Category: Womanhood

Surprise!

And then there were  four: Three girls and their dog.

When Georgia was born, we were positive that she was our last child. Three seemed like a good place to stop: large without being TOO crazy. There was a certain logic to three:

-The logic of space: We still had an extra seat in the minivan, and an extra place at our table — you know, for Elijah or whomever else happened to drop in.

-The logic of stuff: We had girls’ clothing and toys that had now been used three times — a pretty good run for the money, which also called to mind the horrible alternative: what if we risked another child, and it was a BOY?!? We’d have to start all over again.

-Erick’s logic: Erick noted that many of the families we most admire have three children, and “they must have a good reason for that.” (Of course, we later learned that for some of these families, child #3 was an accident, and others sorely regretted not adding another child before it was too late, but that’s another story).

Also, the cinnamon buns that we sometimes like to eat for breakfast are sold in packages of five.

Then, around Georgia’s first birthday, I started having feelings of longing. I knew these feelings well; in the past, they’d resulted in two things: Campbell, and Georgia.

I wanted a fourth child.

I promised Erick that I wouldn’t raise the subject until he was done with his first year of teaching. So, on the last day of classes I was waiting outside his office door, with my sales pitch carefully prepared. It went a little something like this:

-If we don’t give Georgia a buddy of her own, how will she function within the sisterly relationship of Fiona and Campbell, who’ve proclaimed themselves, “MORE than best friends!”????

-We have three wonderful daughters, whom we adore. Why not add one more????

-Another child would add more love to our family. Isn’t more love ALWAYS a good thing????

Erick kindly refrained from pointing out the loophole in what I thought was a logical “more is always better” argument. Because more ISN’T always better. If that were really true, we’d live in an overpopulated world of obese, promiscuous, hoarding venture capitalists. (Hmmmm….)

ANYWAY, the point is that Erick didn’t share my longing for a fourth child. For the very first time in our 10-year marriage, this put us on opposite sides of a Major Life Decision. (That statement is less a testament to the strength of our marriage than a tribute to Erick’s amazing agreeableness).

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Yep: WE GOT A DOG!

Here’s how it happened:

Also around Georgia’s first birthday, I started experiencing headaches, body aches, and exhaustion. These symptoms lasted throughout the summer. Whatever it was remains a mystery, but while the doctors ran me through a series of tests to determine the root cause, there was no question of pregnancy. First I was on antibiotics, then I had to have an MRI, then I had to have another MRI, and until we knew what was going on, we weren’t sure a pregnancy would be safe.

All of which made me frustrated and sad. But it also gave me time to think. I looked at our life and realized that three kids is a LOT of kids! In fact, most doctors would probably assume that the cause of my symptoms was: my children. I looked around for proof that we should add another child to the mix, and the proof just wasn’t there. Instead, I was snapping at my kids, counting the days until preschool started, and bribing my four-year-old to have “quiet rest time” by handing her my iPod. Don’t get me wrong: I love our three kids, I can handle three kids. I just couldn’t see how having a fourth child would do our family any favors.

Then I noticed something else: Brinkley, our neighbor’s dog who’d adopted us as his second-string family. I when I was doing yardwork, Brinkley would often come over to keep me company; he’d romp around, then sit at my feet and stare lovingly at me. I really liked that. I also noticed how our girls loved Brinkley: he was a prominent figure in their conversations, and every time they spotted him outside they would RUN to play with him, which kept them entertained for hours.

But he wasn’t our dog.

So, one day I said to Erick, “How about, instead of a fourth kid, we get a dog?”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but here’s a tip for anyone who wants a dog, but whose partner isn’t into the idea: First, say that you’d like to have a baby. (For added drama, moon around for a few days, sighing over baby pictures and tiny baby clothes). Then, say, “How about, instead of a baby, we get a dog?” And watch the relief fill their eyes. It’s a great bargaining strategy.

So, we got a dog, which made much more sense than having another baby. Yes, I KNOW that dogs are a lot of work, but when it’s a choice between a dog and a baby, the dog is a tropical vacation; an adorable, adoring creature whom we won’t have to send to college, and who does add more love to our family — without ever screaming, “Mommy, you’re being MEAN!”

You can read more about our dog, the amazing Gracie, here.

On the very day that we put down the deposit on Gracie, we found out that I was pregnant. Further proof that, whatever else you might say about God, he’s got a spot-on sense of comic timing.

That’s right, folks: Kiddo FOUR, due in early June.

Youngest child no longer….

I Hate Housework, Two

Earlier this year, I published a post on this blog (“I Hate Housework, Too”), in which I confessed my tormented ambivalence towards housework: Having grown up in a spotless house, I have high standards for cleanliness, but I hate the actual effort needed to reach those standards. I admitted that my own house suffers from “creeping kids’ stuff,” which I handle through a combination of breaking the cleaning into manageable pieces, and shrugging off any oversights with the “I have three kids” excuse.

While I was writing that piece, and for about five minute afterwards, I felt great. I felt like I’d finally found equilibrium when it came to the state of my house.

And then, because this is real life, I went right back to stressing  about housework. In fact, my husband will tell you that housework is almost always the straw that breaks my mental health — and with it, the overall mental health of our family. I can handle the kids screaming and the dog barking, but if I feel like the house is spinning out of my control, I start to become unhinged. “I need some degree of neatness in order to think!” I’ll wail to my husband, who will in turn catch my stress, and so on, until the whole family is entangled in my stress cycle.

Of course, with three young children and now a DOG, the house is constantly spinning out of my control, and any effort I put into wrestling it into a state of basic neatness is undone minutes later. HOWEVER, just the other day I had a revelation that I think may change my perspective for good. It came to me, oddly enough, while washing the dishes. Here it is:

MY HOUSE IS NOT ALIVE.

That seems like an obvious statement, and it is. But to expand a bit: I am surrounded by living things that, at this moment, depend on me for their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. My house is not one of them. My house has no chance of ever going out into the world and making a positive difference. No matter how I care for it, my house is slowly breaking down, and will continue to do so until the day (decades hence, I hope) when some young, investment-banking couple from Manhattan will arrive to gut the place and install granite counter-tops and jacuzzi tubs.

My house is not going to attend my funeral and eulogize me for the amount of care I gave it. And while we’re on the subject, have you EVER been to a funeral at which it was said of the deceased, “She was so CLEAN!”?

No, my house is not alive. But my daughters, and my husband, and my dog, and my family, and my friends, and mySELF, they are alive. Am I prioritizing my time and energy and mental health accordingly?

It my be that I’m alone in this war with myself over the state of my house, this pointless battle to maintain a baseline of cleanliness. But in case I’m not alone, perhaps this thought will help you, too: your living space is not going to feel hurt if you neglect it a little. The living beings who surround you, they’re another story.

Here’s hoping that you and I can let ourselves off the hook for good this time!

Being Mean

Photo by Fiona

As our girls are getting older, their anger is getting more personal.

Back when they were toddlers, they’d howl and scream and throw themselves on the ground when they were upset about something — like all toddlers. But their howls and screams weren’t personal: they were cries of fury directed at the universe, existential angst. WHY can’t I have what I want RIGHT NOW?!? Even when I was the cause of that angst, I wasn’t the target of their anger. Their tantrums launched them into another realm, and even their garbled yells rarely, if ever, included my name.

That’s all changed in the past six months. Now, when I say “no,” or look askance, or fail to use the nicest possible tone, my oldest daughters are quick to make it personal: “You’re being mean. We’re getting a new mommy!”

(Note on the idea of “getting a new mommy,” which seems particularly cruel: this idea did not originate with my girls. Maybe, just maybe, it’s something that I suggested once in an effort to lighten up a heated exchange….but the girls latched on to the concept).

I suppose another way of saying this is that, as my girls grow up, they’re learning how to hit where it hurts. I’m so proud.

Not for the faint of heart, this parenting gig. It’s incredible how quickly children turn from innocent, adorable, dependent infants, into such willful, flawed little people. NOBODY warned me that adolescence begins during preschool, but it does. Oh yes, it does, complete with the pouting, eye rolling, and shouting “FINE!” while stomping upstairs.

For a while, I responded to the “You’re being mean!” complaint by trying to reason with the girls. “I’m not being mean,” I’d say calmly. (The calm is important; I’ve learned that if my anger rises to meet theirs, things will only escalate and I’ll feel terrible afterwards. This way I can say, “Well, at least I remained calm.”) Then I’d point to the evidence; almost every single time I was accused of being mean, I was, in fact, engaged in activities that would suggest just the opposite. Like driving the girls to get ice cream. Preparing dinner for the entire family. Getting everybody dressed to go out.

But of course there’s no convincing a preschooler that you’re not being mean. We’re not talking about logical people here. It doesn’t matter that I’m doing non-mean things for the greater good; if they’re not getting what they want, when they want it, I’m mean. I could be discovering the cure for cancer with one hand, but if the other hand isn’t putting exactly the right ponytail into my daughter’s hair, I’m “not nice.”

Finally, one day when daughter #1 pulled out the “You’re being mean” card, I responded, “You know what? That’s okay. It’s not my job to be nice.”

That surprised us both for a minute. After all, I’ve spent my whole life trying to be nice; my attempts to be nice, to make everybody like me, have defined my character for most of my life — and have been at the root of some of my very worst choices.

But after I said it, I realized that I was right: being nice is NOT part of my job as a mother.

It’s my job to LOVE my children. But “love” and “nice” are not synonyms.

Here’s what I think love looks like: keeping my children alive (to the extent that I can control), nurturing their bodies and minds and spirits, encouraging them to become the best versions of themselves, and giving them the tools to grow into independent adults. Nothing in there about “nice.” On the contrary, the items on that list will probably require a whole lot of behavior that, at the time, looks “mean” to my kids.

What a concept. This is something that does NOT come naturally to me. But I’ve kept repeating, “It’s not my job to be nice,” as a reminder to myself and to my girls of what love really looks like.

One more thing: The other night, as I was putting them to bed after a day filled with “mean” accusations from my girls, Fiona asked what I planned to do for the rest of the evening.

“Oh,” I said, “I think I’m going to read this great new book I just got. It’s called 101 Ways to be Mean to Your Kids.”

“MOMMY,” she said, and in the dark I could hear her eyes rolling.

But I think she got it. It’s not my job to be nice, but it is my job to help us all keep a sense of humor about life. I see it as a favor to that new Mommy they’ve ordered, whenever she arrives.

That Crazy Tree

I’ve been reading The Artist’s Way this past month. This is the sort of book, marketed as “A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self,” that I’d usually avoid. Really, who has the time? Its author, Julia Cameron, claims to have helped countless “blocked artists” discover “a spiritual path to higher creativity.” I bought this book back when I was a legitimate artist, having just completed a photography degree in New York City — but apparently it didn’t work for me back then, because I made it to the third chapter and then quit photography.

I’m not sure why I decided to pick up this book again, since I wouldn’t describe myself as an “artist” — unless by “artist” you mean “someone who started writing a blog about her kids and then got tired of writing about her kids.” Nor would I describe myself as “blocked,” although I’m sure there are some who WISH I’d develop a little writer’s block.

I guess I just hate to have a book in my house that’s partially read. And it’s turned out to be pretty good. My FAVORITE part is when Cameron recommends taking yourself out on a weekly “artist date,” where you go off alone to do something fun and restorative. That seems like a good idea for anybody, artist or no. So, the “artist date” was on my mind when Erick took out all three girls on a recent Saturday morning. I figured I’d give it a try; beats cleaning the house.

I decided to take a hike. I love walking, and looking, and thinking. When the girls are around, I may be able to walk short distances, but I have to watch THEM instead of the scenery, and there’s always too much chatter for me to hear myself think. A nice, quiet hike seemed just the thing for my first artist date.

The problem is, hiking by myself makes me a little nervous; I’m still too much of a city girl. I worry about things like getting killed. And where we live, the options for hiking tend towards two opposing but potentially dangerous scenarios: rugged wilderness trails, or the narrow shoulders of winding roads along which cars drive waaaay too quickly.

But there is one exception: the TAM. TAM stands for “Trail Around Middlebury,” and is a 16-mile loop around Middlebury through conserved land owned by the Middlebury Area Land Trust. I opted to walk a small section of the trail that starts at the Middlebury College golf course and ends close to town. The assurance that retirees with golf clubs would be within shouting distance was enough to make me feel passably secure.

It was a beautiful, sunny late summer day. The section of trail that I walked is mostly wooded, with a few open fields between the trees. It felt secluded and quiet — I passed no more than five other people along the way. Then, in one dappled green stretch of woods, I looked up and spotted this tree:

I know the photo isn’t great — I snapped it with my iPod — but LOOK at that crazy tree! I can’t see the leaves well enough to tell what kind of tree it is, but I think it’s an oak. Oak trees — the ones in my yard, at least — usually grow up straight and strong and tall. Certainly all the trees around this one were growing straight, or else I wouldn’t have noticed it. Something happened to this tree, something was strange enough about its environment that its trunk veered off in one direction, and then abruptly changed course and doubled back upon itself. From the looks of it, this may have happened several times.

And yet, the tree survived. It’s healthy, thriving there in the woods. And isn’t it beautiful? Much more interesting than all the straight arrow trees around it.

There are a couple of points in life — usually around age 18 and 21 — when people make Big Decisions. Decisions about school, work, life partners. We tend to invest these decisions with a sense of great importance; we worry that we’ll make the wrong choice, and then we worry that we did make the wrong choice. By “we,” of course, I mean “me.” I went to college with no idea where to focus my attention, then bopped along through a series of decisions: graduate degree in education, teaching job, graduate degree in studio art, photography freelancer, nonprofit manager, mother. I love what I’m doing right now the best, but whatever you call this life I’ve cobbled together, you can’t call it “employment.” And that’s what tends to matter on paper and at cocktail parties.

When I saw that crazy tree, though, it reminded me of my life — and not just my life, but the lives of so many people I know and love.

So, I decided that when my girls reach the age of Big Decision Making, I’m going to show them the picture of this crazy tree — or take them to see it in person. And I’ll say something like this:

You’re worried about making the wrong choices, and your choices DO matter, but you don’t need to worry so much. Check out this crazy tree. This tree didn’t worry, it just grew towards where the most light was at each stage of its life. It’s okay if you change your mind later, or if you look back and feel like you were all over the place. As long as you’re growing towards the light at each stage of your life, you’ll be okay. And when you stand back to look, it’ll be beautiful.

College Town

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

-from The Velveteen Rabbit

What happens when you end up living in a college town that’s almost a carbon copy of the town where you spent your own undergraduate years?

I went to Williams College, a small liberal arts school of about 2,000 students in Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains. I now live near where my husband teaches: Middlebury College, a small liberals arts school of about 2,000 students in Vermont’s Green Mountains. When he was interviewing for his job, Erick knew that I had some concerns about the deja vu aspect of this move, so he specifically asked his future colleagues how Middlebury differed from Williams. “Oh,” they scoffed, “Williams is out in the middle of nowhere. It’s tiny. Middlebury is much more of a town.”

I found — and still find — this comparison hilarious. It’s like arguing the relative difference between a flea and a gnat. In fact, as of the 2000 census Middlebury’s population was 8,183; Williamstown’s was 8,424. (And please note that those numbers include the  2,000 undergrads who descend on each town for nine months of the year). Both towns are centered around a single main street. It may be true that Middlebury’s main street is slightly longer, with slightly more offerings that Williamstown’s. But I’m living in essentially the same town where I went to college.

So far, it’s been interesting how little I’m aware of living in a college town. Sure, my husband goes off to work at the college every morning. Sure, I’ll occasionally notice students walking around downtown. Roads and restaurants are busier during special weekends when the students’ families come to town. Many of our friends work for the college in some capacity — but by no means all of them. There’s an unofficial “college pew” at our church where all the students sit together. Our daughters take swim lessons taught by members of the college swim team at the college pool. We’ve even had students from Erick’s senior seminar over to our house.

That sounds like a lot of interaction with the college, but it’s such a vastly different experience from when I actually attended college that I seldom feel any deja vu. As a mother of three, more than a decade out of college myself, I’m in a different world. We’re a 15-minute drive away from campus, and — what with the three young kids — we don’t attend many campus events. Shockingly, the undergraduate population tends not to breakfast at 7 AM, hang out in the children’s room of the public library, frequent the local playgrounds, or eat dinner at 5:30 PM. So we don’t see much of them.

When I do see groups of undergrads going about their college lives, they seem very young, and very loud. Their confidence and energy make me a little nervous. They appear to float on their own potential; most of them haven’t yet felt life’s hard blows that cultivate humility and empathy.

I look and them and think, NOT FOR ANYTHING WOULD I WANT TO BE BACK WHERE YOU ARE.

College was not a particularly happy time for me. As I understand it, many people look back on college as the best years of their lives: years when they forged lasting friendships, joyfully experimented in both the academic and personal arenas, and emerged after four years having found themselves.

For me, college was when I lost myself.

This may come as a shock to some people who knew me during college — perhaps even to most people who knew me then. I put up a very good front, as I’ve done for most of my life, because that’s what good girls do.

When I arrived at Williams, many of my peers seemed to already know who they were and where they were headed. They’d survived the proving ground of high school, and now they were ready to soar off on their talent. Sure, some edges needed to be smoothed, but at a basic level they were who they would be. Maybe it only seemed that way, but over a decade later these college friends and acquaintances still appear to be fundamentally who they were back then.

I was not that undergrad. I came to college looking like I had it all together, having spent the first 18 years of my life being perfect: working hard, getting good grades, going to church, and trying to make everybody happy. High school wasn’t much of a proving ground for me; I more or less breezed through it with a group of like-minded peers.

Problem is, trying to be perfect and make everybody happy for 18 years doesn’t leave much room for becoming a real person. I was 18 years old and I didn’t have a single opinion of my own. Going to church didn’t help me with identity formation, frankly, because if you’re perfect then you completely miss the point of grace. How can you receive forgiveness and love despite your failings if you’ve never actually failed?

No, when I arrived at college, I was more like the description of a crab cake I once saw on a menu: “Just enough binding to hold it together.”

If this were a novel or a movie, what would happen to a protagonist like that? Clearly, they’d have to fail. Something would have to rip apart the binding of their fragile self so that the pieces could be put back together more securely. It’s an old story. It’s The Velveteen Rabbit: the toy bunny needs to be discarded on the trash heap with a broken heart in order to become Real.

And, thankfully, that did happen to me: I made mistakes. The specifics aren’t important. These weren’t major crimes against humanity; they were the kind of mistakes that happen when you wander through four years of college without knowing who you are. But they were major to me, because I wasn’t supposed to make mistakes. And it wasn’t pretty; the ripping apart of my binding that began in college resulted in a three-year post-college morass of depression and anorexia, during which time I distanced myself from friends and family. It wasn’t until I found grace and Erick — almost simultaneously — that my pieces started to come together again.

I missed my college reunion this year (because our California family was visiting) and I’m very sorry that I did. None of this was college’s fault; I still have fun memories, and I made some friends whom I hope to know forever (and whom I wish I saw more often!). I wanted to be at that reunion, because I think that most people who knew me in college didn’t really know me. I’d like to have a chance to get re-introduced.

So, these are the thoughts that enter my mind when I come into contact with undergrads these days. I’m glad for those moments, for living in a town that allows me periodic flashbacks to the lost-est time of my life. I wonder how many of these students — underneath their pulled-together, confident exteriors — are just as much of a mess as I was back then. (For that matter, I wonder how many of my own college peers were just as much of a mess as I was back then? Probably a fair amount).

NOT FOR ANYTHING WOULD I WANT TO BE BACK WHERE YOU ARE, I’d like to tell these undergrads, BUT NOT FOR ANYTHING WOULD I HAVE SKIPPED IT.

Here’s what I would have skipped: My panic and shame at having my perfect front deconstructed. It was that panic and shame that I took out on my body, my family, my friends. And for that, I’ll always be deeply sorry.

So if I were to give advice to any undergrad who, like me, arrives at college as a hollow shell of “perfection,” it would be this: DO NOT PANIC when you discover that you’re not perfect after all. Welcome it as the thing that will make you who you are, as radiation therapy for your soul. But don’t wallow. Show yourself some grace. Gently pick up your pieces and start looking for the tools to put yourself back together again.

In a recent segment on the NPR program This American Life called “The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar,” a woman from a family that had suffered tragedy, deceit, and mistaken identity concluded, “If you hate that it happened, then you hate that you are.”

If you hate that it happened, then you hate that YOU ARE.

You should never, EVER, hate that you are.

Living Without Blinds

Because we live in the woods, our yard is very beautiful and our house – particularly during those times of year when all the leaves are on the trees – can get very dark. Probably for both of those reasons, our house was constructed with many windows. We have eight windows on the first floor alone, plus an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in the Sun Room and five sets of sliding glass doors.

When we moved in, every single one of these windows was covered by blinds.

There were heavy wooden horizontal blinds hung above each window, and vertical blinds to cover the sliding glass doors. It was kind of the previous owners to leave us their window treatments, which were in good shape and had probably been installed with much effort and expense.

One of the first things I did after we moved in was to remove all the blinds from the first-floor windows.

Okay, I didn’t remove the blinds; at the time, I was busy unpacking, painting, nursing a three-month-old, and supervising two rambunctious toddlers. But when my parents, who were helping us move in, asked what I wanted to do about the window treatments, I said, “Take them all down!”

A friend recently lent me a wonderful book of essays by Shauna Niequist called cold tangerines. In an essay titled “basement,” Niequist makes the case that our homes are like mirrors for our selves: the rooms we love the most often contain qualities of who we’d like to be; the rooms we hate the most reflect facets of who we fear we are.

Yes, this is going to be a metaphor for my life. Because it’s like my house knew, even before I did, the kind of life I wanted to lead.

I’ve realized over the course of this year that I want to live a life that’s open, unobstructed: a life without blinds. I’ve spent so much of my life with the blinds drawn, trying to hide parts of myself from the outside world, trying to protect myself. But you know what? It’s a lot of work having to continually raise, lower, and clean those blinds. And they get in the way of my view; it’s hard to see clearly through my blinds to other people, to the beautiful world outside.

Writing has been a major — if not the major — step towards taking down the blinds of my life. This past winter, I started writing (and publishing) more of what I was really thinking and feeling. I admitted that I wasn’t perfect, with perfect kids and a perfect house. I wrote honestly about my faith for the first time ever — something I’d always been terrified to do for fear that people would assume I was going to start judging them or trying to convert them. These were all big steps for me.

I’ve been amazed by the grace with which people have responded. My favorite thing about writing — and life — is that it allows for so many “You, too? Me, too!” moments. Because trying to write as my honest self is very, very scary. It’s scary for the same reasons that some of my family members were horrified that I had no blinds on my first-floor windows: “But people can look right in and see you!” gasped one relative.

Of course, it’s much easier to live without blinds on your house than to live without blinds on your life. My response to “But people can see you!” is: What people? We no longer live in Manhattan or Berkeley; for much of the year, we can barely see our neighbors’ houses through the trees. Somebody would have to go to an awful lot of trouble to look through our windows. And even if they did, So what? They’d see a family, going about our normal, loud, crazy, loving business. We’re not cooking meth in the kitchen or torturing chipmunks in the living room.

It’s much harder to apply that logic to my life.

I’m writing this as a prelude of sorts: within the next couple of days, I’m going to publish one of the most personal things that I’ve ever written.

I’ve written about what happens when you end up living in a college town that’s almost an exact replica of the town where you yourself attended college: the thoughts, memories, and emotions that get dredged up. To leave out this aspect of our move to Vermont would be a major omission.

Don’t get too excited or worried: this is a big deal for me, but that’s because I’ve been living with the blinds drawn for so long. There are no bodies in our basement, no fourth Gong child stashed in our attic, no secret bank account in the Caribbean.

I’m going to publish this piece, and then I’ll probably go back to writing about our mice and bugs and wacky daughters. This blog is about our life, and our life these days is mostly about mice and bugs and wacky daughters. I’ve no interest in starting down a path of gratuitously emotional soul-baring.

You see, as much as I want to live an open life, it’s important to set appropriate limits. I removed all the blinds from our first-floor windows, but I left up all the blinds on our second-floor windows. Not because that’s where we cook the meth or torture chipmunks, but because there are things we do on the second floor — where most of our bedrooms and bathrooms are — that are and never will be anybody else’s business.

So there you have it: my philosophy of life, writing, and home decorating all wrapped up in one little metaphor. It’s a little scary, a little less safe, this life without blinds. But the views are amazing and there’s a lot less upkeep required.

Adding It Up

And then there were three: two smart ones and a lucky one. (The doughnuts were a little post-trauma treat, not a regular occurrence!)

Brinkley killed one of our chickens last week.

Here’s how it happened: For those of you who don’t know, Brinkley is our neighbor’s Golden Retriever, but we’ve “adopted” him to the point that our neighbors looped their electric dog fence around our yard. So Brinkley has the run of our yard, and we love him. Since July, when we first put the chickens outside, Brinkley has shown admirable restraint — he’s been interested in them, but until lately he never made any aggressive moves.

We keep the chicken coop inside a fenced yard. Here’s the weakness: because our yard is so rocky, we can’t sink the fence deeply into the earth to keep predators from digging under it. The fence is chicken wire strung between metal posts, but the chicken wire sits level with the ground. So last week, when Brinkley started digging under the fence and pushing up the wire with his 80 pounds of doggy energy, he won. I’d caught him inside the chicken yard several times, but luckily no harm was done.

Then, last Friday, as I pulled into the driveway with Georgia (the other two girls were in preschool), expecting a quiet, uneventful afternoon, our neighbor from across the street came up the driveway. She was watching Brinkley while his owners were away, and had caught him with one of our white Leghorns in his mouth. She saved the chicken — who was a little slobbery and wobbly and traumatized, but otherwise unhurt — and returned her to the chicken coop. I went to check on the chickens — and found only the lucky Leghorn and one of our Rhode Island Reds inside. That left TWO chickens unaccounted for.

My quiet afternoon turned into a frantic chicken hunt. It’s unclear exactly what happened, but it appears that three of the chickens may have escaped their yard by squeezing under part of the fence that Brinkley had warped with his digging. Once they became totally free-range chickens, they were also fair game for Brinkley. Amazingly, the OTHER Rhode Island Red eventually fluttered down from a tree branch above the chicken yard, where she’d taken shelter during the chicken massacre. As for the other Leghorn, all I found of her was a pile of feathers and a dismembered leg.

I wasn’t totally devastated; it’s pretty rare for a chicken to die of old age. Although I’d have liked to have gotten a few eggs out of this hen before she became Brinkley’s chew toy, chickens don’t usually inspire deep affection. They’re not cuddly creatures; even as chicks, our chickens hated to be held, and now it’s almost impossible to catch them. They’re nervous, flighty creatures whose main interest is food.

But I felt worse than I expected. Those chickens were my responsibility. I was prepared for them to die at some point, but it was still my job to keep them alive as long as possible. If you were looking for someone to pin the blame on in this situation, all evidence pointed straight to: ME. It was hard to be mad at Brinkley; he was just a dog being a dog. And the chickens were just being chickens. But I was the one who’d wanted the chickens to begin with, and I was the one who’d invited our neighbors to include our yard in Brinkley’s fenced run. I’d brought a hunting dog and chickens together, and when the inevitable happened, I had only myself to blame.

“You just keep adding and adding and adding,” my mother said to me during her latest visit. She was concerned after we told her that we were thinking of getting a dog of our own. And she’s right: three children in four years, four chickens, our neighbor’s dog, and now possibly our own dog. I DO have a little problem with adding things to my life. But here’s why: I think it’s almost never bad to add something else to love. Don’t most of us add and add? We form new relationships, get married, have children, acquire pets. Isn’t love the motivation behind all of those things?

I have a hard time saying that I love our chickens. I got them because we go through at least a dozen eggs a week, and because I thought it would be nice for the girls to have some animals around to watch and care for. But I raised them from chicks, I feed them and clean their coop, and I guess that’s a form of love.

Here’s the scaly underbelly of love, though, the thing we try to fool ourselves into forgetting: nothing lives forever. My husband, my children, my chickens, Brinkley, myself — we’re all going to die. When we add things to our lives, we’re adding present-tense love, with the promise of future-tense pain and loss.

So why keep adding at all?

I thought about that while I checked on my lonely Leghorn all that afternoon — a chicken who’d just suffered shock and loss herself, and appeared about as depressed as it’s possible for a chicken to be. I thought about that when Brinkley came running up to me proudly, carrying a mouthful of white feathers. I thought about that when I told my two oldest girls that Brinkley had killed one of their chickens.

Guess what the girls wanted to do after I picked them up from preschool? I am absolutely not making this up: they wanted to go play hide & seek in the cemetery. So we did.

And then I thought: we can live with loss. We can feel the pain and learn from it and work through it and heal. But I cannot, I cannot, live without love. So I will keep adding.

Also, I will reinforce that chicken fence.

When You Don’t Like Your Kids

You know that thing that you’re always supposed to say when your kids are acting up? (And by “acting up,” I mean behaving inappropriately, driving you crazy, whining and crying and not listening and pouting defiantly…)

You’re supposed to say: “I love you, but I don’t like this behavior.”

To see whether I succeed in loving my children while not liking their behavior, click here to continue reading over at On The Willows.