honeybees & reveries

Being the daughter of an Episcopal priest, it would make sense that I would go to an Episcopal Church camp in the summers when I was a kid.

And I loved it. It was the perfect camp for me. No focus on athletics – no archery, no swimming lessons, no real competitive activities at all. There wasn’t even any camping.

But it was vaguely religious, in that spiritual, campfire songs – skits – and walking-in-the-woods – kind of way.

A handful of church clergy were our leaders, but they were young and never wore their collars. They were like one of us kids, joking and informal.

There weren’t many strict rules, it was a laid back place.

Except there was one thing that we took seriously – Prayer Hill.

Prayer Hill was a special space. It was a small clearing on a tiny mountain that overlooked the camp, deep in a thicket of trees. And every night, after campfire, we would process, single-file, up the hill for evening compline.

And it was understood that, as soon as we took our first step up the steep trail, we had to remain silent – not a whisper or a sound, until we were back down again.

Actually, that’s a lot to ask of pre-teens.

But each evening, after supper, the campers and counselors would take the short hike to this dense nook in the deep woods.

The chapel had rough wooden benches and a stone altar. The pews were worn and saggy from the weather. Leaves covered the benches. Bugs were biting.

There were no formal services. We may have sung camp songs, but mainly the sounds of our music were swallowed up by the screaming cicadas.

One or two prayers were offered up.

And on the last night of camp, we carried candle stubs that dripped and burned our fingers.

But for me, during the summer when I was 10, Prayer Hill was also the place of spiritual revelation.

I can close my eyes now and return there so easiIy. I was a kid who was always in my own head, I was deeply imaginative and easily led to the mystical.

I longed to believe in God, and I longed to feel his/her presence.

As I hiked, a quiet peace ran through me. My body felt light and my brain clear. As I climbed, my spine was electric with joy, unlike anything I’d felt before.

I came into the small clearing and stood to let my breathing slow, and to hear the sounds of the woods go through me. It felt like the moment at the pool just after you launch from the high dive and right before you hit the cold water.

Exhilaration and peace.

Something perfect.

And as the sun lowered beneath the trees, I felt older, as if I was a different girl in a different body.

Or maybe a girl with no body at all, just spirit, like all my seams lined up effortlessly.

Even years later, it points me to something that is constant, burning bright and true

I think the power of that place might have had to do with the wacky mixture of elements: a crucifix rising up from the gnarled bark of a maple tree, a prayer bench covered with bright moss, and the listing stone altar.

The setting was such a stark contrast to the dark, polished pews and the gold cross and stained glass windows of my Episcopal church back at home.

Anyway, that summer, after camp ended and I went home to my family, I distinctly remember feeling transformed. I was more patient with my sisters, more content with myself. I felt spiritually clear, almost as if I was in a monastic state.

But eventually the feeling faded, and I went back to being my same old bratty, junior high self.

The shine slowly wore off.

I was impatient and moody and bored being back in the fall school routine.

And now, all these years later, I wonder at the alchemy of the experience.

Yes, it was the silence that allowed me to meditate and to filter out all of my pre-teen angst. But it was also the intention.

The spark to investigate.

The yearning to open myself up to the divine.

And I think this memory has stayed with me because I haven’t written it off through the years. I’ve kept it in a small, private place.

Away from any editorial cynicism and judgement.

More than anything, our weary old world is in need of great love. Less adult smarts, more childlike wonder. Fewer certainties, more curiosity.And when I read the daily news I wonder what I can do to make a difference.

And when I feel hopeless, I walk.

And I try to pray.

I try to conjure that 10-year-old faith that there was a kind of redemption up on the mountain. Something bigger than my overactive imagination even.

These days I believe that prayer is an act of letting go. Like releasing a breath. A sigh. Like slipping a chafing backpack from our aching shoulders.

A prayer is a question for the universe.

It is a dance of imagination and risk.

And maybe the questions, even unanswered, are enough.

Maybe climbing the hill is all we have.

Yesterday, my sister called and told me that you are depressed.

She said that you want to sleep most of the day, and that when you’re awake, you mostly just want to eat.

That you are sometimes angry, mostly irritable.

And she said that this has been going on for quite some time.

I’m sorry.

We’ve never met, but my sister says that you are amazing – funny and unique. She loves you.

I just wanted to say that when I heard about you, my heart ached.

Because a number of years ago, I was you, (or a lot like you, maybe).

Clinically depressed. 

I remember how my days were a fog, everything was flat and grey. And my skin was thin, my feelings right on the surface. Everyday comments could cut right through me.

And I would cry at random, even though there was nothing attached to the tears.

One time, I cried non-stop in my therapist’s office. I mean, I didn’t speak a word until I wrote her a check at the end of the session.

Sometimes we just need a witness to our pain. To feel the truth and have someone to hold onto it with us.

To say this is the worst.

It’s a confounding thing to live with a reality that can’t be explained. Something so ugly, so convoluted, so monotonous and draining. In fact, it is a nearly intolerable thing.

Sometimes we just need a witness to our pain. To feel the truth and have someone to hold onto it with us.

There is no one answer. No fix.

But people will try to help; after all you are so clearly in need of advice (right).

They tell you to exercise, see a therapist, takes meds, do yoga, meditate. Just get up and do something.

Mind over body (right).

But at the time, what I really wanted to say to my family was this:

I need you to listen. It will probably be a repetitive script of bitching, moaning, crying and feeling sorry for myself.

Still, just listen.

I need you to accept that I am trying, even though it doesn’t look like it.

I need you to accept me exactly as I am, not a better version of me.

And I would also say that I know that being around a depressed person is a colossal drag. I know because I live it every moment.

But I need you to know that this depression is in my body, just like some other disorders, like diabetes, MS, or epilepsy, the symptoms are physical.

Which is part of the problem, because I have to walk around and pretend that I’m okay when my brain is not really functioning.

It is an added burden – I carry my guilt along with your judgement and expectations – and it’s too much to handle, it is exhausting.

And so I comfort myself.

Eating takes away a bit of the pain, at least for a short time.

Sleep is my delicious, velvet escape.

But I guess the biggest thing I need right now is a simple, neutral acceptance.

Anyway, as the years have gone by, what stands out the most, are the tiny moments of feeling okay – the sparks of possibility for relief, when I could escape my own head, even for a little while.

I remember when you sat with me and told me a story, or rubbed my feet, or when we just looked out at the yard, laughing at the chickens.

I remember that you stayed with me, even though it was such a hard, hard place to be. 

And you might not have been able to imagine my suffering, but when you sat with me, I felt so much less alone.

Time passes, this is always true.

But some things remain, deep down in the bones, the hard life experiences, like depression. The pain is baked forever into the marrow.

Even so, today, what surfaces in my memory is you. Your care gave me a whiff of hope; like oxygen to my body.

Your kindness, your patience, your love – you saved me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve had a few close calls with predators here on the backyard farm.

Yesterday I watched as a massive red tailed hawk hunkered down on the power line, its dappled chest ruffled, right above the chicken coop, lurking overhead, with a beady eye.

His tawny shoulder wings were partially spread, ready to swoop.

My flock was out of the run, free-ranging in the grass, having a great day.

But when they saw the raptor, three of my girls froze up like little chicken mannequins under the picnic table. Fiona was hiding under the deck, a little clueless.

And there was my poor Babs, standing stock still in the middle of the yard, the plumpest, heaviest and slowest (in all ways) of my birds.

Beaky mouth agape, she had a stricken look in her bright orange eye, but she was focused, not on the hawk, but on her sisters.

There was an eerie silence, a collective intake of breath, not even an insect scraping its wings.

The chickens were holding still, in suspension, for several minutes, even after I finished waving my arms and screaming like an idiot.

Later, I reflected on their response.

It was as if there was an invisible thread that linked the flock, a tensile connector between them that whispered across the line.

A bit like the yarn we used to string between tin cans to whisper across our bedroom windows in our children’s game of telephone.

In the past I have seen the flock freeze up like that, but I never saw any threat.

But of course there was, and the chickens knew it.

I marvel at the way nature interacts and moves together to protect its own.

Another example came last week, when I had my two baby Marans outside to scratch around and get acclimated to the outdoors. They are my cute black copper twins; they never leave one another’s side.

I always find them wing to wing, with their little beaks together, like they’re telling secrets.

Anyway, Huckelberry the dog, chased one across the yard, caught her and dropped her, and she quickly scrabbled underneath the chicken feeder.

She had two puncture marks on her shoulders, a little blood, but no broken wings.

As I gently inspected her and placed her back in the indoor cage, she immediately ran to her sister, as expected.

But what I noticed next surprised me. Her twin, the uninjured bird, was trembling. Her soft little body shook like I’d never seen before.

And I wondered if she felt the terror, the near escape, the trauma, of her big sister.

Sometimes it is so clear to me the way that our big, wide world is connected by tiny strings.

And the way every mood we experience travels along these invisible pathways, creating ripples of emotion.

Animals are attuned, but we humans often forget this universal language of empathy.

This week, when I read about Simone Bile’s Olympic performance, and her withdrawal from competition, I watched how the world responded.

Her message was: I am human and my mental health is an integral part of my body’s athletic pursuits. You can’t separate the two, mind and body.

And, I swear, I could feel the ripple effects of her statements throughout the mental health community.

Finally, we can talk about what is real: the strength to step away, the courage to describe vulnerability, the excruciating pain of carrying others’ burdens.

And the unnecessary shame that often accompanies us when we let people down, people we love.

And mostly, ourselves.

to be vulnerable is to be strong, to be broken is to be fully human.

For me, Simone is not letting us down, she is raising us up.

She is still the world’s best in her sport, and maybe mind-body intelligence is a reason why.

Like Naomi Osaka, these young women refuse to be defined by mens’ preoccupation with stoicism and self-punishment.

The old ideal that we must subjugate our emotional life in order to succeed, needs to be retired – like mandatory white tennis skirts for women at Wimbeldon, and bikinis on female volleyball players.

Even though these moments are just whispers on the breeze, I believe the flutterings of real change are in the wind.

And I hope that we can transmit this lesson: that to be vulnerable is to be strong, to be broken is to be fully human.

Only if we have the courage to listen, to feel empathy, and to pass the word across the wire: that we’re all in this flock together, and we’ll only get by if we take care of one another.

My chickens know it and I’m trying to figure it out too.

The death of a pet is a grief unlike any other. And when the death is a decision we have made, it is cast into an ambiguous category of loss.

One that we don’t want to talk about.

We say euthanize, and sometimes that term helps. It helps to neutralize what we are feeling, and to distance us from the act – the act of taking a life.

Because, of course, what we are doing is killing a beautiful, vigorous animal.

Last week, my husband and I decided to put our dog Theo “down.” I suppose I am still in shock; I hope that writing these words will help some.

Theo was a huge, big-hearted, loyal, coon hound mix who lived for our family’s love. He was disinterested in other dogs or squirrels, or even treats – he was just partial to people – specifically me and Mac. And Lewis, always Lewis.

He waited every afternoon between five and six, pacing at every window, for Mac to come home.

He watched over the baby chicks without incident, never chased the backyard flock, and joyfully welcomed a second dog into the house.

He could hear the UPS driver from a half a mile away, and wanted nothing more than to jump, full body, onto his shoulders and lick his face.

He adored me, and sat on my lap – all 95 pounds of him – every afternoon when I read my book.

And in the evenings, he galloped, tethered to Mac’s bike, long tongue hanging to one side, with the neighbors laughing as they made way.

A perfect dog.

Except that Theo had one defect: he was a food guarder. Meaning, if anyone got between him and something he really wanted, he would bite.

Last week he bit me. He had done it a handful of times before, but this time felt like a tipping point. I researched, talked to vets, and mostly struggled with my own conscience, to decide what to do.

There was no right or wrong decision, all of it felt wrong.

There is a particular shame in euthanizing a dog. If you’ve had to do it, you know what I’m saying.

Playing God, or using our power over another creature, makes us feel guilty.

Because these animals are vulnerable, and they come to us for protection and care. And it feels like a betrayal of trust.

It is unjust – Theo didn’t even know what we were having to do. He had no voice in the matter.

Yes, he was just a dog. Just a sweet, goofy mutt.

But he had a fierce love, not unlike my own.

My own love that has been so crazy hard, so exasperating, so intense.

Loving a puppy is easy; they give you so much. The pure innocence. The need to please. The forgiving nature. The complete devotion.

But loving a problematic dog is a special kind of heartache.

Loving the not-so-perfect. Loving the hard-headed, stubborn, difficult one.

Loving the temperamental, unpredictable, even dangerous dog.

But also loving the dog who looked at me from the cage of the Durham ASPCA shelter and said take me home, please.

My friend tells me that maybe not every creature is meant to stay here on earth with us. Because maybe this world is too imperfect to truly love a complicated dog like him.

And so maybe it was never Theo’s defect, but rather the world’s inability to accommodate him.

But if I could have understood, or helped, in any other ways, of course, I would have. And, despite his biting, he was such a good boy.

Too good for me to truly understand how to love him in the way he required.

And I want to believe that in some other, more perfect world, I’d be able to love and understand him the way he could me.

I take full responsibility for his death, just as I did for his little life when I brought him home from the shelter. I told him I would care for him forever, but that time has fallen short.

Emptiness, heartache, and such a feeling of loss, that I cry a little, in the afternoon, when I try to read in my chair. I can still feel his hot, heavy weight on my legs and the way my circulation would cut off. But today my legs are light, with no silky black hairs shaking off them.

And in my heart – where there should be a doggy fullness, there is only a jagged hole.

Mac has scattered Theo’s ashes on the roadway, where he loved to run. And when I close my eyes, I can imagine that hound-dog face with the huge, drooley smile, racing alongside him.

He loved just being alive, in the night air, next to Mac. He could run forever if my husband had asked him to.

My Theo, my big sweet boy, I hope your huge heart can forgive me.

I am this sort of person. The sort of person who is strong most of the time, but one who also has a thin skin.

Things my kids say, off-hand comments that can feel mean, they can cut to the bone. I take things so personally.

Am I really that insecure?

Like the egg my chicken Olive laid yesterday, I am so delicate.

Olive’s egg was no good. It was a tiny, slick, water balloon of mucous and half-formed orange yolk. Inedible, ugly, malformed, a gelid aberration.

Yet it was a weird glimpse inside the workings of the miracle, into the dark place that quivers and hides, one that’s not quite ready for full disclosure.

The egg membrane is like the private soul, and maybe we’re just not accustomed to viewing it so naked, so raw.

But I look at the egg and see the contents of a story, one that iterates a woundedness, or maybe just a vulnerability.

Nevertheless, I see a place deep inside, one that is imprinted with a fear of sunlight.

A me not quite ready to meet the world, a me that is afraid to be seen. A me that is afraid to face the violence of some kind of birth.

Years ago, we swam, the three of us, in a heavily chlorinated suburban pool, my sisters and me.

Somewhere around the ages of nine and eleven, back when we still inhabited our bodies and gloried in what we could do with them.

With our little melon tummies and chubby thighs, we would hold our noses and pretend to be mermaids, our legs held together tightly in a thrashing fishtail. And we would hold our breath for as long as we could.

It was a different sensation to have only one leg – but a tail! In a weird way, we could swim better!

We were strong and beautiful.

And we talked to one another at the bottom of the shallow end – in a strange dolphin language. Clicks and squeaks – we would try to decipher the words and end up laughing, and swallowing water until our snotty noses burned.

Years later – middle aged now, we swim circles around one another’s busy lives.

But I think we still remember that long ago sea maiden language that we spoke, and we believe that it belongs to us still.

Swimming pool memories – diving for pennies and other water games.

Like the new app we discovered recently – Marco Polo. It has been an unlikely tool to keep us connected in these pandemic times.

Like the swimming pool version, it involves a sort of call and response. We record a message that can be viewed at any time, and answered whenever we want. A singular moment stolen from our day – from inside a closet at work, or on the bus, even out in the chicken yard.

And like the swimming game, for me it is a shoutout to my sisters – while I might be blindfolded, unable to see where my voice lands, I can still sense that one of them is close by.

And I trust that they will hear the echo of my words, that they will let me close enough so that I can touch them.

I need their touch these days.

I think it has taken many years for us to remember the mermaid language.

In the past, we were distracted by our our need to be important in the family – we were insecure, our allegiance to our parents seemed more critical.

But now, there is is this singular, plaintive song that calls across empty space, and when it does, I go back there, to that time when we were wise.

We talk – one day, one sister is burned-out and stressed – another day, another sister is just needing to vent. And sometimes for me, sometimes I’m just lonely and down.

We have come to know the pain in our silences, and that’s when we shout out.

Sometimes we practice listening even when we just want to talk. We mirror the sounds of sadness, grief or insecurity.

Sometimes we just record a silent moment of a sleeping puppy, or a clutch of fresh, brown eggs.

These are all ways that we attune our ears to hear, and really understand, who we are, and what we need.

So often we let the most important relationships slip away. We stay blindfolded, and scared – when what we really want and need is to be discovered, with full disclosure.

My sister Deb is a full disclosure kind of gal, the one who will say what the rest of us is sure as hell not going to say.

But when she called me out recently, I listened. I swam towards what was true for me, and we met again, after several years of distance.

She scares me. And she sets me free.

My other sister, Kath, the calmer one, will always lead with compassion. She has some idea of me that I really want to believe in. It’s been true since we were nine and eleven.

She sees me. And she sets me free.

I am so grateful to be that mermaid again – back with my beautiful mermaid sisters. And I know we will never lose our sisterhood. We’ve got our strength and tenacity, and most of all, our belief in this feminine triad that defines us.

It is a glittery pool of possibility – amidst love and loss, depression and illness and death.

But we are strong, and we keep swimming, sometimes even in the dark, but always alert to the calls across the deep water, and we know that we are loved.

I think about moving.

Memories of a glorious fall in upstate New York, a slight crispness to the air. It is still too soon for the freshman to swarm the quad, but we are here early today because our son plays soccer.

We spend the afternoon unpacking his clothes, making his bed, arranging his few, carefully chosen items from home. His roommate has yet to surface, so tonight Lewis will be all alone in the big, Soviet bloc style dormitory. There is not a single soul in sight. Is there even a security person on campus?

My husband and I drive back to the hotel and lie in bed and picture our son doing the same just across town.

It is moving day.

He is moving into a new home. Smaller, more intimate and more his than any other place he’s lived, in a funny way.

It is a place he will call his own, and a place he will fill up with a new version of himself, one that has very little to do with Mom and Dad.

And now, years later, I think about another moving day. My father, after living independently, has decided, at 85, to downsize. This week I will drive up to West Virginia to help him.

He too, will take very few belongings with him. A few pieces of essential furniture, books, clothing, toiletries and linens but not much else, really.

His immediate life will be much smaller. And like my son, he will have an opportunity to re-create the space, the decor, even the shadings of who he will be, in the years ahead.

My son, my father. The rites of passage. The stepping stones across the river to another shore.

Both days so full of nerves and excitement and newness – I will be tired, and emotionally spent. And there is this feeling of uneasiness that I won’t be able to shake. What happens next?

Life is always about letting go. And even with practice, it never gets any easier. There is no guarantee that what you lose will ever come back to you. It usually doesn’t.

As a mother, my son leaving home felt like a tearing away of something in my chest. An ache, a soreness, that would come and go. I thought it would never heal. I spent the rest of that fall nursing the hurt, probing the source, confused at the severity. Humbled by grief.

Of course, our son did return home, but it was a bit like the cicada who shucks the protective exoskeleton and crawls out with fresh features. He was reconfigured in an awesome new way. Bits and pieces of who he is now were formed in those 4 years of college.

Often I wonder at the fact that maybe it is not time, but place, that molds us.

Often I wonder at the fact that maybe it is not time, but place, that molds us.

A seed pod, a shell, a womb, a hospital room, a prison cell, a trailer, a garden plot, a starter home. We take on the shape of our surroundings.

Anyway, my father will leave the home that my mother spent so much energy and joy crafting and tending. Where she lived and died. Only now it’s so apparent that the decor was really all her taste, not his. So what my dad leaves behind now is more of her and less of himself, I think.

And like the hermit crab, he will carry away what is his. His home is his own body, really.

His new apartment is lovely. It is small, but has an extra room for an office where he will be able to write. Maybe having a smaller space will allow for less distraction, more focus. I think he will expand and fill these corners.

And my dad will be a different man, because spaces change us. And I will think of him, from my own home in North Carolina, with the knowledge that the next space he inhabits after this one will be beyond walls.

And I think that’s why this letting go is such a painful deal. Ultimately, we can’t follow. We can only help with the transition and desperately wish for a postcard that will never come.

So going back to that night in Ithaca, once my husband and I had held onto each other and sobbed and finally settled into bed, my phone lit up on the pillow with a text. It was from Lewis and it said: You both did a great job.

To this day I choose to think he was thanking us for all of it, the rearing and the nudging forward.

But I know that that’s the other part of this loss: I believe we want to love with all our hearts, to love so hard that it hurts, like it will break us. Because to let go when we would rather cling is the hardest thing of all.

So traumatic that, in the end, we want to be told that we have done a good job helping to transport the burden when it was needed. And we want to make sure someone will do the same for us.

So thank you son, and thank you Dad. I am grateful to have shared a part in your moving days.

Well, originally I’d named her Cricket. Because she has a very plaintive, persistent chirp that dominates the chorus of the other chickie babies.

She can be pushy, rude and even mean to her sisters. The kind of gal who swoops over and pecks at the eyes for no reason. She stirs up trouble, creates kerfuffles.

So we started calling her Ivanka, as a joke. The unfortunate name stuck.

Still, I was not feeling much love for her.

But then, one day I noticed her wings were looking bad. She had glaring, bald patches. The skin beneath was a raw, angry pink color. All at once, she looked like a cat had eaten her and spit her out. Seriously ugly.

And the more bedraggled she became, the meaner she got.

And that’s when I started to feel sorry for Ivanka. Vain, self-centered, power hungry girl.

I tried to hold her and comfort her fragile-feathered ego, but she wasn’t having it. Damned if she would admit to not being the belle of the ball.

Because, you see, chickens have this thing called a pecking order and Ivanka was battling it out in the primaries with Fiona for the top position.

I was rooting for Fiona.

Anyway, these chickens are my Zen Masters. They teach by example. They coax me into understanding the nature of the world. In this case, the ways of love.

How and why do we choose the ones we love? We choose what is easy.

We love the cute fluffy, cuddly, yellow chicks who nestle into our palms with contentment. We love the eager, frisky attitude of the young pullets who scurry to us for feed.

We love the adult chickens who let us hold them and allow us to bask in a sense of companionship and trust. We love the girls who give us eggs, compliant and generous.

But what about the difficult ones like Ivanka?

So this is the Zen: maybe we learn more from those that are problematic rather than the loyal, adoring ones.

And now I think of this when I deal with Ivanka. Sure, I want to muscle in and overpower her and woo her to my side – but that’s not what’s required. If you know chickens, you know that doesn’t work.

So, over time, Ivanka’s feathers rectified themselves. She now has gorgeous peroxide-color plumage, with a lacy black decolletage. She is finally ready for the debutante ball.

And that’s how I see her, as a slightly neurotic, insecure young lady. But she is smart and I have high hopes. Because she’s Ivanka – a bit like her namesake – the bottle-blonde, ambitious and powerful political force.

And what’s funny to me is, she is an incredible breed of chicken – she is a Colombian Wyandotte. A beautiful heritage specimen who makes a great layer.

In my mind’s eye, I see her at her best chicken-self. Yes, the top of the order, but beneficent and wise. She will rule with firm kindness, even though there may be times of necessary toughness, not always a pretty sight in the chicken yard.

But that’s OK. I love her, and I’ll just need to rein in my aversion, and make room in my heart for Ivanka. Take the bad with the good.

It’s what we chicken farmers do.

At Thanksgiving we had our little stunted celebration in the backyard. My son and his girlfriend, my husband and I, we huddled in our coats, with our lawn chairs spaced out judiciously. We wore our masks. Just another staged pandemic family holiday.

And after the apple pie was consumed, I handed out my little party favors. This year, a handful of fluffy chick for each guest to hold and keep warm. A peeping baby bird to snuggle in the palms of their hands.

I thought it would be fun. I’m attempting to socialize these birds, and what better way? We may not be able to cuddle our loved ones, but we can love on a chick.

Remember when we were kids and we all got those goody bags at the end of the birthday party? We would tote them home as little souvenirs from the party. Often they were lackluster – cheap, plastic toys or a bit of candy or a silly whistle.

But what mattered was the thought. The tiny tokens were a way of remembering the event, capsulizing the moment, in a gracious gesture.

Holidays during this pandemic also feel a bit like that takeaway prize. But the problem is, we aren’t even allowed to experience the actual party, instead we’re forced to make do with the scrap of what remains.

We must use our memories to call upon the fuller experience, to imagine and just be grateful.

Anyway, today I spent a few hours in the yard, watching my four baby chicks scratch and bathe and peck around inside their new enclosure. Since the days are warm, I can let them out in the fresh air for a few hours.

My baby chicks, my live party favors.

I scrutinize them, their funny antics. The sun is a big heat lamp for them, they move towards it and roost in the warmth. And they hop and fret, jockeying for position near the green clump of parsley I have pulled out of the dirt and dropped into the pen.

I sit and ruminate on them. Vitality, freshness, cheek.

They are not the party, they are the side dishes.

But still I think that they are also the real-life prize. These cheap, throwaway birds are actually the main attraction. They are what will remain when the dust settles, worthy of prime time.

I mean, once the virus is under control, I will be here and so will the chickens. The small animal bodies are true life, real. Maybe more relevant than anything else here.

So anyway, the sun warms my cheeks and I marvel that it is December. I’ll take it as a gift. Like the chicks, I grab that patch of sunshine and let it leech into my bones, let the Vitamin D saturate the corpuscles in my blood.

And I hope that my body’s reserves of endorphins will get me through this long winter of scarcity – with its small tokens of human contact. And I’ll pray that a boost of grace from my party favor chicken babies will get me through.

I’m counting on it.

Hope is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Hope. The thing with feathers.

The brilliant poet Emily Dickinson wrote this. And it is a poem that most people know, but one that could be dismissed as quaint, or naive.

This morning, a day after the election, I think these words are meant for me.

A simple metaphor, yet perfect.

As the urban chicken farmer, I can see this thing that Dickinson describes. A small bird, that flits and flies – is here and gone, within a moment.

Flighty, inconsistent, mostly wild, hidden.

Yes, it is so easy to let cynicism and rationality overtake the mood. But I think it the braver thing, the harder thing, to consider the birds, the feathers.

To let this moment rise.

The bird may never be the strongest animal but it is here and now, for this day. And as the poet says: it asks not a crumb of me.

Because really, what does it cost me to put aside my tired cynicism?

We are all trying to believe in a new promise for our country. And today, as I walk the stone path through my backyard, back to the chicken coop, I know that this hope is a light, gossamer thing.

If you know birds, you know the nature of fragility and outcome. Faith, and lots of scattered feed, and then a prayer and a letting go.

And so, today I choose to let my heart lift with the birds – yes, they are inconsistent and flighty – but what’s the point otherwise?

It seems to me that negative thinking and critical analysis only clips the wings of a creature that wants to ride the thermal winds to see a distant ocean.

To be free.

Oh, to see that world from where I perch!

And to imagine another distant shore, another place to lay my head and fold my wings.

Hope, the thing with feathers.