The doors are propped wide open.

Outside, spring raced with the posture and speed of a roadrunner.

This year, the redbuds flowered in storms of intense pink petals, rivaling my childhood memories of strolling under cherry blossoms at their peak.

Windflowers on the hilltops (Anemone, berlandieri)

and the endemic variety deep in the gorge (Anemone, edwardsiana)

all came and went like a shot.

Native wildflowers, the seasonal showstoppers, did not disappoint.

And the tiny treasures found when my eye focuses on the ground were gifts received with every step taken.

The live oaks, which stand grand and green eleven months and a week of the year, shed and grew a complete new canopy as their signal of spring.

And if you look closer, their spring march shares a snapshot of life — new birth surrounded by the young, old, healthy, scarred, and dying — the journey taken together.

And in flew a canyon wren.

Back for another season, the canyon wrens have been busy building their spring nest in our outdoor space heater.

(To learn about an earlier season, click to read the story Oh, Little Bird, Why Did You Visit?)

The open doors were an invitation and one little wren accepted.

Once through the doors, the little wren jetted from place to place, spirited and silent.

I grabbed my camera, snapping pictures with each wren landing.

At first, it was fun.

I laughed thinking what the little wren thought about Jimmy’s water bottle flip, a heave from 15 feet below that included one spin around and a perfect standing landing.

(Add water bottle flipping to your things to do while being stuck inside due to a pandemic. Or watch fascinating youtube videos of water bottle flipping tricks!)

But after some time inside without finding the way out, I thought about how I could help.

Glancing out the front door, I noticed the hummingbird feeder off the porch and recalled the time when a hummer got stuck in the house.

For over 30 minutes, the hummingbird whizzed back and forth along the ceiling ridge from one end of the room to the other, landing only a few times to rest on the beams along its path.

I gathered everything red I could find and placed it on the floor, trying to draw his attention down and out the door.

I took down the hummingbird feeder and placed it on the threshold, as one more source of color.

My heartbeat didn’t reach a hummingbird’s 1,260 beats per minute, but it was rising because nothing seemed to work.

Until another hummer came and landed on the feeder.

As if all it took was for someone to call, the hummer who hadn’t once dropped below the rafters shot down to the feeder to join in a drink and then together the two buzzed away.

I stared at the hummingbird feeder, not thinking it would work for a canyon wren, but thinking how it reflected the world we are living in — stretched thin, blurred, and upside-down.

And then, the falling call of another canyon wren perched on the porch beam across the courtyard, pulled my attention away.

The song of a canyon wren is a series of sharp, clear, rapidly descending notes, followed by a couple buzzy buzzes.

In the post, Oh, Little Bird, Why Did You Visit?, I likened it to spilling out sorrows with a gripe at the end. (A recording of the call is included in the post.)

Perhaps this was the precise sentiment he was sharing as he called to the wren stuck in our house.

He repeated the plaintive song until finally the silent stuck-in-the-house wren responded with a single chirp — short, full, and piercing.

A duet began — two different solos back and forth, never singing out of turn.

The singing followed the musical form of call and response — a chirp, then a cascade, a chirp, then a cascade — but the answer to fly lower and out the door never came.

After ten minutes, the songbirds went silent and the outside canyon wren flew away.

Their score was unsuccessful and I stood stupefied, not sure why the hummingbird’s script didn’t work — a friend calls, leads the way, you fly to freedom, and all is well. It’s a script started by another.

Meanwhile, the stuck wren did what canyon wrens do in a canyon… find a crevice and tuck in.

I wasn’t sure what to do.

I didn’t know how getting this wren out of the house would resolve, or how long it would take to resolve, but I maintained a belief that it would resolve, and I held firm to a hope it would resolve well.

Quite the parallel to living through a pandemic, even if no doubt there is no comparing the significance.

Ten minutes later, I noticed the outside canyon wren standing silent on the sill of the open front window.

How long was he waiting there?

No time to wonder… the stuck-in-the-house wren flew down and landed near the window, the outside wren flew away, and the stuck-in-the-house wren followed to freedom.

All is well.

The script worked. It just took a second approach.

A different script calls out a scene I wish was never written. One where I joined thousands of families relating to our loved ones through a window.

Unlike the open window invitation for the wren, Mom’s window is closed.

I can’t go in.

She can’t come out.

In one sense, my mom has been living in lock-down for years, in a tomb of dementia. The boulder cannot be rolled away.

But these are only the mental and physical barriers closed off to her.

Dementia does not separate her from the call she answered years ago and the faith deep in her soul. Dementia cannot separate her from God’s love that does not require mom’s clarity. On that, I take comfort. That she heard the risen Christ’s call outside the tomb.

So, while during this crisis I will miss my loving hands on hers, I accept it is safer for her this way.

I trust her caregivers will continue her routine and provide her with excellent care, along with doing their best against this virus.

And I will visit through the window.

Today is mom’s 89th birthday.  We will visit and sing and add another picture of mom through the window.

The photo album is filling. In some photos she smiles, some she stares, and some she sleeps.

My favorite is a sleeping photo I should have deleted, but I looked closer.

I am standing in the rain, holding an umbrella with one hand and taking the not so quality photo with the other. Mom is sleeping while embracing a snuggly stuffed animal she loves. The window — the barrier that stands between us — strangely blends us together while reflecting our chaotic world, and boldly pronounces the cross that leads us to freedom.

The past few weeks have been anxious ones. For me, hope that all resolves well in our world from the disruption and pain and loss, requires an Easter message of love over the grave.

I’ve walked in Comfort for comfort, and prayed to changing heavens, assured the boulder is rolled away.

One evening, a beautiful calm.

Another, a dramatic stir.

One night, my camera captured a fiery, ominous sky

that only eight seconds later using the same camera settings reflected a sky of vibrant, assuring blue.

The light makes the difference.

It’s resurrection Sunday. Happy Easter.

The doors are wide open.