“OK, I will take the four chickens in my back yard. That means you make sure they have a secure place and provide food. I will keep an eye on them.”
This is a gesture to my 30-year-old daughter, Meli, a way to support her in a stressful time. Chickens became her go-to pets during the pandemic. She cuddles them and coos to them. She also has an indoor variety she learned about in her chicken chat group, which is why I have the large ones in my yard. That’s not all the pets. She also has rabbits, dogs, and cats. And actually she has three children too, an 8-year-old and two 2-year-old identical twin girls. I am learning to be flexible and creative in how I play my role as grandma and as mom.
Luckily, she has a handy father-in-law who comes over, hammers, screws, cuts, and builds a very sturdy, cage-like thing to surround the coop. “What did I get myself into?” I think, as I stand at the back door watching this project happen. She loves them and finds comfort in these birds. I see one lean into her when she makes kissing sounds in the chicken’s ear.
One light brown chicken sits in the grass in a sunny spot and lifts one wing in the air.
“That’s how they get sun. It feels good to them.”
My daughter is crazy about chickens. Her chicken chat group keeps her informed. Indoors she has a flock in a large cage in her living room. I remember how I pined for a dog for years as a kid. I cajoled my parents with persistence. But chickens?
Then she gets a tiny rooster who can make eggs fertile. Before we know it, she’s raising tiny chicks in an incubator. She gives some away and sells other. Then, she keeps a few! The flock is growing. There is no telling her to get rid of some. Her chicken group assures her she is doing everything properly.
I pause and consider what is making her so enamored of chickens? We adopted Meli at age 2 weeks, young for adoption. Her 35-year-old birth mom was going to give her up at the hospital but ended up taking her home for a week. Being in health care and almost a midwife, I am acutely aware of the importance of those early hours and days for bonding and having a sense of security and love. After a week at home, the birth mother called the agency and said she had to give her baby up. The word from the agency was that when they picked up Meli, she had diaper rash and seemed hungry. I ponder what that early experience set up in her. Just wondering. She saves and nurtures animals.
Around this time, Meli and her family were invited to go with the in-laws on a rare, few days away at the beach. Meli left me with an incubator full of tiny quail eggs. They were brown and the size of an egg-shaped malted milk ball.
“Don’t worry Mom,” she says, as we stand next to the tiny eggs in the incubator now perched on my mantlepiece.
“Maybe the day before we get back, they might start to hatch.”
Wide-eyed, I stare at the fifteen tiny eggs, mulling over what one does with baby quail.
“OK,” I say.
Not even 24 hours later, I peek at the incubator and see movement. There’s a tiny brown fluffy thing hopping around. I let out a screech.
“Yikes!!”
I take a photo with my phone and while up close, I notice a neat line of crack along another tiny egg. Someone is working his way out!
I call Meli. “Hey, they are hatching! What do I do?”
“Oh, cool Mom! They are okay for twenty-four hours. Then you’ll need to give them water and food.”
As I look back at the cracking egg, a little beak sticks out. Oh my!!
Now I have what seem like giant chickens in the backyard, checking on them each morning. These tiny ones are inside. I shake my head. “Geez!”
By the end of the day, before I go to bed, there are nine, yes nine of them hopping around the incubator.
The next day, my daughter’s friend brings quail food, and we determine to put water in a bottle cap. When I lift the incubator lid, one tiny fluff drifts to the floor. “Oh!” I catch it and pop it back in. Still hops around. The water? They seem to know what to do.
When we picked Meli up, at age two-weeks, she was a healthy content baby. We even had a lovely moment holding her close, eye-to-eye, talking to her. I kept saying, “We are your Mom and Dad, and we love you.” She met our gaze and looked from one to the other and then broke into a toothless newborn baby smile. I know from years of study the importance of bonding, first moments, warmth connection. I wonder what she seeks now. Kahil Gibran says
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.…
This is true of all children and especially clear of adoptees. Parenting is challenging. To give fully when they are small and helpless, to empower them to step up, and hope they can navigate. Yet they have their own destiny and mission in the world. I must be discerning—when to lean in, be supportive; when to lean out, have a healthy boundary; not lose balance by leaning in too far or out too far.
I am asking myself to “please remember that you are not just a mom an adult watching your grown daughter learn about life. She is teaching you a lot a well, by asking your help and showing her vulnerability in caring so much for chickens.”
Can I get it? Can I weave my way through to lean in and help while also creating a healthy boundary for myself. Once a mother always a mother. That is one of the most challenging roles on the spiritual path that I know. How easy and tempting to focus on her and what she is doing, forgetting to watch myself and what I am doing.
Finally she comes home and bursts through my front door to dash right over to the incubator full of her tiny fluffy balls. She opens the top and takes out a few into her hands, eyes gleaming.
There’s a flurry of checking them over, counting them, seeing there is enough water….
She looks over at me smiling.
“Thanks Mom!” she says.
I know I did more than watch eggs hatch.
Now she is the mother hen for these chickens little. Somehow this seems right. I welcome them, cracking out of their eggs. She takes over, loving them up and cooing over them.
