There is an oak tree in my backyard covered with fern and moss. Some poison ivy vines have survived my spraying, but the undergrowth is too dense to clean underneath. It would take removal of the new oaks growing beneath it and the lush ground cover, but the possibility was there for great climbing.

When I first moved to this house, with the back room of glass walls, I had hopes that children of a friend would climb the limbs that stretch out mainly in one direction. I never cleaned it out. The children haven’t been to visit. I’ve not done the things I thought I would to make the house a place where gatherings were regular occurrences. Too many transitions, health issues, community activities, work responsibilities — and the solitude has trumped the invitations, though I still have plans for entertaining, someday.

Life is what happens when you jump into a stream with a current. It takes you places “new and unknown.” I wrote about that once as a poem in the only school writing class I ever took — I felt like a fish out of water at the time. Now look at me, writing for a living.

Parenthood gives people an opportunity to experience things singles rarely learn — unless the Divine uses other ways for the same lessons. This week mine has been empty nest, letting go. I’m reminded of the many programs of Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family I listened to in the 1990s when I still thought the possibility of children existed. Also, God had blessed me with several children in my neighborhood. I became a second parent in their one parent lives. So I could recognize what happened this week when I made the decision to let Rascal, my rescued feral kitten, go outside with his mother and sibling.

First the good news. He not only regained use of both hind legs, now I don’t even see the scar crossing his belly and up both hind hips. For weeks since fully recovering, he has scampered around the house like a teenager at only three months old. I distressed each time Momma cat and another kitten came in the yard. They would jump up on the window ledge and Rascal would whine and try to touch them through the glass.

One morning, listening to his whimper, I gave in and opened the side door. He hesitated but went. He looked back and even came back to the door as if asking permission or saying goodbye. I told him he could go, but I really was hoping he would stay. In a very few minutes he was out of sight.

Throughout the morning I’d go call him. Nothing. After work I came home and turned on the back lights, put out some food and called. I could hear him crying from the yard in back of my house. We talked a few minutes, but eventually I went inside. The two kittens came to eat, but as soon as I went outside to get Rascal, both scurried away. I worried about my little kitten that had been a house cat for the past six weeks. Did he know what to do at night?

The second night after he left, he hesitantly came back and didn’t first go to the food bowl of dry kitten crunch. Eventually he came to me as I sat in a chair by the door. Testing and trials, he came in, then went out, in and out. I wanted it to be his choice. Momma cat and kitten were not around so he stayed inside for the night and was reminded why he liked it so much.

Two days later, I let him out again when Momma cat showed up. Instantly he was gone. But later as I sat reading on the back patio, I spotted the two kittens, identical except for a slight variation in white markings, playing hide and seek on the branches of the oak tree. The children were playing as I had always wanted. It was the same tree where I first heard one of the kittens crying, alone, hidden in the underbrush, unseen. It was tiny then.

Rascal came back the next day and was a calm loving kitten, happy to be inside. The wide world may have had fun play toys, but it apparently was a scary place, too. He has been calm and very loving since the adventure. Although I’d like him to have a playmate, maybe one day his sibling will give in, but for now, no more outside — that Rascal played too much in the tree with poison ivy and passed it on to me. Lessons from nature can apply to our lives.

VICKY BRANTON is the Teche Life editor of The Daily Iberian.