Swallows and Sitting on the Floor

Living Happy/Be Brave Friday

Photo by Hans Veth on Unsplash

This morning when I was walking back home through our town (Bar Harbor, which is a small town that turns big in the summer and October), a guy in a big truck swerved and pulled into a driveway right in front of me to pick up another guy. The truck’s reverse lights went right on.

I stopped on the sidewalk, not sure whether to risk going forward. I could wait, I figured.

The truck was huge and high and it would crush me pretty easily even if it was going 5 mph.

The man rolled down his window and yelled out over his shoulder, “Darlin’, don’t you worry. I’ll wait. I got you.”

This doesn’t seem like a big deal, probably, right? Just one guy noticing me and being kind. He was obviously in a hurry, but he didn’t want to put me in a hurry or in harm’s way. He noticed me stop, probably saw my indecision about what to do next.

He chose to be kind.

He had my back. And that? That’s a really cool thing to experience.

Some flowers on my walk

Most of you who know me well know that though I often present as an extrovert, I’m actually an introvert.

How introverted?

I sit on the floor to take up less space whenever possible.

I almost never text a person first—even my loved ones and besties.

I pretty much never ever initiate a call.

Being an author kind of writer made all of this introvert-side of me even easier to lean into. I could sit at home and type pretend stories and control the worlds of pretend characters and call it good.

But was it, really? Was it good?

Now though, now I am a journalist again, too.

This means that I have to (gasp!) initiate calls and emails and texts and actually leave my desk at home and go out in the real world to meetings where I will try very hard to find a space on the floor to sit no matter how many people try to give me a chair.

It hasn’t been easy.

I love reporting. I actually love almost all humans. But putting yourself out there? It’s scary. It’s so much easier to conserve your energy, be unnoticed, right?

But because Shaun and I started the Bar Harbor Story, I have met people—cool people—new friends.

And that?

Well, that’s pretty much worth getting out of my damn comfort zone. If I didn’t get out of my comfort zone, it would be so much harder to have moments of goodness—where random men in trucks are kind—where I can see the most amazing flowers or children skip on sidewalks or people crooning on lawns and a million other tiny beautiful things.

Man singing down the street

Because of the paper, one of my long-time friends and a new friend and I have started meeting every two weeks or so for breakfast. I always sit there, fascinated, by how cool these women are: how strong, how talented, how they know how to do so many things (make a cake, run an inn, train a dog, talk in a British accent, the list goes on and on).

At one recent breakfast, one of these cool humans gave the other two a swallow pin. Just, you know, out of nowhere.

My little hobbit dad who died a while ago had two favorite birds: crows and swallows. He’d build the swallows houses, put them all around his back yard, watch them swoop and frolic.

“This means something,” I thought, weighing the pin in my palm. “It has to mean something.”

It does. I looked it up.

“Spiritually, swallows represent breaking out of your comfort zone to experience different things in life,” OnTheFeeder writes. “Overall, the free-flying bird represents mindfulness and faithfulness, which people can bring into their spiritual relationships with higher beings and into their commitment to family and loved ones.”

How cool is that?

How cool are swallows?

Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

When a prisoner gets a swallow tattoo, it means that his imprisonment is over. He’s done his time, right? And maybe . . . just maybe my swallow pin can mean that for me. That I’ve done my time being afraid, that it’s time to be mindful and faithful and at the same time? To fly free and brave and experience things beyond my little office and computer a bit more. With fellow swallows—strangers and friends—who believe in flight and in kindness, too.