Crepuscule

My baby’s lapis eyes are quick to laugh, her soul
a magnet picking up the filings of joy in our lives,
pressing them together into solid chunks of goodness.
I don’t like to lie to my daughters, or even to dissemble.
But I yearn to protect the too short mirth of childhood,
keep the worst of the world at bay. Here in the gloaming,
anxiety sparks at the margins of my maternal smile,
shaking the foundation just a bit in spite of my assurances.
How do I explain war to a pure heart? Greed and hubris
to one who shares without hesitation?

I am buffeted by the sense of unknowing, unable to get
my bearings without the sun or stars. A feeling
like motion sickness without the certainty
of a distant horizon and firm footing.
This twilight offers no hint of what will follow:
a sheet pulled over the slack features of resignation?
Or incandescence, as the world springs to life.

Maybe she was on to something...

Okay - this morning my chickens were nowhere to be found. I walked all around the yard, to all their favorite haunts, even up the road a bit, calling and clucking. Nothing. About 20 minutes later my husband announced the the chickens had emerged...from the woods. Feral after all?

Feral Chickens

This summer, the lovely wooded hillside behind our house was transformed into a softball field for the private high school that also receives locals via tuition paid by the district. It's a good school, but very focused on attracting dorm students because that's where the money is. There are a lot of benefits to the town and community - I for one am glad that for at least 9 months of the year our little town (well, it's bigger than Wasilla, AK was when Sarah Barracuda was mayor, but that's another story) is pretty diverse, with students from Asia, Europe, Central America and the Carribean breaking up the homogeneity of the locals. So I guess we can look forward to more diversity, as a new dorm is slated for where the current softball field sits. And the hilly topography of the school's property apparently left them with no options but to decimate the woods and move earth around into a very unnatural looking configuration.

One morning I left for work, and arrived home to find an acre of forest gone - flattened by this amazing (horrible, actually) Terminator-3 looking gizmo. Within days, all the fallen trees were hauled away, and in the ensuing weeks the fairly steep, rolling land was redesigned into an even steeper amphitheatre with a little softball field at the bottom.

Here's what our backyard looked like before the trees were massacred:


And here's how it looks now:

Not the end of the world, but kind of a sad event. The woods were great for the girls to play in - there was a nice trail that the XC team used, which made a scenic shortcut when we walked into town. Last summer there was a skunk family back there - a really beautiful matriarch and maybe 6 babies who would wander onto our lawn and commune with our cats peacefully. I think the school may have exterminated them, as I heard a loud bang one day and never saw the skunks again.

Now to the story that inspired the title of this post...this spring we got six barred rock chicks, which stayed in our basement for a while but eventually moved to a coop on the lawn. When they were big enough, I began letting them free range during the day, and as time passed they became more and more adventurous. Finally they made themselves known to our neighbors on their short walks up the road a bit. One of my neighbors caught my attention one day and asked "do you have chickens?" I thought uh-oh, is there some zoning restriction? But I answered truthfully, and she said "Oh that explains it! All the sudden I noticed chickens and I thought they must have been driven out of the woods when the construction started!" Yep, feral chickens. I kind of wish we'd let that story ride for a while. Here are the beasts (the four that remain), looking all wild and ferocious while lounging on the deck:

I love 'em!

Finding the Silver Lining

Our family is still without a permanent child care solution, but the chaos that has ensued has had the effect of shaking us out of our stale routines, with some unexpected benefits. Prior to this, we had settled into a pretty even (but disturbingly traditional) division of labor. I cooked, shopped and handled child related duties, Fritz did kitchen clean up and household maintenance.

For the past couple weeks we've been trading child care and transportation duties, shuttling the girls to school in the morning, then picking up Hazel from preschool and getting her to her temporary child care situation (the nice old lady from an earlier post), picking up Lily from school a few hours later, and finally collecting Hazel at 5. Thursday and Friday of this week I was completely off child duties due to out of town meetings. What's more, I had to work both evenings to catch up on work that I had fallen behind on due to all the mixed up days. When I popped in between meetings on Thursday evening, Lily begged me to quickly make dinner so they wouldn't have to settle for Fritz's standard, spaghetti. Rude and insensitive - and as it turned out, unfounded. Fritz expanded his culinary efforts significantly both evenings, to rave reviews. When I arrived home at 7:30 last night, I found grilled chicken breasts that had been marinated in a tasty rub involving lime rind(!) and "other stuff." Of course the microplane grater is also a woodworking tool, so this wasn't as much of a stretch as it might seem, but still...I was impressed. And the salad! Lettuce, arugula, broccoli, feta, onions and tomatoes. Awesome. Plus, he did laundry.

I noticed that after only two days of not being the one connecting with the kids' other lives at school and child care I felt out of touch with them - more aware that they have whole lives away from me. They feel a little less "mine." A loss for me, but the benefits to Fritz and the girls more than make up for it.