So…I’m sitting on my deck on the first sunny day in a good long while, when I hear an occasional buzzing near my head.  I sit up and look for horseflies or wasps or bumblebees.  Nothing.  I sit back and return to my book.

Thirty seconds later, the buzzing returns.  Still, no flying insects.

“Hmmm,” I say to My BFF, “Sounds like a hummingbird.”  I’m perplexed, because I don’t have a hummingbird feeder, and there are no blooming plants.  Must be a large hornet of some kind.  I look up into the dogwood branch hanging over my head, and there it is, a small hive-shaped nest.

“Uh-oh.”  I put the BFF in the house and carefully examine the nest, when, suddenly, something rushes past my head.  A dull-colored hummingbird.

I am beside myself with happiness and rush into the house for a stepladder.  How incredible is it, that there could be a hummingbird nest on my deck?  The BFF watches as I drag the ladder outside.  I can tell by the look on her face that she thinks I’m losing it.  I set up the ladder and climb it with my cellphone, because I won’t be tall enough to see inside the nest — if it is a nest — but, with my arm extended, the cellphone will have a clear shot at it.  I take the first blurry shot, and there they are, two little hummingbird eggs.  My eyes tear up.  So serene.  So perfect.

And then The Shrew in my head pipes up,  “Are you crazy?  Do you know how you’re going to look to the EMTs when they find your lifeless body on the deck when you fall off this ladder?  Your lifeless, 63-year old body wearing a black bikini?  Have you no shame?”

“I need a shot that isn’t blurry,” is what I’m thinking.

I move the ladder to the other side and shoot again.  This time, the picture is in focus, as is my headless torso, the deck, the ladder, and my chair.  I get down and sit back on my chair.  The little hummingbird flits back and forth but doesn’t come back to the branch.  When it rests, it sits on a wire of my television antenna and looks down at me.  We are both a little dumbfounded.  The hummingbird by the scary woman.  The woman by life.  If I were an ordinary, sane, rational woman, I might be amused and check the little nest daily until the chicks hatch and fly away.

I, on the other hand, am plagued by “The Meaning of Life.”  What does it mean that a hummingbird nest has appeared to me?  Is that routine?  Does everyone have a hummingbird nest hanging over their decks?  Or, in the lunacy that is my life, does it just remind me that, as the medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich, said, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”?

It also begs the question, why would I be so stupid as to post a picture on the internet of my headless 63-year old torso wearing a bikini?  That one’s easy.  It’s a great shot of the nest, and the photo is taken at such an odd angle that my body is completely distorted.

What have I learned?  I’ve learned that the key to a good swimsuit photo is, apparently, to stand on a ladder with your arm extended three feet over your head, thereby elongating the torso, removing folds, wrinkles, and stretching the skin as good as a plastic surgeon would.

God made me smile today, so, who am I to complain?  Life is good (mostly).  Soli Deo Gloria!