Month: September 2012

I used to think I’d been really short-changed by Mother Nature.  Born into a family of smart, attractive women, I must have been day-dreaming the day she was passing out her gifts because, while she was giving my sister brains, beauty, and personality, the only gift I got seemed to be a set of smarts associated exclusively with my derriere.  My parents, however, were much more egalitarian about the gifts they gave us.  They made sure we left home equipped with at least a modest command of manners and survival skills.  And, in the fourth grade, my mom gave me the gift of writing.

Our family was living in Peru for a few months while my dad was working with a pediatric clinic there, and, contrary to what we had hoped, we were not going to spend the Peruvian summer goofing off.  A former high-school english teacher and future history professor, my mom was adamant that she would keep us caught up with our classes at home.

My sister and I knew she was getting the lesson plans and materials from our teachers before we left, but somewhere in the corner of my mind I still nurtured the idea that I would be able to weasel out of any serious studying for the next few months.  After all, my mom was – literally – (and is) the nicest person you will ever meet.  I rarely hear her raise her voice, and, even in what should be a heated confrontation, she manages to keep a civil tone in her voice.  It was not until we were going over my abysmal report card from the previous term that I realized how badly I had underestimated her resolve.

One gift I did get from Mother Nature was an olympic-calibur ability to daydream through even the most interesting class, and, at the time, I didn’t think fourth grade was too interesting to begin with.  Determined to put a stop to my academic apathy, Mom decided we would work on the research projects together.  The school had decided on the themes, but together (kind of) we settled on at least one book report, with mom promising I would learn to write at least one well.  She kept her promise.

Under her gentle but unyielding tutelage, I learned how to write outlines and how to write a draft.  I learned the word diction, and I learned how to take criticism without breaking down in tears (tried it at least once, still had to study).  Almost completely my will, she gave me her literary gifts, and, at the time, I showed as much gratitude as if I’d received a fruitcake for Christmas.

When we got back to the states, Mom’s determination had put me and my sister ahead of our classes in her two favorite subjects. The experience set the tone for the next few years, and she continued to critique our papers.  There were fewer and fewer tears, and, by the time I got to high school, I had acquired a taste for fruitcake (which, as some of my old classmates may remember was pretty evident in at least one thing I wrote for our entertainment).

We all know the joke about fruitcakes – that there’s really only one that’s been eternally re-gifted from one family to another over the years/decades.  Right now I’m wrestling with the challenge of re-gifting a love of writing to my oldest son, and he’s just as excited about it as I was when I was in his shoes.  I spend a lot of time wondering how my mom made it interesting, even when she was making it hard.  And, on those nights when I’m pushing him to rewrite and revise something, I realize there was a lot more than just a love of writing that was mixed into that fruitcake.  There was love, of course, and there was perseverance and creativity.  And from her aspirations for us, I have found inspiration.  It is a gift I hope to pass on.

From the first year we were married, living in a basement apartment in Boston whose only highlight was the extremely shady but private 12 x 12 ‘yard’, I knew I needed to garden.

Once my gardening was simply a way to be outside and be near something green – something sorely missed in the city.  Then it became a path to  greater food independence. Still later, it became my place to experiment.

Now, even living surrounded by farmer’s markets and CSA’s, I still grow at least some of my own food and flowers each year.  Sometimes I struggle to explain my addiction to others and even to myself, and, as I went out to rescue what may be the last of this year’s hot weather veggies from an impending spate of bad weather, I meditated on the question once again.

This mental meandering always takes my mind from the why’s of it all to the smell of the basil leaves in my pail and then to the the chirping of the crickets nearby.  I listen to the song of the tree frogs and then travel to thoughts our toasty kitchen with a homegrown savory stew on the wood stove.  I wonder what the people who worked this land a hundred or two hundred, or even four hundred years ago would have grown.  I wonder how they survived without a country store three miles away and if we could if we had to.

And, finally, my travels take me to a place where I want to keep these skills, even if we may never need them to the degree we have in the past.  They take me to a place where I am connected to our land and to its history, to an act of faith that something good will come from my labors each year, and to a place where I am truly mindful of my senses.  And, most of all, they take me to that place where I am determined to cultivate – for as long as my body will let me – the peace that comes with the knowledge that those places do exist.

One of our first – and favorite – country life endeavors was the acquisition of a flock of chickens.  At the time, the backyard chicken movement was in its infancy, and most of the books we found were republished versions of guides from the 1980s, so most of our education came from trial and error and picking the brains of our more experienced neighbors.

Now, there are a lot of books out there that will tell you what you need if you want to keep chickens. You’ll need something to keep the varmints out. You’ll need a watering system. You’ll need housing and a place to keep their food from getting moldy. But the one thing they don’t tell you is that every backyard chicken owner needs a good mudroom and a healthy tolerance for messes.

Our chickens – my husband liked to call them ‘The Girls’ in his best South-Chicago accent – were truly free range. To be sure, we locked them up at night, but in the daytime, they had the run of our garden and yard, and our flock became very friendly with us. They followed me into the garden, scratching and digging and weeding. They’d follow the kids around the yard, risking death by flying baseball to enjoy their company. And, if we left the front door open, they’d follow us into the house.

The first time it happened, one of The Girls had followed me in when I went to get a garden tool. One of them inside momentarily was adorable. She hopped around our cluttered entry way, exploring until I decided that we were in danger of invoking Murphy’s Law and, playing it safe, tossed her out.

Little did I know that she had discovered the bin of cracked corn we had leftover from winter feeding.The next day, I had two companions close behind me as I walked to the door. This was threatening to become a trend, so I put my foot between us and warned the family that the girls were suddenly interested in the house.

This kept on for a while, and The Girls being more persistent than we were vigilant eventually began finding their way regularly into the mudroom. The only thing that kept our house from turning into a giant chicken coop was our mudroom – our Maginot line against feathers and chicken poop. It got even crazier when winter weather rolled in making them completely dependent on the corn bin (in the summer they survived on bugs for the most part).

Now, I did draw the line at the living room door – the only chickens in the main house are in picture frames (along with the rest of our family), But, when there was 6-8 inches of fresh snow on the ground and another 4-6 inches on the way (cracked corn sinks), the mudroom/poutry bar was a really convenient way to feed the ladies.  And, somehow, the new mom who had been revolted by the sight of pigeons feeding from and off of tourists in the Plaza of San Marco in Venice had morphed (in a mere five years) into a chicken lady, cooing as she fed The Girls and snapping pictures when it was her husband’s turn.  No one who knows me would ever have mistaken me for a neat freak, but convenience and necessity were teaching me not to let my feathers get ruffled (sorry – I had to do it).

A couple of summers ago a fox a way into the coop and decimated our flock. Fixing the coop and restocking is fairly high up on the to-do list, but, in the interim, the mudroom has been cleared and re-cluttered several times, erasing any evidence that it was once a poultry bar.  I’m still sure that a mudroom is a must-have when you have chickens, but now, even at its most cluttered state, it feels a more than a little empty without our companions, making me wonder if the mudroom needs chickens to be complete.

It was just like any other Friday night.  We were planning on a dinner with the kids at our favorite diner – a babysitter wasn’t in the budget -and then a night on the couch in front of the tube.  The only thing that set this Friday apart was the fact that it was our sixteenth anniversary.

We weren’t celebrating another decade or any major milestone, but, in some ways, our run-of-the-mill family night routine made it as special as a gourmet dinner out.  It was mundane, but it was a recognition that we’ve arrived at that sweet spot where we can’t remember a life before we were together or imagine any life in the future without each other (even when we hit the inevitable rough patches).  And it was a reminder that happily ever after isn’t always about champagne and caviar – sometimes it comes with a side order of fries.