Forget about the egg
It’s official: We have a layer.
I’d gotten so caught up in the raising of chicks, situating the coop, and securing the chicken run that I almost forgot about the end game of this whole experiment: fresh eggs from my back yard!
There have been other, unforeseen benefits to chicken-having, as I’ve mentioned before. I find it quite calming to sit among them and watch them in action as they poke around, scratch and shuffle, take dirt baths, and explore their run.
But to finally discover an egg in the nest and hold it in my hand—hot, delicate, and perfect— was a wonderful experience.
So far only one girl is laying.
I’m not sure who, but my money is on Adelaide, who’s now the biggest of them all.
She’s also become the boldest, superseding Alice, who is shyer now, but still likes to sit on my lap. (She would like to perch on my head too, but at her current size, this has proven untenable.)
Just as I didn’t know how the chicks would develop, I also didn’t know what to expect the eggs to look like. They’re small, blue-green and lovely.
The process of discovery, of revelation, is one of the things I enjoy most about writing too.
As I recently told students at a local middle school, Flannery O’Conner said, “I write to discover what I know.” Joan Didion said, “I wrote to discover what I think.” I write to know what I feel. Writing helps me sift through the experience of being human and understand what I think of it all.
I also take joy in being able to arrest specific moments in my life through writing about them.
I talked about this with Zibby Owens when she interviewed me for her podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books. (It’s a great podcast with recent interviews with writers Liane Moriarty, Fredrik Backman, and Ruth Ozeki.). Writing offers a chance at documentation, examination, and remembrance.
That was the case with my memoir, How to Be a Sister, and essays like the one I wrote for Moms Don’t Have Time to Write—“Beekeeping Through the Seasons of Grief.” And the more I talk with readers about The Music of Bees, I can see my own life experience shining through the characters, who are all very different from me and yet carry pieces of me within each of them.
This fall I’m leaning in to new projects—writing, reading, singing, and language.
On good days, I forget about the results that I hope will come from the work and focus instead on the day to day—the scratching, clucking, dirt bathing, and poking about in the practice writing.
What are you leaning into this season? Want to chat about some unexpected results you’ve discovered?