Empty Nest Season: Last Child

Well, clearly I've been doing other things than keeping my blog updated. Sorry! But thankfully I doubt that anyone has actually died or even been caused to have a bad day because my last entry is stalled in --gulp!--December :-/

But anyway. I just posted a YouTube video about a poem I wrote when my last child graduated from high school, and wanted to put it here in text so it can be read without mistakes and for further pondering, should that help your heart in your own parenting journey.

Last Child

Last night was the last time

I'll sit on hard metal bleachers

Eyes searching through hundreds of red-robed graduates

For that one familiar face.

My child's.

Last night was the last time

I'll brave thousands of parents on the field

To find that one precious person surrounded by all the others someone else loves as much.

There she is and she's smiling.

My child.

Last night was the last time

I'll have a schoolchild of my own

And all those years of ABCs and schedules and catching buses by the skin of teeth

Are over with one last march to measured music,

And I wonder if I should laugh or cry

For this last child.

We've loved and nurtured and taught these dear ones and now that they are fully fledged, it's time to let them fly. No, not just fly. Soar. Soar to new heights, exploring their lives and what they are capable of doing and being. Their journeys are their own. We have ours, in which they figure large.

But they are more than just part of our journey, and that is one of the challenges of an empty nest season: rejoicing for their journeys even as our paths divurge. It is good. But it's not always easy.

More later on the Empty Nest Season...

Chicken Wisdom

Mother Hen Update

In an earlier post, I spotlighted our little black hen who hatched six little fluffballs, and was doing such an amazing job of nurturing and protecting them. In mid-winter, her own warmth kept the Missouri cold at bay while the babies grew feathers. With special calls and peckings here and there, she taught those chickies how to find food, how to drink water, and to do all things chicken-y. (http://journeywithhonor.blogspot.com/2011/12/speaking-of-chickens.html ),

Back off, buddy!

There is a rooster twice her size along with five other hens, all in the same pen, but this mama kept a no-peck zone around her babies, facing down even the curiosity and pomposity of said rooster while her birdlings peeped and scratched as if they owned the entire world. Week by week feathers replaced fluff, until almost three months later, they now look like miniature adult chickens.

Chicks at three months

Which brings us up to this week. One morning while checking on them, I realized that their mother was not with them.  The six fledglings perched on the edge of the feeder in a little huddle, but she did not. A quick search found her: she was on the roost with the other hens. My first reaction was concern. Why would she leave her babies? Could they survive without their mama?

Mother and son (or daughter)

But as I watched the interplay of the flock--hens and rooster hopping off the roost, heading to the newly-opened outside run, leaving the chicks in their group pecking about the floor without a glance toward where their black mother had exited--I was struck once again by the instinctive wisdom of that little chicken-mother. She had given her babies all they needed in order to survive and thrive in their world, and as they had grown, she faded into their background until one day, much like any other, she took a final step away and rejoined the life she'd known before she set out to hatch those new members of society.

Call me if you need me.

Okay. I know there are some gaps in the analogy, for human moms can never forget their mother role, no matter how old their babies become, and chickens don't have enough brains to go through the parenting process with cogniscence.  Nevertheless, I admire the calmness with which the little black hen stands to the side and observes how her children carry on. She doesn't hover, as she once did, making little clucking, encouraging noises, leading them every place they need to go, and forever keeping them dependent on her.

They are growing up as they were meant to, and she does not try to keep that from happening. Rather, she encourages and blesses, instructs and models what it means to be a grown up chicken, and they in turn follow in her footsteps as if it were the most natural process in the world. Hats off to you, small black hen. You have done a wonderful job, and your children are beautiful :-)

Speaking of Chickens

As you can see from my title, I'm going to depart from horse-derived insights to muse about chickens and parenting. Chickens? Yes. Granted, even at their best, chickens cannot claim to be bright. However, this does not mean they cannot be profound. You see, I've been watching a certain little black hen who recently went to setting.

The fact that her chicks would emerge into a December-chilled world obviously  never occurred to her bird-y brain. But in her defense, she didn't know any better. Brought to life in the sterile enviornment of an incubator, she grew to feathered chickenhood beneath the impersonal warmth of a brooder light. This little black hen, stirred by something deep and solemn within herself, sat on her clutch of eggs three long weeks, barely leaving them for a quick meal or drink.

Six little peeping fluffballs of black and yellow hatched, and now follow her everywhere. She leads them to food. She leads them to water, calling them to her in a special mother hen cluck-voice, wings half spread to receive them should they become chilled, tired, or frightened. The chicks seem oblivious to the fact that they are experiencing something precious. They will never know that their mother is giving what she never received in order that her babies may thrive.

In our world, I know there are parents who, either from inability or unwillingness, do not give their children what they need in order to prosper emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically. But here's what I love: for every one of that kind of parent, there are fifty, a hundred, a thousand parents like the little black hen. They do not become embittered about what they did not receive from their own parents, therefore refusing to give it. Instead, they look down into the trusting eyes of their children and, reaching into their own beings, they give all that they wished they'd been given.

A second miracle often occurs as well: In that selflessness, they begin to understand how their own parents most likely did the same, and how they, the children of that generation, were oblivious to the gift, just as these chicks are. They cheep and scrabble and maybe even get tired of their mother's everlasting clucking and care. They have no knowledge of what it would be like to have to turn to the impersonal glow of a heat lamp for their only comfort. All they have ever known is warm, cuddling feathers and sheltering wings.

I also find it fascinating that we assume we can do what our parents did, never realizing until much later that in many instances, just like the black hen, they were breaking open new ground, giving us what they had not been given. To me this epitomizes a beautiful aspect of parenthood: we want our children to go beyond us, and we're willing to invest all we are to give them a launching pad to that beyond. May our ceiling--the best we can achieve--be their floor. May they stand on our shoulders to reach for that which is beyond our abilities. And when they look back at us, may they see us smiling as we cheer them on to ever greater heights. :-)