As we rounded a corner, there was an almighty ruckus of wing, a roiling of feathers and dirt - two buzzards, talons locked, refusing to let one another go. Grounded, the mighty birds looked like a tatty clod of earth. They twisted their necks to stab with sharp beaks, and rolled closer to my son and me where we stood with learned patience.
“Hello Buzzy,” I whispered.
My son smiled, remembering his obsession. The birds wrestled on, screaming like cats, until one got the advantage and, with a wing span that could embrace both of us, took flight. The disturbed ground gave little indication of the turf war except a small, barred feather. I collected it, and we walked on.
We moved to an old farmhouse when my children were four, two and in utero. In our first winter, a juvenile buzzard made daily visits to the field beside us. Buzzy became the subject of our homeschool studies for weeks, down to the dissection of the pellets he choked up to glean insight into his diet.
In an act of deep commitment, my son and daughter set a mouse trap in the barn. My daughter cried at the sight of the small mammal seduced by a digestive crumb, then got on with her work. They tied it to a stick, then staked it in the field. For a child who could never sit still when in school, my son kept vigil with utter dedication. I wrote about it at the time:
‘My son’s patience is rewarded when, without a sound, buzzard drops like a stone into the waterlogged field. The carrion flag is uprooted, and our winter visitor receives the hospitality of a child. We watch him pin the mouse to the earth under eight sharp talons and make a meal of it. The scene is captured in pencil drawings, immortalised in story and acted out on tree stumps with arms spread wide.’
Buteo Buteo were wiped out in the late 1800s in Ireland. They were hunted to extinction and poisoned with strychnine, a toxicant used to kill foxes, badgers and corvids. Although buzzards began breeding in the north of Ireland in the 60s and 70s, they didn’t migrate south until much later as strychnine was only banned here in 1991. Now, these mighty predators dominate the skies and have restored a balance in the ecosystem, keeping corvids in their place.
A bare patch of land
From my writing desk perch, I can see for miles across the lake and hazel woodland. This is buzzard territory, and the pair that have been making ready to nest here, defend it mercilessly. Every day since late January I have observed the sky wars of hooded crow vs buzzard. In the afternoons, magpies bomb them in the trees. It is hard to get anything written with such gripping entertainment. Soon, the female will lay her eggs and I am rooting for the nest within binocular shot of my desk for their site.
I encountered the talon-locked males with my son on the eve of his thirteenth birthday. In this way, nature comes so close to me. In Irish, buzzard is Clamhán (claw-on). The word also means a bald or bare patch of land. This threshold of adolescence on which we stand is yet another uncharted territory. The maps I have been given highlight all the pitfalls, the treacherous parts, the black holes into which we might disappear - but what of the patches we rub bare through talon-locking struggle? How might we reimagine these spaces?
My mother gave my son a compass for his birthday that he might find his own way. What a beautiful gift. We gave him a drum kit so he can syncopate these years with a rhythm of his own. Where I am utterly scundered, though, as I burn all the maps and commit to openhearted cartography, is the overlap of his map with mine.
In my way
I spent International Women’s Day with three fierce feministas who have shaped and inspired my journey as a woman: my mother-in-law, and my two sisters-in-law. We had 24 hours together in the Kingdom of Mourne and covered everything from birth to death, passing by religion, marriage, menopause and The Troubles on our way.
In one conversation, I was describing my recent bouts of unnerving self-consciousness. I have entered the room of my forties and, at times, would quite like the floor to swallow me whole. Take, for example, my waltzing debut. The act of dancing in public, even though not a soul was paying me heed, unravelled something in me. It was an awareness of myself and the space I take up, and it almost sent me running from the room. I tried to explain this, the sense of exposure, my preoccupation with myself, and I found myself saying:
“If only I could get out of my way…”
I am choosing this phrase as my entry point into The Quickening. In their book Wild Power, Alexandra and Sjanie, use this term for the time in mid-life when women experience changes in their bodies and emotional worlds. I love The Quickening, because it is active, and holds an energy of its own. It is synonymous with waken, rouse, stir up. And the thing that is wakening for me is, well, me.
It is not a time to get out of my way; it is a time of reckoning. ‘In my way’ is exactly where I should be - unapologetic, needy, conscious of every part of myself and how I engage with the world. The maps for this landscape are equally harrowing, and although there are a lot of signposts telling me how to travel, what to eat and ways of riding the peri-menopausal rollercoaster with abandon, I need to make my own map.
Rooted
It is roughly six months from the time buzzards begin weaving their nests to the moment of separation from their fledglings. In this season they craft a large, loose nest high off the ground, incubate two-four eggs, hunt worms and carrion from dawn to dusk, ward off predators, give flying lessons, and mentor the juveniles until they are fully independent. As I type, there is a large female perched on the limb of an ash tree at the lakeside. When I lift my binoculars, her left eye is trained on me, her right on the water where a cormorant surfaces. Is she preparing herself for the work that lies ahead? Can a bird brace itself?
My son likes to make his own birthday cake. We iced a Fender American Vintage II 1961 Stratocaster in Fiesta Red. He told me he can’t wait to be a teenager - the freedom, the independence. I asked whether all the negative things people say about adolescence have put him off.
“No way,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be like that for me.”
I rooted my children so deeply in the earth, I am amazed they do not have leaves in place of hair. They learned the names of every plant, fern, bird and tree we passed. They drew grass, took spore prints and raised butterflies from cocoons. We lived out of doors, grew our own food and hiked mountains in our bare feet. It was important to me that they knew where they came from and the creatures to whom they are connected.
Now, when I quiz my 13-year-old on the wildflowers, he says, “Dunno.” His sights are set on the horizon, not the ground at his feet, and that is exactly as it should be. Other things are more important to him in this season, and even if he never brings lesser celandine or wood anemone to mind again, they are part of the man he is becoming.
A muscular faith
As for me, botanist turns flight instructor and I can only teach him to ride the thermals, if I take flight myself. I consider this proposition on every morning walk. The buzzard feather stays in my coat pocket as a reminder of grounded birds, and I spend time watching heron, egret, sparrowhawk and song thrush on the wing. The second half of life requires a muscular faith in my ability to carry myself no matter what my children are up to. I need imagination, wise elders and a wild landscape that embodies female archetypes: rivers as goddesses, mountains topped with Cailleach cairns and wells as portals to the Otherworld. I need the cold Atlantic to bear me up when the clash of hormones in my home feels too heavy. I need limestone caves where I can hide, and limestone cliffs from which I can gain perspective. I need cyclical wisdom - embodied wisdom. I need to meet myself, and take her flying: mother, other, me.
The Mother
Maggie Smith
The mother is a weapon you load
yourself into, little bullet.
The mother is glass through which
you see, in excruciating detail, yourself.
The mother is landscape.
See how she thinks of a tree
and fills a forest with the repeated thought.
Before the invention of cursive
the mother is manuscript.
The mother is sky.
See how she wears a shawl of starlings,
how she pulls the thrumming around her shoulders.
The mother is a prism.
The mother is a gun.
See how light passes through her.
See how she fires.
As the one who got to be there for your teenage years of becoming you, I am excited to witness this mother and son dance. A beautiful exploration of the holding and then releasing. I love the space you fill. Finlay is blessed to call you mother.
This is wonderful piece of writing Bethany inviting reflection. Such beautiful, powerful imagery in exploring a tender yet powerful time of life—for both mother & son.