Not What I Expect

She was not what I expected.   Walking toward my car in her high heels and bleached blond hair, she motioned us to the garage in back.  I shouldn’t have been surprised at this point because just a few minutes before I had driven right past her house. I didn’t think the naked mannequin for sale by the side of the road with arms flailed out in odd contortions had much to do with our destination. Certainly, the Garmin was wrong. In my imagining mind, heirloom chickens were sold from a rustic barn on acres of land, with windmills and sheep dotting the landscape.  Furthermore, the woman who would sell the rare breeds would not dye her hair. 

But anyway, there we were.  Two hours away from home on a hot August day, staring at some chicks in South Jersey, when we find out we are in for another surprise.  She had forgotten to mention on the phone that these chicks had not been sexed.   (to clarify for the non chicken owning reader: chickens can only be sexed the first 24 hours of hatching.  If they are not sexed then, you have to wait for 6-8 months to confirm gender.)  She tries to be helpful by repeating, in three different ways, that I have a 50/50 chance of getting hens.  So probably as she had planned, I buy a few extra chicks to better my odds. I might as well be on the boardwalk.

We drive home and I suddenly recall every horrible, terrible story I have ever heard about roosters.  They have spurs on their hind legs that can injure you! A farmer lost his thumb from being pecked by one!  They will have endless sex with the poor hens, pulling off their back feathers, tormenting them daily!  

So, over the next few months I try to be proactive.  I call around a few places to find a home for the chick that has now grown bigger than all the rest.  And I find out that many places will take this rooster--for auction.   In a twist of unexpected events, my fear of the unknown has now merged with my conscience.  I cannot reconcile my image as a humanistic backyard chicken caretaker with one who sentences to death a creature whose only mistake thus far was being born the wrong gender.  So, to manage my anxiety, I do the usual.  I google.  I google  “positive traits of roosters.”   And I read about how they will protect the flock from predators -even sacrificing themselves! And they hunt out the best food sources, letting the hens eat first; and, finally, -this one got me--sometimes, if raised with human hands, they can be gentle. 

There is no clear answer, I think, as I go out and give them some treats.  Only time will tell.   He has gotten so big now, that he looks just like those roosters in the paintings and on the kitchen cloths.  Who knew there might be a dark side?  But no matter, my conscience will not let me give him up yet; fear of losing my thumbs will have to be pushed aside for another day. There exists the possibility that this rooster can be different.  I give him a little pat on the back.  He might not be what I expect.

Slow Time

There I am in a tiny basement apartment, in the middle of a big city, listening to her story of single motherhood.  She is trying to strike some balance with her emotions and her obligations, her frustration with her older husband who left for a different woman.  It’s over 25 years ago and I actually forget many of the details…except for one.  We were knitting socks.  In between the easier rows I listened to her snippets of raising a daughter on her own while juggling a teaching job; and a certain kind of nighttime loneliness that got stirred up when her three year old crawled into her bed and she wondered if she was making the right decision.   As her younger colleague I had no advice to offer.  I hadn’t even really lived any “life” as of yet.    So I kept knitting and instead listened to the voices around me-among them a much more seasoned grandmother who had been through more experiences than all of us combined.   She was busy dreaming about retirement, renting a camper and traveling the country.   She was anxious to be free.  And she knew that it didn’t really matter where the little girl slept.  It just mattered that they forged through this time with each other and swallowed up the dark until the morning light.

And then, many years later, knitting a little brown hat, I am witness to the unexpected realization of a friend who is fearlessly and quite accidently journaling her way out of a marriage -though she doesn’t know it yet.  She just knows that she ran into an old “love” quite unexpectedly and it stirred her in some deep undeniable way; bits of clarity exposed about where she is meant to be at this time in her life.  The entries were hidden in her glove compartment and in a second of doubt she burned them in her fireplace that night.  But the nagging was still there (some things are hard to burn away)—not to reconnect with her old flame, rather to embrace the change on the horizon and find the place that she was actually meant to be-to answer the restlessness that was keeping her awake at night.

It takes time to sort through a lot of this stuff.   The fact that LOVE thrusts you in places you never expected to go.    Whether it be love of our children, parents, companions, or friends; or love of adventure, risk or safety. There are too many “knitting stories” to count, so many instructive life stories that connected the fears, dreams and pain of living daily life.  And the stories of these people have stayed with me; they are woven into my being. 

And in very sharp contrast, I have forgotten the viral videos I watched yesterday.  They were quick, fast and that is all—I had no real connection to them.  Though it is so easy to press play on my computer; on my phone; to feel momentarily connected while pushing back time for one more minute, and then another, until I am filled with pictures and stories of people I don’t even know.   Suddenly, a sense of isolation has crept into my life and I realize that something deep and important is missing.

Slow knitting, the antithesis to the speed of the current world, connected me in a deep and powerful way to the authentic stories of the people I was with in real time.   Time that often feels agonizingly slow when you pondering a life choice, when nothing feels clear or right; when things just feel hard.   Virtual worlds leave me longing to find my way back to my slower one, the one rich with real people struggling over daily decisions just like me.   Where the current technology keeps me abreast of the news and the weather, it does not fill that deep reservoir of my spirit, my soul, of my need to connect with people.   Knitting gives me a reason to do that.  To slow down the speed of life, to tap into the wide world of questions without answers; to feel the slowness of change in relationships, the shifts of perspective, the opening up of pain and the pleasure of friendships.  This all takes time.   Knitting time.