The one accomplishment that has escaped me for the four years I have lived on this farm, was the ability to bring forth chicks. To have them born here, and not bring them here in a box from the post office. There is something very romantic about the way a hen raises her chicks. She stays with the eggs from the moment they are layed and leaves the nest for nothing. Not food, or water, or anything else for the twenty-eight days it takes for them to hatch. Her personal needs are set aside for the good of her brood. That's dedication and commitment. That's pure unselfishness. I wanted to see this miracle first hand, with my own eyes. To see little chicks scattered around a mother hen, in my yard. It was my goal, and it would have been my shining moment.
It doesn't seem like much of a goal, and for everyone else raising chicks appears to be easy. But for me it was like a thorn under my skin. A glaring flaw. What was I doing wrong? Why was this so hard for me? No matter how I tried to provide the right environment to accomplish this... I failed. I tried an incubator and failed. I tried penning the hens up and they just got pissed off at me and broke all the eggs. I tried buying fertilized eggs and they spoiled. It was clearly an obsession, this desire to raise my own chicks.
I noticed several weeks ago that the banty hen that Jake caught for me after the rooster wars had gone missing. I was not surprised. I suspected that she went back where she came from, or was taken by a dog. Everything else in my life is such a mess right now that the disapperance of the little hen was just another detail. Another punch in the stomach. It was stupid of me to set this goal for myself when other things were more important. But as I said before, my 'chicks goal' had become an obsession, and I had heard that banty hens are good setters and will hatch out not only their own chicks, but other eggs as well. Now my last hope was squashed.
I pulled into the yard at dusk on Sunday evening and parked. There was nothing that had happened over the course of the day to indicate that the Gods had decided to smile on me. In fact it was one of the worst days of my life relatively speaking. It was the day that Fred and I had decided finally to separate and I agreed to move out after months of arguing.
I noticed the llittle banty hen, first. I was somewhat relieved to see that she was still around and all right. The sun was only a tiny speck on the western horizen so I had to squint to make sure that it was really the little banty that I was seeing. It was then that I saw the eight little chicks that followed closely behind her. She had disappeared. But only to hatch out a clutch of eggs. I should have felt jubilation, a sense of accomplishment. I should have been elated. I wasn't. I sat in the truck, listening to the engine tick itself cool, and cried.
It seems that after all my efforts and interference, all I really needed to do was start out with the right equipment and let nature take it's course. I had been trying too hard. I was sad that it had taken so long to be fulfilled, this burning need to raise chicks. I was sad that it had happened now, now that it was too late to give me any real satisfaction.
I wouldn't get to watch her raise them. I wouldn't be there to see her shelter them under her wings when danger threatened. I wouldn't get to relive the raising of my own brood through this little hen, because after all, that had been my real goal.
I couldn't help finding the whole situation ironic, and being somewhat superstitious, I couldn't help thinking that someone was trying to tell me something. Why would this happen the exact day that my husband and I had decided that we were not longer meant to be together? That we have nothing common anymore and no longer loved each other.
Fred chose that moment to come outside. I quickly hid the fact that I had been crying.
"We have baby chicks!" I said, stupidly, like it was the answer to all our problems.
"I know. I saw them yesterday."
I gazed at him, wondering if he really didn't know what a special moment this was for me, if he really just didn't care; or if like me, he knew but was hiding his feelings. Did he see the irony? Hadn't I been telling him all along that I longed for just such an event to occur? Or had I kept this fact, along with a lot of other hopes and dreams and fears to myself, and was now blaming him for not being able to read my mind.
In order to answer these questions I would have to delve back into the previous twenty years and search my memory for snatches of conversations that had taken place so long ago that the words were now dead and useless. Instances where I bared my soul, assuming I did, and told him of all my hopes and dreams and belatedly try to actually gauge his reactions to those admissions. It seems an impossible task, and it occurs to me that like a belief in God, so much of our relationships have to be taken on faith. There's no way to 'prove' love exists, any more than there is a way to prove God exists. You just have to take it on faith that it's real and worthwhile, like my faith that one day I would have chicks that were born on my farm.
If there is a message here, it escapes me. If this is a guardian angel trying to send me a message that faith does have it's place, and is not wasted, I didn't get it. To me, it's just another twist of the knife, salt in the wound, another kick while I'm down. If I should be interpreting this event as some kind of sign that I'm making a mistake letting this relationship go, and that I've lost my faith... I'm not. Maybe that's been my problem all along. Only time will tell. The little banty? She'll raise her chicks whether or not I'm there to see it. Life will go on.
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