Mama Hen
Lately, I’ve been feeling pulled and pushed and torn and beaten in a million different directions. Personally, professionally, emotionally, physically. There’s just a lot of, well, stuff. Life. Things sitting on TO DO lists and dates marked in red on the calendar. And when I give myself enough time to pause and take it all in, to contemplate what it means to have such fullness, such richness, in my life, I am grateful and humbled and all the mush-gushy happy stuff. But when I’m in the midst of trying to tackle bed time routine with the kids at some ridiculous hour (how is it that they are never asleep before 9?) while sending invitations to my sister’s 30th birthday party while shopping for Father’s Day surprises while responding to a never-ending unread mess in my inbox while booking tickets for a wedding in Chicago while transplanting the tomatoes to the garden while preparing to welcome 3,000 people back to town for a work event all the while just trying to eat a decent meal, squeeze in some exercise, finish my book club read, have sex with my husband, play with my children, and maybe enjoy fifteen minutes of peace and quiet, I often feel like I am falling short on all fronts. Never enough bandwidth to do any one thing fully, instead I’m managing many many things half-assedly. (That’s totally a word.)
I also recognize that every single one of us, at one time or another, feels busy and harried and that none of these feelings are unique. I’ve been rather fixated on my own current state of madness, knowing full well that there are many others far busier and spread even more thin than I. And yes, that is strangely comforting, because misery and company, y’all.
Fortunately, last week was begun with the simplicity and beauty of new life in the form of two peeping baby chicks that eventually hatched to four. We let one of our broody hens hatch her own babies, and the wonder and awesomeness that has hit Cartwheel Farm has provided a necessary and welcomed dose of perspective. To see nature play out without interruption or aid. To see maternal instinct transform a living creature. To stop everything to hold an egg to your ear and hear the peeping of life within. To watch your child hold emerging life in her own two hands. To witness your other child’s humanity as she rescues struggling life with positivity and action. Well, it’s enough to make all those feelings of “busy-ness” and stress melt away.
If you follow along on social media then you’ve caught glimpses of these moments that have transformed the atmosphere of life in our home.
Because the chicks hatched over a four day period up in our barn in the chicken coop, the last chick got the short-end of Mama Hen’s attention. Her other babies were up and out of the nest, blithely endangering their lives by confronting the other full-grown coop mates and venturing into the great wide open. Mama had to choose between sticking with and defending her idiot babes running amuck, or staying with her freshly-hatched chick.
Sophie’s choice in the coop.
Mama chose the three maniacs, and so we discovered a wet, barely alive, baby chick left lying in the nest on Thursday afternoon. James tried to tuck it back under mom to dry off and warm up, while creating a barrier between the other hens and the new babies, but a few hours later, not much had improved. The poor thing couldn’t even lift its head. I was not managing the sight of a struggling baby very well, while Sunny informed me that “Mom, we need to make her as strong as we can. That’s the best we can do. Let’s help her, and if it doesn’t work, then she might die. And that’s sadly just what happens sometimes.”
Life raised on a farm = healthy perspective on life cycles. Something I am still working on.
And so Sunny marched a blow dryer and her tiny stool from the bathroom up to the coop and spent an hour blow-drying that baby chick back to life in the middle of the chicken coop. Lucky, as she’s been aptly named, was still pretty wobbly and unstable that evening, but slowly improved as time went on. Mama Hen was able to teach her how to eat and drink and gain further strength. And I was laid bare witnessing the impact of this experience on both kids.
While insecurities about our tiny home, our humble salaries and our measured careers often creep in and tease me at my most vulnerable moments, experiences like this turn them all on their head. I’m left feeling secured and overjoyed at the life we live and are providing to our children. It’s certainly not for everyone, and there’s no one way to do this crazy thing called parenthood, but this just feels so right for us. Right now. And at the end of the day, that is all we have.
