Another kind of love story

No trouble (redux)

I didn’t want to begin with the admission of being a little worn out. It’s such an uninspiring opener. Like, what the hell? No! You can find that vibe anywhere, right? Alas, the truth always finds its way out.

I’ve just returned from a work retreat. My colleagues and I powered through facilitated discussions, breakout groups, and shared meals, packing what would have amounted to weeks of emails and meetings into a single, 36-hour download. The setting was wonderful. We were away from our respective offices. It even snowed a delicious, cake-icing snow that was enough to turn everything pillowy and peaceful for a few hours, but not enough to complicate our departures.

The early morning view from my “retreat” bedroom.

While there were opportunities for free time, s’mores, and free-flowing conversation (enlivened by free-flowing hootch) the seclusion, quiet, rest, and relaxation that appear in the definition of the word retreat were not key features of our hours away. If it were up to me, I’d choose different terminology for these kinds of cloistered, immersive work experiences. Call them team-building intensives. Call them mind-mining symposia. Call them sanctioned suffering for those of us who are apt to run out of peopling stamina.

Even the most gregarious and extroverted of my colleagues were beginning to stare blankly at the funky chandeliers on the ceiling by the time we were wrapping up. So, I vote for ditching retreat, which seems to imply that we should walk away from these things like we’ve just spent a week in Provence.  

My brain is feeling, as my father used to say, like it’s been rode hard and put up wet. Thus, I’m sharing a piece written some years ago and posted here just a couple of weeks after this publication first hatched.

Whether you’ve come across it before or not, I hope it inspires you to care deeply, to behave differently, to live simply. I hope it encourages you to ask for help when you need it and to give help when you can offer it. I hope it renews hope.

It is the kind of love story every Valentine’s Day needs. It’s part of why I call this project Chicken Scratch.

Here’s to you and all the ways you love…

Happy Valentine’s Day

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No trouble: Ode to a chicken

None of us knows for sure how long it went on. Not really. All we know with certainty is that she became part of our clan when she was very young, and the children were very young, and we were all pretty much novices at the whole farming thing. We hadn't had a chance to develop the more Darwinian principles of the seasoned caretakers we became.

She was different not hopeless. She required careful consideration was all, and we were just the ones to give it to her. We never envisioned it persisting, but who thinks about those things in the moment, when it's just a little something extra, not so much to ask, no trouble at all really, and look how the kids adore her. There was more than enough room to make a safe haven for a chicken who mysteriously lost the ability to use her legs in a normal fashion. As long as she could get herself to food, water, and shelter it wasn’t an issue. Not at all, really.

A snowy Snowy day, in 2005

So it began, and so it went on. Across the seasons, through the chapters of our lives. We'd laugh about having a disabled chicken. We’d shake our heads and laugh even more about the absurdity of having a geriatric, disabled chicken. She was no trouble at all. Really. And, she asked so little of us.

Bright-eyed with a guk-guk of gratitude most every time we interacted with her, she never needed veterinary care, never got underfoot, never dragged home anything foul, never wandered off, and never lost enthusiasm for her unusual, solitary existence. 

One especially bitter evening, right before Valentine’s Day, we brought her inside. Old girls like her have earned the right to a spa retreat when a polar vortex blows through. Relishing the warmth of the house and being close to her human flock, she didn’t mind downsizing to a small pet carrier. She ate with gusto and told tales in her colloquial chicken chatter.  And the next day, before the light took its leave from the sky, she was gone.

If there were some sort of prioritized list for pet-to-people connections—and I'd say there is one, even if nobody much talks about it—chickens don't rank very high. When they're allowed to live beyond a certain age they mostly don't, so what's the point in bonding?

Snowy was different. Snowy went on. After 16 years, we no longer talked about lack of attachment. We just shook our heads and laughed. It was easier than explaining how on earth we came to love a bumbly, blonde bird for such a long time.

Life brings us messengers of all stripes and species to teach us what we need to learn. Snowy taught us perseverance. She taught us that appearances aren't always what they seem. She taught us that the world is filled with remarkable souls, some of whom require a bit more regard before their best gifts can be revealed. And really, offering at least that is no trouble at all.

~Elizabeth

Snowy, circa 2015