hatch

thoughts from an emptying nest

I’m trying to read my notes for you here but there’s melted chocolate on them and I don’t really regret it.

May has been filled with milestones and the month isn’t over yet. We have a boy who left for the summer to go commercial fishing and we won’t see him until September, and we have a girl who is moving out next week. Our home is shrinking, but not really – more like deflating, while my mama heart heaves and contracts in a season that feels blurry with movement and change.

All these milestones for each kid are major accomplishments in motherhood: The birth, the adoption, breastfeeding, potty training. Learning to read, learning to drive, learning a million things in between.

The nest is emptying, but still pretty full here; even after eight kids, five is no small thing. I threatened to pull over and spank boys who were misbehaving in the back of the Stagecoach last week, so my Mom Bingo Card is filling out nicely for the month and in no danger of being revoked due to inactivity.

Iree plays Nuvole Bianche on the piano and it has been the soundtrack of this season, the background music of these days until she moves out. I love this song; there’s a part in it that sounds like horses running that makes my heart pound even as I put away dishes and wipe the counters for the eighth time, pouring grief into the motions of the dishcloth.

“You’re sure you’ll get along, Mother?”

“Why, of course I’ll get along.” Abbie was outwardly calm and confident, while all the time there was that queer sensation of a wind rushing by – a wind she could not stop – Time going by which she could not stay. Oh, stop the clock hands!

– Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

Before Afton left for fish camp, we hatched quail. It was our third round of quail chicks but our second go at incubating, and as we waited for them to hatch I thought of all the things I might’ve done wrong: the temperature might’ve been off because the cheap thermometers were inconsistent, the heat wasn’t steady the first night, and I didn’t mist the eggs on day 15 like I was supposed to.

What if none of them hatch? I thought. What if it was a waste of time, and resources, and worse – what if I’m just not good at this? It works for some people, sure, but what if I’m just bad at it?

It’s like waiting for breakthrough in anything else. Hold on, let me overthink this for a while, I can come up with a million possibilities of how I could’ve screwed this up and why I might not deserve the success I was hoping for. Stand by. I’ll justify it, it’s okay – I mean, it’s not okay, but I want my heart to be okay with it not being okay because I don’t know what else to do with so much disappointment and I don’t have any other answers for why this isn’t working out.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and all day we waited for those chicks to hatch, but they didn’t.

But I was a day early. The night we got the incubator going, the temperature wasn’t high enough until after midnight – and I forgot to adjust the hatch date to reflect it. So really, I was looking for breakthrough a day ahead of schedule and frustrating myself needlessly.

They finally did start hatching and the incubator rapidly filled with broken bits of eggshell, confetti everywhere. After two days we had nineteen tiny chicks. They walk on folded toes at first from being curled up so long and it looks alarming, but as they walk it out, their toes straighten. Enthusiastic little buddies, fast and fluffy after just hours of seniority, climb all over the panting newcomers, forcing them to roll and stand up to protect themselves. And the conflict is good for them; their bones need the exercise and it sets their skeletal alignment correctly.

We waited a little over 24 hours after the last chicks hatched before turning off the incubator and giving up on the remaining eggs. One chick had died, which is super common and has happened all three times we’ve had quail chicks, and we were down to eighteen. It wasn’t a great hatch rate but we suspected a lot of the eggs were infertile because one of our roosters got injured shortly before we started collecting eggs. So Afton went to clean out the incubator and, lo and behold – there was one more tiny chick, just hatched, still damp, a little piece of eggshell confetti still stuck to its back.

I scooped him up and he was so cold. How he was alive, two days after all the others hatched? How did he have the strength to break out of his hard shell when he was so cold, so late, and the incubator had no humidity left?

But there he was, damp and wriggling in my hand. I immediately held him under the heat lamp to warm him up while Cham found a little box for him.

I wish I had taken pictures for you as he laid there in it, breathing and lolling, trying to get his feet under him. I wanted to but I was afraid; I didn’t think he would make it and I didn’t want another reminder of grief.

Alone in the box he warmed up but he had nothing to climb on to strengthen his neck and get the upright posture he needed. His head bobbled back and forth and his legs skidded on the paper towel, trying to get a grip but rapidly splaying out sideways. Their bones are still malleable, so the longer they do this, the more they set badly and that means the death of a chick because if they cannot walk, they cannot eat or drink. They need conflict and pressure to get strong. They need to develop the right posture so they can stand and walk.

So since he didn’t have it, we created the pressure for him and wrapped him in a paper towel in a tiny cup. We had to do this with a chick from our previous hatch, too, and it works – it keeps their legs under them instead of going out at right angles, and since they want to see out of the cup, they use those tinytinytiny muscles to stand and push themselves up. Their toes start to straighten from the effort, and their necks strain forward to see.

(Why am I going on and on about quail? Because I don’t want to think about our last few days with Afton; I don’t want to think about how he ran out of time to clean out the incubator, or how Mother’s Day was awkward and filled with grief, or how empty his room looks with everything packed up and him not in it, or how Iree’s room will look in a week. So, quail…quail are safe.)

After a few hours in his own box, with the right posture, Afton reported that the little guy was trying to jump out to be with the others. And that’s another thing about quail, they don’t like being alone – as much as they pick at and aggravate each other, they want to be with their buddies. So we let him out and he ran around with the others, several sizes smaller than all the rest, but perfectly flappy and happy.

A couple days later was Mother’s Day, and Afton flew to Kodiak the next day. I wish I had taken pictures of Mother’s Day, or of him before I left. But I was crying and didn’t want that reminder of grief, either.

When we let go of control, surrendering our normal ways of doing things and letting Him nudge us (or bodyslam us, as the case may be) into doing something different, things start to feel a little loosey goosey. We are agreeing to a fast, of sorts, as we relinquish the way life used to be, and we gain the perspective that comes with fasting because we start to figure out new ways of doing things.

Our kids will find new ways of doing things. And we will, too.

Kavanagh is looking at sea glass and shells, asking where some of them came from and if you can hear the ocean in others. The glass is like us; sharp and broken until we’re worn soft from the tide moving in and out, billowing over us, crushing us against each other. We rub the sharp edges of ourselves against each other, and we no longer fit perfectly together all the time. We need the mortar of time and space between.

We have two hens, Molly and Toughie, sitting on nests of eggs that will hatch soon – Molly’s are due this weekend – and life is plenty full with the activity of new endeavors and milestones.

And Iree is playing that song again, and I stare at the keyboard, letters blurring.

“Good-by, dear!” Oh, stop the clock hands!….Stop Time for a while – until she could think –!

“Oh, Mother, do you think I ought to go?”

“Of course you ought to go.” Head up, Abbie was smiling….

Abbie waved and smiled – waved and smiled – as long as they were in sight. Then she turned and ran blindly into her bedroom and shut the door. And, whether she has driven away in a lumber-wagon or a limousine, the mother whose daughter has left her for the first time, will understand why Abbie Deal ran blindly into her bedroom and shut the door.

– Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

A friend of mine in this same season, texted me the other day and said, “Our family feels so small. And our house feels so big.” She’s right, both are true. We have bedrooms to rearrange, and kids vying for empty spaces. And when Iree moves in a week, I’ll try to take photos… but then again, I might not.