There it was the nest sitting right on top of the paint bucket under the fig tree. Wound with twigs and white cotton a blue ribbon woven through its core it must have might have fallen from the tree but I don’t know.

All I know is it stopped me in my tracks.

I picture the mother bird flying all over picking up the perfect twigs.

Just a little white cotton for comfort and a blue ribbon for a dash of color.

I see her all worried that her nest won’t be ready in time.

I know because I know her.

She doesn’t kvetch when she works. She scouts the fields and forests for just the right twig just the perfect tree to settle in.

Are there cats around? Is the sun too hot here or the winds too strong? Did she move to a new town or did her nest just fall?

There were no eggs or signs of life in that nest. Yet it looked so cozy and warm.

It’s such a miraculous thing that mother birds actually go out and design their homes. That Hashem gave them that task and the ability to fulfill it. HaKadosh Baruch Hu could have had birds just live inside caves.

But He gave mother birds the drive and the need to build and protect.

We once knew a bochur who lived in a cave.

He’d had enough of the world and so he decided that he didn’t need or want to live in “this” world as it is. He’d beat the system and not build a home or pay rent.

It worked for a while. It was on the way toHadassahHospital nestled in one of the hills there.

But it got cold in the winters.

And lonely.

He decided to get a job doing deliveries for a frum vegetable store.

For a year he delivered boxes of fruits and vegetables to the homes of large families.

Every so often he got a peek into their homes. He noticed the simplicity and the warmth.

Watched the frum community as if they were an exotic species. The way we watch birds.

He wanted to fly in but how? How does one change his species?

Then it was Succos time and everyone was building what seemed to him their human nests.

An older man needed a hand.

The deliveryman offered; it was his last delivery of the day anyway.

He never left that nest.

He went on to yeshivah and became a masmid. He’s married with two little girls last I heard.

But the story about the bochur in the cave isn’t really what the nest next to my house is saying to me.

It actually makes me stop in my tracks and think Oh my gosh that could be my house soon. Empty.

Everyone is kind of growing up and soon moving on.

And though I haven’t really seen it yet I say G-d makes hunger so children come home but it could happen any second just like that.

Just like that little empty nest.

I think a moment about all the work and the weaving it takes to build a home.

I picture the mother bird flying all over picking out the perfect twigs a little cotton for comfort and some fabric for a dash of color.

Now Succos reminds me again of that drive. The drive G-d put inside of us to build to protect to have safety and peace.

How important it is — no matter how it looks no matter how big or small everyone loves to pile in.

It’s home. The nest.