Scott says his favorite blogs are when I write about how I am feeling. Okay, Scott, this one’s for you!

Grant left for college. It’s been coming for a long time and of course, I am happy for him because he has worked hard and he’s ready to get started on his own life but…it’s been really hard and we all miss him.

For me, it’s about so much more than just missing Grant. My little family of four is no longer together and that is so very sad at the moment. For the past year, I did pretty well, pushing the inevitable out of my mind. We were busy helping Grant polish his college applications, waiting, and then celebrating. We watched the last plays and we went to the graduation celebrations and we sadly counted down the days.

There was so much going on; the last prom, the last drive to school together for Grant and Ashley, the last bonfire at the beach with friends, the last Film Club film. I congratulated myself on only crying a few times like while reading a card in Target and watching the last performance of the last school play. I could even joke about it, but then my emotions manifested in an interesting, to say the least, and unexpected experience.

It all started in second grade. Grant’s teacher was a veteran, she had been teaching for a long time and every year she taught a science unit on the life cycle using chicken eggs. Looking back, I can’t fathom why she, after a hundred years of teaching, thought that hatching a bunch of eggs under the impatient eyes of 2^nd graders was a good idea, but who am I to judge?  Anyway, it was an exciting time, the eggs were hatching, school was soon to be out for the summer, and Grant, along with all of his classmates, brought home a note happily announcing that the chicks would be ready for new homes in a couple of weeks!  Ummm…okay. What kind of person does that to the young parents of a 2^nd grader and a four-year-old?

Like any breakdown, the beginning is impossible to recognize at the time, but that day the note came home was the day I signed up for a massive chicken meltdown years later.

We never didn’t have chickens from that day on.

Grant liked the new chicks, Violet and Red, but Ashley was in love. Violet (above) grew into an especially docile and kind playmate.

The chickens became Ashley’s playmates, her dolls, her muses.

I have a lot of pictures of little Ashley and Grant and many of those pictures have a chicken in them somewhere.

Ashley and company dressed them up, married them, painted their toenails, and carried and carted them around the yard.  You couldn’t walk out of the back door without the chickens hearing you and they would come lumbering across the grass like drunk jalopies. I chased chickens out of my freshly planted garden, I cursed chickens when I stepped squarely in their generous, multicolored poops scattered randomly around the patio and yard.  I laughed when spring gusts would blow fat hens off of the bird feeders. You couldn’t eat on the patio without the chickens wandering over and begging like dogs for treats.  When it rained they would huddle piteously up against the sliding glass doors acting like it was my fault for the rain.  The chickens were part of the family landscape.

Along with the chickens came chicken drama and maybe this should have served as some sort of foreshadowing, but it usually just turned into a funny story, if slightly morbid. There were the sick chicken stories. A hen would get sick and I would soak them in warm Epson salt baths in the laundry room, mostly gently squirting olive down their unappreciative soggy necks, while the smell of wet chicken permeated the house. The chicken population would ebb and flow, sometimes my googling and chicken heroics saving a life and other times they just died of stuck eggs or old age, which is rare for chickens.

One young hen recovered from her egg issue thanks to my treatments but then died suddenly a few weeks later. Ashley was fascinated by the cause of her demise and so in the name of science, she and her friend (and Scott) dissected the chicken to see if they could identify the blockage. I know, gross and I will spare you the other more graphic picture, but it was a funny story, especially the part when I called the mother of the child to get her permission for her daughter to participate in the afternoon activity at our house.

Then there was the story of the mean rooster. Anyone who has brought chicks home knows that they will probably end up with at least one rooster, regardless of the “guarantees.” We always did and before I got smart and got phone numbers for the “right people,” I got stuck with a mean rooster.

Cookie Dough (the III, I believe, but Cookie Dough I & II were hens) was a White-crested Polish (above with the crazy hair and please notice the colorful paint on the coop), a small breed suffering from a huge case of Napoleon complex, and would attack anyone who got near him. The first time he attacked me, I kicked him as hard as I could and he just kept flying at me, spurs a blazing. I left the coop with bloody legs and reported the incident to Scott. The next time the rooster attacked it was Ashley and then Ashley’s friend…and this happened when they were little. Again, I told Scott that he really needed to do something about the mean rooster, but nothing happened.

Then one day I returned to the house after running some errands. Scott had been home with the kids and we were looking forward to a date that evening. Our babysitter pulled up just as I was getting out of my car and here comes sweet little Ashley to greet us…I thought.  She was so excited, happily panting, “The rooster jumped on Molly and now Papa is going to cut his head off! I need my fiddle and can I have the flowers on the table?”

Molly, our sweet and elderly golden retriever, dear friend and protector, had been assaulted by the rooster, and that was unforgivable. Grant found the hatchet, Scott did the deed, and Ashley had the funeral complete with music and flowers.

Instead of being horrified, which I would have understood completely, our babysitter was happy to watch it all. She was a fabulous babysitter.

That was the end of the mean rooster.

And there were non chicken visitors to the chicken coop that caused chicken drama too.

Then there was Turtle, a sweet and quiet Silkie. Turtle spent much of his younger years being carted around, dressed up and married off to other chickens, like his sweet friend, Sugar (on the left) and maybe because of all of the attention, he remained gentle.

Here, we have Grant and Violet (one of the original hens from 2nd grade) officiating the nuptials between Sugar and Turtle

And then they rode off into the sunset…

Eventually, the chicken population dwindled, and we did not replenish the flock. One day only Turtle, the serene black rooster remained and he was so sad. He would stand at the sliding glass door all day long and would even come inside if you left the door open. He needed a friend and so I sent out an email to my neighbors asking for a companion for our sad rooster. Soon, Georgina came to live with us and after a few days, the two were inseparable.

They were the sweetest pair until Turtle disappeared months later and Georgina was sad. I have never heard a chicken cry, but she did, for hours.

Scott told me I should give the hen back to our neighbors and retire as a chicken farmer. Ashley said, “Let’s get chicks…one more time!” Scott said, “Don’t do it.” We got more chicks, too many more chicks and of course one of those chicks turned into an obnoxious, but not mean rooster, and everything was fine. The new flock was wild, but Georgina had friends and we had a bounty of fresh eggs.

Then a lot of things that had been bobbing about on the horizon became front and center. Grant was graduating from high school. We had planned a long family trip over the summer with only a few weeks between our return and delivering our oldest to school in New York City. After Grant started school, Scott, Ashley and I planned to travel while she completed her sophomore year online. Scott and I found a house sitter and started to get the house ready. It was during this process that I came to the conclusion that the chickens needed a new home.  I had a week before our summer trip and I could make life easy for all of us by rehoming the flock before we left. And I did it. It took a few days but some good friends offered to take them. I fist pumped! I was so excited. Yes! The chickens would have a new home in a free-range friendly environment.

I borrowed a dog crate from our neighbors and gathered up all of the chicken stuff, the food, scratch and shavings in heavy barrels, the 5-gallon waterer, the extra bits and pieces of chicken paraphernalia and then at dark Scott plucked them from their cozy roosts and dumped them into the dog crate. It went from silent evening to cacophony very quickly and the kids came hurrying out to the chicken coop to tearfully say good-bye to their pets.  Wait a minute…that’s not really what happened. Scott and I got the chickens into the dog crate and put the dog crate on our wagon (the same wagon that Ashley used to cart them around in) and as we began to wheel it across the lawn to the truck in the driveway, the kids wandered outside to see what we were doing.  They walked the rest of the way to the truck with us and said “good-bye chickens” and then Scott and I drove into the sunset. Wait, that’s not what happened either…Scott and I drove the ten minutes to our friends’ house talking about the end of the chicken-era and then we were there, and we moved the chickens into their new and in honor of their arrival, freshly cleaned and bedded, coop. We chatted for a bit with our friends and I mentioned the “free-range” part of having chickens and was informed that they couldn’t let their chickens out anymore because of their dogs and the ever-present coyotes. The chickens were now “inside” chickens. We drove away and I felt sad, I felt guilty that I had unknowingly signed my chickens up for life in a cage, but so much more than that, I was sad that there weren’t little kids that made giving chickens away impossible.

We left on our summer trip a couple of days after the chickens moved out. It was so nice to be just the four of us again, away from the craziness of the past few months. It felt quiet and we were back in one of our favorite places, Oberammergau, Germany. That’s when it started. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the chickens and feeling so guilty that I had given them away just because they were a little inconvenient and annoying.  I couldn’t stop thinking about them, especially at night. I told Scott that I thought I had made a mistake giving the chickens away. He just looked at me like I was crazy, which  I was a little bit. I mean I was raised on a farm. We named the cows that we ate and animals were for eating and working and sometimes pets. We cycled through cats and dogs and chickens and I had a healthy respect for farm life. My chickens were safe and being well taken care of, but I felt like I had abandoned helpless creatures into a life that they were not accustomed to. We were gone for almost a month and I must admit that as time wore on, I forgot about the chickens a little bit. We were having such a good time together, hiking, playing tennis in the morning, and cards at night.

We got home the end of July and that is when the real nitty gritty countdown to college began. Scott and Grant were driving to Chicago for a boys’ road trip. Ashley and I would meet them in the Windy City in time to celebrate Scott’s and Ashley’s joint birthday. We would fly together to New York City for a few days to move Grant into his dorm and then the three of us were on our way to Mexico City and San Miguel de Allende. We would be home sometime in October to wait for Spanish visas. The boys were leaving August 20^th and Ashley and I would leave two short days later. There was still a lot to do before we left and the chickens were in my head again.

The yard was quiet, the patio free of chicken poop and birds had picked the coop clean. I spent a lot of time talking myself down about the chickens. They were just chickens after all. I tried to talk to Scott again. I told him, “I think I need to get the chickens back.” He said, “Don’t do it. Blame me, it was my decision to get rid of them.” Nice try, but that didn’t help any. I tried to reason with myself but all of the while that little voice inside kept telling me, you don’t have much time to get the chickens back.  I finally talked to my friend who had taken the chickens about how horrible I was feeling.  She was so sweet, she just laughed and hugged me and said, “Come and get them. We were just taking care of them for you until you were ready to have them back.” That part was easy and I will forever be grateful to her for being so loving and not looking at me like I was a lunatic. I still needed Scott to come onboard and I only had a day or two before he and Grant were leaving.

I kept giving myself deadlines and finally, I told Scott I had to talk to him. We went outside and I said, “I have got to get the chickens back. I don’t know why, but it’s making me crazy. I can’t stop thinking about them and how I just gave them away.”  Poor guy, his wife was an emotional puddle over chickens. So Scott says, “Fine, I will go and get the chickens for you, but you need to do some self-reflecting. You do realize that the chickens are not changing the fact that Grant is going to college and Ashley is not far behind.”  I took a deep breath and tried very hard to understand myself, which I’m just not that interested in or good at.

And that is when I realized that having a flock of chickens running around the yard, pooping on everything had been a constant since Grant was seven years old. Giving the chickens away, especially in such a rush and then learning that their lives were not what I had imagined, just seemed so careless. The chickens and the kids were all mixed up together in my head and I couldn’t stand that all those years of care and love ended in such an easy decision and complete abandonment from me. It was over so quickly. My kids and all of those endless days and adventures seemed to be careening away from me.  I can’t control time and I can’t control all of the life that will be happening to them and really truly I know that I can’t control much of anything, but I can control the chicken poop in my backyard.

The night before Scott and Grant left on their road trip, Scott retrieved my chickens. And now they are back to being mildly annoying, pooping on the patio, digging in the garden and being one more thing for the housesitter to take care of. Ironically, I won’t even see them for most of the next year, but every time I do or when I think about the great chicken meltdown, I think about how much I love my family, how quickly the years slip by and how very blessed I have been.

And I think about Scott…Thank you…Thank you for all of it…xo