How I spent my retirement

The day before, I'd spotted a nest just up from the water, three bright, white eggs--there may have been more--in an organized heap amid a bed of goose down. Like an idiot, I'd not taken my phone, couldn't get a picture. Yesterday, I went back, phone and camera. I'm quite sure that somewhere beneath this pile, the eggs were still there. 

How do I know? Mom and Dad wouldn't let me be. 

Yesterday, it seemed to me, was the very first day of my retirement, despite my having left the classroom 12 years ago--well, 13 to be exact. I fudged away the afternoon, all by my lonesome, at Alton's South Pond, nary another humanoid in sight, while Mom and Dad Goose hung around lest this old guy who walked funny would pull some shenanigans.

There I sat, twenty feet-max from that nest, hoping some of the fuzz would blow off and reveal its treasures. Didn't happen. I sat there close enough to be real trouble the parents, while the two of them ritually and warily swam back and forth.

The nest, you will note, is in a line with the corner of the quartzite throne on which I'm half-sitting, a line that leads right out to the two of them. 

I hardly dare say how much time I spent there just waiting for them to come closer, which they did, in an odd gesture that seemed to test the threat of this stranger by the amount of time he (I) could spend just sitting there. 

Now all of this is being done in perfect silence. As you're likely aware, Canada geese are known for the tumult they raise with their incessant honking. This time, not a sound. Not. A. Sound. They were utterly aware of my presence, but they didn't say a thing, just pushed back and forth through the water, coming ever closer to that treasured nest when they'd sweep by, in perfect silence.

It was just the three of us, me with my camera and phone, hoping for a real treasure, hoping that one of them, eventually, would come up close and primp the nest so I could get a mother-and-child portrait. Eventually--honestly, a good half-hour after I got to that hunk of Sioux quartzite--she (I assume it was Mom--I didn't ask) ever so slowly got out of the water. Now these are wild geese, not the homeys that leave their doo over city sidewalks. I'm thinking it's a joy just to have them so close and so shockingly quiet. 

I'm fifteen feet away, that feather nest is twelve, and I'm sure I'm going to get a wonderful National Geographic shot here: Mom and her calcium-ed brood. On the other side of the pond, a Canada twosome have already hatched a family--saw them yesterday (without a camera). Who know what kind of joy this young (?) mom will uncover when she gets up there and primps--or whatever.

And now, let me just deal with the gender thing. If I'm right, if Mom is the one who came up on shore, you shouldn't go away thinking the old man just sat back somewhere and sucked seaweed. No, ma'am. He was there too, if in fact he was he and not she. It's almost enough to make me up the ante to plural pronouns, but that would be far more confusing. 

Let's just assume that once upon a time it took two to tango here, and one of them is a boy goose and the other is a girl goose. Is it sexist for me to think that it's the girl goose, the Mom, who came up out of the water? All right then, call me a pig and stop reading, but I can't help thinking how sweet it is that I don't know, that they're both here so that should this dangerous old man sitting on the big rock come after the kids, I'd be in trouble.

And now, trust me, I'd love to unveil the National Geographic shot I waited for more than an  hour to take; but I didn't get it--not because I didn't wait (I'm retired, remember), but because she (I think) seemingly had no intention to tend whatever treasures existed beneath all that goose down. What she (or he) intended to do was simply stand there and wait, stand there to defend her beloveds until that pond, in gorgeous 70-degree weather, would freeze over. She wasn't about to move.

And I waited. And waited. And waited. She kept her back to me the whole time.

Finally, I picked up my gear and left. These two--and how many more beneath the down I don't know--had taken a chunk of my afternoon that only a retiree could burn. What's worse, I didn't get the shot I wanted. All she'd do is show me the elegant designs on her backside. 

I guess she just wanted to be there. Well, let me rephrase that, "she just needed to be there." I waited and waited, but she just wanted to be there, I guess. She never touched the nest.

Way too much time passed, so I left. She won. I went home without the stunning shot, but once I took off it's fair to say we both were happy.

Five minutes later, I took another shot, this one from afar. That quartzite rock--a true glacial erratic, where I'd been sitting--stands to the right of a dark jumble of feathers in the bottom corner--see her (or him)? She's primping the nest. Meanwhile, Dad stands guard up in the corner, opposite side of the  picture. (To heck with it, I'll just be a sexist.)