A sugary sweet fragrance cuts through the crisp air – not beer, not wine – but a seasonal swill of glugwein, which seems the perfect word for this drink, German or not.

Like many of the faces in the crowd, the grog has a rosy shine in the mug and reflects the merriment of the Christmas season.

My son has wandered up ahead of me, across the ancient cobblestones, and waits in line to get a cup. My husband is eyeing the bratwurst on sticks.

For me, I simply stand and look up at the stringed lights, blurring and spinning. Far out beyond this small circle of my vision is a cold, German nightscape and we are many miles from home.

The steaming cup my son brings to me is a real ceramic one that we are allowed to re-fill and return throughout the boozy night.

A small detail – but somehow it signifies a larger sentiment from a bygone time when folks offered wassail on the honor system.

As ex-pats we have entered a wonderland of good cheer, almost like time travelers posed under a self-contained dome, something like a snow globe.

My brain shakes the snow globe and the snow flurries and falls, and finally settles.

It is 1973 and I am 10 years old, living in West Virginia, and it is Christmas Eve.

My grandparents from upstate New York have come for their yearly visit and they are sleeping in my brother’s twin beds down the hall.

Which means he is camped out with me in my double bed. But I don’t mind.

We stay up late and listen to the little transistor radio he has smuggled under the covers. We tune the dial to pick up The Guardsman’s Snoopy vs. The Red Baron, a song we just can’t get enough of, and we laugh and sing along to Alvin and the Chipmunks singing carols in their funny, high squeaks.

And even though we are beyond the age of believing in Santa, there is a magical quality to the night. For me, it is mostly that I am with my brother. He is a teenager now, and I don’t often get to be close to him.

He has strung big-bulbed Christmas lights all over my bedposts for me – he was always like that – coming up with the good ideas and thoughtfully letting me in on them.

In this scene he is young and alive and full of wild dreams. And there is no place for motorcycle accidents or chronic pain, or addictions or jail time, it’s just me and him in our pajamas.

I shake the snow globe again.

I see my mom in her plaid wool maxi-dress, worn with a creamy, ivory blouse, and an apron over the whole ensemble. She manages the kitchen, the elaborate Christmas Eve meal. She’s a perfectionist, a stickler for the details and I stay out of her way.

Anyway, I’m sixteen and kind of tired of the whole routine, but not ready to give it up just yet. Still I itch to escape the rectory and to ditch the Midnight Mass.

My boyfriend comes over and we finish off my parents’ wine. We make it to the communion rail a bit tipsy, just in time to add the Blood of Christ to top things off.

Looking back, I see how my mom and I were always so different and truthfully, it will be many years until we grow close.

I shake the snow globe again.

I am in bed with my husband, trying to sleep on my side and not on my back. My belly is huge and the baby rests quietly in a cradle of ribs and muscle and fluid. In two weeks she will be born.

And I am not afraid, because I am 27 years old, and in the way of that age, I am confident. I believe that my body is a safe haven for my child and that the short distance from that nest out into my arms – and then out to the wider world – is something I can do pretty easily.

I will welcome my daughter into a safe, loving home. A peaceful place.

And now my two babies are adults and I have failed in a basic promise. I’ve tried to protect them, but what world have they inherited?

I shake the snow globe.

It is a balmy North Carolina afternoon and our family of four is walking the perimeter of a pond. The water is brown and murky and has logs and debris (even a deer carcass) sticking up from the depths. But the walk is pretty – the pines are sweet scented and there are geese flocked to one side.

The kids are in college and it’s been a struggle to assemble everyone. We are picking our Christmas tree, a tradition I love, but this year feels different. My Mom is gone, after a long-term diagnosis of cancer.

My kids are amazing but if I’m honest, I’m not sure who they actually are. I can’t stay up with their digital world; I can’t even keep track of their conversation.

And I worry about what memories they will have of me when I’m gone.

I shake the globe again.

Christmas Day and my husband and my son and I are sitting on lawn chairs in the backyard. It is an unseasonable 70 degrees outside. There are no decorations, no tree, no crowded table with coffeecake and stollen. No stockings. No cheeseball with Wheat Thins and no craft beer.

I want to re-shake the globe.

I want to transport back to that original scene in Germany

But no, here we are. There are no bustling crowds, no toasting with glugwein, no hugs even – never mind kisses beneath the mistletoe.

It is a pandemic and the reality of illness doesn’t fit into a snowy, nostalgic scene. The globe is supposed to hold us all close, protect us in an idyllic place and time. To reflect a joy, a poignance, a promise of what is possible.

But we all know that outside this globe is a place of poverty and war, violence and famine. And we know that even the bubble of atmosphere itself is overheated and volatile. There is no pure, crystalline stage left on which to play out our memories.

And so I grasp the globe and wonder what will be this year.

The world has slowed; we’ve been shaken and sobered.

During these past months I have spent time with my son; he’s taught me how to make kombucha and sourdough bread. He’s built me a chicken coop and taught me to tend honeybee hives.

I can’t remember having this much focused time with him.

He and I have had hours to watch episodes of Succession and Premier League soccer, and to eat take -out dinners on the front porch swing. I’ve watched him patiently and methodically build a bed out of local cherry wood.

And I’ve been able to see him up close, clear eyed, with no filter.

His jaunty stride as he unexpectedly runs past me on the Duke trail, where he calls out nice pace! with his shameless flattery.

His face lit up when he writes his stories on his laptop, late at night in the kitchen. Glowing partly from the digital screen, but partly from his own energy and Lewisness.

Later I watch him pack his stuff and head to New York City, carefully wrapping baby succulents, sourdough starter and a full kombucha jug, by hand, in blankets, for the long drive. My heart melts.

Tonight I picture him in Manhattan, bundled up in a down coat, walking on the streets with no gloves. Underneath the skyscrapers that reach to the black sky – no stars, just dirty city air. No sparkling dome, but maybe a dusting of snow.

Next week he’s back for the holidays.

And today, I turn the globe upside down, yet again, and shake it. And I watch the flakes of white settle gently over the magnolia trees and Carolina pines in my imagined scene.

And I listen as the tiny music box plays a tinkly version of Silent Night.

And I wonder.

The interesting thing about chickens is that they are not really wild but not really pets.

They exist in some rare middle place.

They need me to keep them safe at night. If not for me, they’d be hawk food in a heartbeat, or run over by a car, or eaten by the neighbor’s cat. And they definitely rely on me to feed them and keep them free of pests and disease.

But I don’t feel the pull of emotion like I do with my dog, Huckleberry. If a predator decided to take Babs to the great rapture in the sky, I wouldn’t be devastated. Sure, she was an adorable fluffy yellow chick that chirped when I came into the bedroom, but I don’t know.

Chickens are incredibly smart though, and their instincts are fine-tuned. I’ve read that they can recognize up to 100 faces. I mean, I don’t think I can even do that.

My chickens know when it is Wednesday night – Banh’s Vietnamese take-out night, when they will get the leftovers. I mean, they pace and peck at the back door in the late afternoon, even after I’ve told them that Mac is calling the order in.

And I recognize that my girls notice me specifically in the yard – they know that I am the one who fretted over the air temperature when they were in the brooder. And that I was one who took them on field trips when they were toddlers. And I fed them grits (cooked with butter) and oatmeal, and basically spoiled them to no end.

But still, if a hawk took one away, I’d have to chalk it all up to life in the food chain, which is just a fact of being a semi-wild critter.

Why do I bring all this up?

Because I think it’s interesting that we rate animals in such a way. Clever or stupid? Wild or tame?

I believe they are all basically intelligent – way beyond our comprehension, and we humans have set it up so that we can feel okay about killing them. The one that astounds me though is the pig – we know that it is one of the more intelligent species – yet still we want bacon?

We just think these “dumb birds” are here for our taking, and I guess they are. But I’ll have you know that last weekend my husband and I set up Christmas lights on the girls’coop.

You heard me correctly.

I know.

But did they like it?

Who knows?

But, for me, I choose to believe that their beady little eyes had a dreamy glow in them, as they nodded off to sleep in the glow of the twinkling lights.

I think they were dreaming of mealworms and grubs and tender sprouts of next summer’s grasses, and maybe their pea brains think of me, their benevolent provider.

It’s the season of giving, and these chickens have gifted me a lot – hours of entertainment and diversion, not to mention the eggs.

And those eggs are truly miraculous to me, the expression of a not wild, not domesticated critter. And this year they have truly been a gift, a marvel, an astonishment, when so many other things couldn’t be counted on at all.

Kicking through the fallen leaves in the dusty winter yard, I come across tiny chicken scratches in the uncovered patches of dirt here and there.

They look like they were made by a child’s tiny sandbox tool. The lines are perfectly symmetrical and speak of a methodical communication between chicken and earth. Even a syncronicity between birds.

I think about these innocent marks and they remind me of words, chicken words, but also human speech – the way we chat with one another. Pecking and nattering about trivial, everyday things. Gossip, or running commentary. And sometimes we insult, with small barbs or micro-rudenesses.

It is the language of the chicken yard.

---

Last week, I was in the house, reading in my armchair and suddenly a sound of rushing air followed by a thump caused me to look up at the window. A large expanse of brown and white feathers swooped past.

Of course, I ran outside to check my biddies. But weirdly, everyone seemed fine, even calm.

Yet as I picked up my yellow Buff Orpington (named Ginger), I gently turned her over and my hands tenderly parted the soft golden breast feathers. And there they were – deep puncture wounds where the predator had tried to lift her from the ground. So deep as to not draw a bloody mess, but they were bored into the area near her vital organs.

They were wounds that went deep, the ones that may heal but will leave a scar.

And a memory.

Again, like human communication, it seems to me that the cruel, thoughtless lashing out that we do is like an animal response.

I’ve often believed that when we say hurtful things, they end up hurting us more than the recipient. Like the jagged edge of chickenwire, they pierce our breast long afterwards. I can remember things I said, mean things from many years ago, that sometimes pop into my head. And I wish to God I’d kept my mouth shut.

And it makes me sad that someone is carrying around wounds that I inflected, and that they hide them in order to get by, move on.

And isn’t it also true that the healing, loving comments we make actually do more for us than anyone? They are like soft, protective feathers around our heart, we go to them when we feel down.

And this is where I am today, as I look up at the sky and watch for that Cooper’s hawk that circles lazily in the afternoons. The raptor is an eerie, vulnerable evocation of brute power.

A reminder of my own agency and responsibility. Of the choice I have to hurt or heal.

This fragile earth, even the deep loamy core of it, relies on careful participation

This fragile earth, even the deep, loamy core of it, relies on a call and response of careful participation. And if I can create a connection, that’s what I want to do.

And I want to be like my chickens – as they chirp and groom one another, and as they snuggle, crowded tight together on the dark roost of the coop as these winter nights grow cold.

I know that without one another’s plump bodies, the snuggle, the warmth, they don’t even have a chance.