Hummers versus Mothers

A pretty little female Ruby-throated Hummingbird visits the flowers just outside my office window off and on all day. Hummingbirds are a favorite of many people. There are many reasons to admire Hummers, especially females. Why? Well, all Hummers are teensy- only about 3.5" from the tip of their long beak to their tail. But smallness doesn't mean they aren't mighty. They are darn quick- their wings beat 60 to 80 times per second during normal flight (up to 200 times per second during their courtship dive- yee haw!). They are also fantastic little fliers; they migrate up to 2,525 miles to get to their Central American overwintering grounds. They take good care of their young. Females make the nests and incubate the jellybean-sized for eggs all alone for almost three weeks and then feed the young in the nest all alone for another three weeks. After all this hard work, Hummingbirds don't get to live long, most don't live past one year- three years is a long life for a Hummingbird.

It occurred to me, since I have been thinking a lot lately about how busy I am all the time, that Mothers these days are a lot like female Hummers. Most of us go a mile a minute- we work all day, go home and feed the kids, do laundry, help with homework, try and find time to have some fun with them and then get them to bed. We get them up in the morning, pack lunches, make sure everybody is dressed, fed breakfast and get them to school. We put endless miles on the car carting kids from sports to piano to camps to school functions... yet sadly, even with all this activity, most of us Mothers aren't really small and we need more than 10 calories a day to survive. Some of us have even gained a few pounds with kids and hubbies around. Happily though, we normally get to live longer than a year or two. I guess Moms of today have it better than Hummers? I wouldn't mind slowing down a bit though, maybe being a bit more like, say, a Great-blue Heron sometimes?