Hunger

Two days ago, when I first saw these baby swallows, their eyes were closed and their mouths were open -- wide open -- all of the time. Indiscriminately hungry, they knew at some point their mother would come and feed them. I realized that that was how we all come into this world, needing to be fed and dependent on another for sustenance.

Today, I went back to take pictures and I was shocked to see that the tiny peeping babies are now looking and acting so much more birdlike. Their bodies are thick, and they turn their head back and forth scanning for potential enemies, like me, and their feeding source. When the adult swallow would swoop into the soffit of the portico, then -- and only then -- they knew it was time to open up and be fed.

Between the first and second time I saw these birds, I have met and talked with five different friends. The first, in a coffee shop, talking and laughing. A jib jab of clever. The second, someone much younger than I -- but not -- who I met a year ago. A many-way-beautiful woman who recognizes in me some kindred path. The third, a brand new friend, just met a few weeks ago. We talked from hello, all the way down the shoreway, through ordering, appetizing, sharing some small plates, all the way back home and then for a while in the front yard. Four hours of easy flow. Then, last night, a dear friend, held up truth to truth in a soft, kind way. And then again, this morning, I talked with a woman I last saw thirty years ago, at nineteen. But there we were, wanting to recount the ways we have moved from then until now, open about the struggles and the grace, and still -- very much -- willing to carry optimism with us into the last third of our lives.

And while I was talking with these women, I had coffee. I had an egg salad sandwich, Tuscan bean soup, a blue cheese fresh green salad, some shrimp with beet coulee, two scallops in a citrus aioli, fries dipped in truffle mayo, two fudgesicles, a tuna wrap and a not quite ripe banana. And, yes, each was delicious, every single one.

My whole life I have been eating. I have been walking around with my mouth open -- a child among flying swallows -- waiting and grabbing and making sure there was food to feed me, and a way to grow bigger and strong. Maybe my mom was there, swooping past to give me the assurance of food. Maybe she was not. I do not think she breastfed me; that was not the chosen way of that time.

But what I am seeing is that what really nourishes me is not what goes into my open mouth, but what comes out of my open mouth. Words passed between two people. Nuzzling up against the truth from one to another.

My belly is plenty big enough, able to feed me and a whole nest of my others selves, my former selves. The way I will get full now is through my heart. Talking away my hunger, loving away my hunger, listening to my hunger drift away because of the stories I take in. The stories I swallow.