After my mother died, my family (if you could still call it that) got chickens. I was seven. My father thought that they would help take up some of the time my siblings and I had, after all, we used to always cook, clean, and laugh when my mother was alive. At first, I hated the chickens. They symbolized the death of my mother and were to me like a cheap toy bought as a bribe. As if any bribe could make up for my loss. So in some ways, I associated and still associate chickens with death. But as I grew from child to teen to adult, I realized how much I loved my chickens and how important to me they were. When our oldest and fattest hen, Aunt Mary as we called her, died, I was absolutely heartbroken. But like all losses I had endured, I pushed forward and kept moving. 

My marriage started to fail before it had even begun. My husband was a workaholic with his ambitions and work in line before his family and before even himself. But I felt as though I was committed to being a mother to my future children, like my mother had tried to be for me. I really did love my husband. So I married him and had two children. After almost five years, my husband was offered a promotion and with it came a relocation to Seattle, thousands of miles away. That was when I knew that this devil, the one I hadn’t wanted to look at, needed to be faced head on. He accepted the job and moved. I didn’t.

Though my kids were still little, the first thing I did after my husband left for the airport was to go to our nearest hardware store and farm. I found a perfect little coop and got a half dozen baby chicks, whom my kids named after their favorite TV characters. We had Phineas, Ferb, and Hannah Montana to name a few. But after the novelty wore off, my kids went right back to their toys and games and lost total interest in the chickens. The chickens were totally for me. A chicken isn’t loyal like a dog, or clever like a cat. But there is something that is incredibly comforting about caring for them. Going out to feed them and collect their eggs every morning always warms my heart. 

When the Sheriff arrived to serve me our divorce papers, a few weeks later, though I cried and cried, I immediately went and made sure the chickens had water and feed. I was a mother to my children, but felt so bad that I too failed my children, as my mother had, by robbing my children of two happy parents. I feel asleep sitting against the coop as the sun, like my marriage, went away. I was awakened by my son who was petting our chicken Ferb, and who, after seeing me awake, pointed up at the stars, beckoning for me to not only see their beauty, but to see that after one door closes, another opens.