Nest of flowers

I had just presented Denis' brother Alain with a jar of cherry-rose preserves when two boys charged up the driveway.  We were sitting under a parasol on a brilliantly sunny afternoon in Normandy.  Alain's wife, Chantal, came puffing up behind her grand-nephews.  After I'd exchanged the ritual kisses with her and the boys, the younger of them, Louis,  pulled his hands out from behind his back.  In one, he held a bunch of wildflowers he'd collected on his walk.  With the other, he placed before me the most beautiful birdnest I'd ever seen.

It was woven of delicate birch twigs and green moss, with bits of sheep's wool and horsehair, and--as Louis pointed out--a feather on the inside.  It was as if a celestial florist had wanted to make a birdnest as part of a floral composition--the nest was that perfect.  It took my breath away.  As I was exclaiming about its beauty, Louis grabbed it.  Not thinking anyone was observing him (but I was), he tried to stick his bunch of flowers into the nest, as if it were a vase.  Of course, the nest was too shallow and the flowers' stems too long, so Louis (age 7) very deliberately laid his bouquet of bright yellow buttercups and pink silene gently across the nest.  This activity absolutely riveted my attention on him.  Then, he took his final treasure--a bright, red-orange butterfly-like insect he'd found dead on the road--and poised it delicately atop the flowers.


This transient work of art--and the extraordinary sensibility of the seven-year-old who had created it--took my breath away.  I recognized Louis as a kindred spirit.  But while I had been (and still am) exceedingly sensitive to natural beauty, and had constantly collected similar treasures as a child, I never had at his age the incredible deftness with which he created beauty.

While the boys went into the house to get something to drink, Chantal (a former schoolteacher) told us how Louis chronically and deliberately misbehaved and how worn out she was by having the boys stay with her.  While I could understand how two young boys could wear out a woman in her 60s, I wondered about the misbehaving part, especially as she went on to describe how she--and the boys' mother--had had it with the "dirty" things Louis was always dragging into the house.  I wondered to what extent an extremely sensitive boy--an artist--could be misunderstood and suffer in the everyday world.

When the boys came back outside, I exclaimed lengthily about how beautiful I found not only the nest but Louis' composition.  I said it was the most beautiful next I'd ever seen (true) and that what Louis had created was a work of art (also true).  I told him I thought he'd be an artist or a poet one day.  "I collect nests," he told me, "after the birds have gone.  Next time I see you, I'll give you one!"  Then he ran toward a shady corner of the garden, calling over his shoulder, "Barbara, follow me!  I want to show you my secret cabin..."

Louis parted some branches so I could follow him into a space enclosed by low-hanging spruce branches which swooped from high on the trunk all the way down to the ground.  Beneath them, even I could stand up, peek out at what was going on in the yard, but almost certainly not be detected--a delicious feeling.  Under our feet, a thick carpet of needles was soft as an eiderdown.  I was transported back to myself at Louis' age.  I had been a solitary child and spent hours in the woods, searching out "hideouts" similar to Louis' and often embellishing them according to whatever Indian lore book I was reading at the time.  "I live here," Louis announced.  Then, he vanished, and I followed his voice as he announced, "Let me show you my attic."  This was another shady nook a bit less private than the "main house."  "And over there," pointed Louis, "is my bathroom!"  (We didn't go in there.)

I found myself wishing I'd met Louis when I was seven years old--when I didn't know anyone who liked doing these sorts of things.  We emerged back out into the adult world on the sunny patio.  I asked the young artist to pose with his creation so that I could take his photo.  But even without the photo, I will never forget Louis.  The photo I keep in my memory is more of a film, actually.  It is Louis' sure gesture as, the moment he sat down with his treasures,  he laid the flowers across the nest, then poised the butterfly on top.  He never hesitated a moment nor fussed with his arrangement.  He knew how to create beauty.  And he knew that I had perceived his secret world.

I, meanwhile, knew I had witnessed a moment of grace.

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