ve been remarkably good at leaving. Different cities. Different apartments. Different countries. Different versions of myself. It’s in my blood and bones. A hardwired condition of my existence. I called ten places “home” before my tenth birthday.

While movement has always less frightening than staying still, there is a particular kind of departure that remains difficult no matter how many times you’ve practiced it: Leaving behind possibility.

Not a relationship. Not even a person. Possibility.

The possibility of an imagined future that exists only in your mind. The possibility buried in the story you started writing before life decided to edit the ending. Those are the departures that linger.

Because possibility never arrives with evidence. It arrives with potential. And potential is easy to love. Potential asks very little of us. Reality requires something else entirely.

The older I get, the more I notice how often grief and gratitude arrive together with that signature ebb and flow.

You meet someone who reminds you parts of yourself are still alive. Gratitude. You realize they may not be part of your story in the way you briefly imagined. Grief. You discover both things can be true at the same time. More gratitude.

There was a season of my life when I believed every meaningful connection was meant to become something. A relationship. A business. A friendship. A future.

Now I’m less certain.

Sometimes people arrive simply to reveal a truth. Sometimes they show us what we’re ready for. Sometimes they show us what we’re no longer willing to settle for. Sometimes they remind us we’re capable of feeling excited, hopeful, vulnerable, interested, curious. And then they continue on their way.

The lesson remains even when the person doesn’t. I used to think that was failure. Now I think that’s life.

This summer’s departure is different than the one that took me out of Philadelphia. It’s not purely about wayfinding. It’s about placemaking. I’ll spend time in places I’ve grown to love, places I’ve never been, and places I’ve been longing to revisit.

I’ll walk streets that already know my footsteps. Sit in cafés with no chance of running into anyone who needs something from me. Return to coastlines that somehow feel both foreign and familiar.

Years ago, those departures were an escape. Now they feel different. Now they feel like a return. That’s the strange thing I’ve discovered about building a life over time.

Eventually you stop traveling to find yourself. You travel carrying yourself. The search becomes less urgent. The movement becomes less about reinvention and more about expansion. You don’t leave because you’re lost. You leave because you’re alive.

Maybe that’s what the bluebirds were trying to tell me all those mornings. Movement isn’t abandonment. Flight isn’t rejection. The sky was never a place they escaped to. It was simply where they belonged. And perhaps growing older is learning the difference.

Learning that some chapters are meant to be carried forward and others are meant to be released. Learning that appreciation doesn’t require possession. Learning that a beautiful thing can end before it fully begins and still leave your life better than it found it.

Most of all, learning that letting go is not the opposite of love. Sometimes it’s the proof of it. So here we go. Not because leaving is easy. Not because I have to. Not because certainty has removed the ache. Not because every question has been answered.

But because the wings still work. Because the horizon is still there. Because the next chapter won’t write itself. And because, every now and then, life gently places a bluebird outside your window and reminds you what it was built to do.

Fly.