The fuzzy oracle on my thumb

A serendipitous moment that helped me complete a challenging essay about addiction and compassion fatigue.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on an essay that is one of the toughest things I’ve ever written. It’s about wrestling with compassion fatigue due to my sibling’s severe addiction. In the essay, I weave in the small moments of beauty amid the heartbreak, such as finding a blue canary nightlight in his bathroom. The nightlight, I later discover, is a purchase inspired by his favorite song, “Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants. A snippet of the lyrics:

“Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul”

Since then, I’ve listened to the happy, bouncy song many times in recent months, all while hoping my brother, a talented musician and bird-lover, can rebuild a new birdhouse in his soul, metaphorically speaking.

He’s doing OKish right now, but I still don’t know how the story will end, and that’s the point: With addiction, when can you declare your loved one is safe? When can your nervous system subsequently relax?

And when writing an essay on that internal struggle, how do you write the ending? For weeks, it kept tripping me up.

Amazingly, while I was at my favorite Austin coffeeshop working on the essay recently, a bee landed on my hand. He crawled around for a minutes, long enough for me to take a video. And then it hit me: There’s another lyric in the song:

“Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul.”

The muse arrives on my thumb.

I wrapped up the essay quickly after that. The bee on my hand—a fleeting moment of beauty and a symbol of creativity for many cultures, including the Greek muses—helped me realize that the point of the essay isn’t just about addiction or the sorrow of my brother’s illness. It’s about finding hope in unexpected places, learning to navigate life with compassion, and not being afraid of the sting of love.