Chickens and Boys and Memories

My beloved Mark Rubel is always a good bet for an entertaining Facebook post. Recently he shared an Instagram post of some chickens from Ardelia Farm in Vermont. It made me smile, with it's caption of "Slow commute this morning, but one lane southbound is clear." It also triggered a memory. I remember my mother talking about her....oh, and this is where I get frustrated with myself, because I can't remember if it was her grandfather or her great-grandfather. Regardless, every day when he would walk home from work, as he got close to home, his chickens would be at the foot of the hill their house was on, waiting patiently for him. And they would walk with him back to the house, clucking all the way home. Reportedly when he wanted to smoke he also went and visited the chickens. I loved that story.

The other day I was going through a box of odds and ends. In it, I found a flood damaged old family photo that was far beyond rescue. I reluctantly threw it out. I'm not even sure what great grandparents they were....and that made me feel as bad as having it be ruined on my watch. It's funny. When we decided to try to have children, it took me awhile to get pregnant. For some reason my anxiety focused on the family pictures I had. I kept thinking, if I don't have children, WHAT will I do with the family pictures? No doubt I made myself more and more stressed about it all, which of course, in no way helped. Both times I got pregnant it was immediately after we decided to STOP trying. Now that I have children I still have a fondness for the family pictures, but in some ways, it's less. I guess the boys take up so much of my world that it's not quite as important to me. It still breaks my heart that some of those photos were destroyed in a basement flood, but then again, at least I still remember the chickens walking down the hill to meet some grandfather of mine. I told Owen that story today and he loved it.