Category: Random Thoughts on Life

Life and Death in the Country

lindaktaylor6 Comments

I have been facing the difficult reality of life and death in the country. We came to the country as city folks who have been learning the hard way about the harshness of nature.

Not that there isn’t death everywhere, but it seems more–well–in my face here. The sadness came to me the day I sat on my back porch and saw a fox attack the little group of chickens that were trusting the safety of our little back garden. The fox came out of nowhere. He must have crept along the sides of the buildings and attacked from there. The flock scattered in all directions but the fox managed to grab one. I saw him tearing across the lawn toward the high hay in the field behind us with one of the “Three Amigos” (the three matching red chickens) in his mouth. I chased him, but of course was unable to save my poor little clucky friend.

We’ve been wondering what’s been happening–we started with 15 chickens and are now down to three. Hence my sorrow. My husband says we should think “circle of life” and realize that we provided the fast food joint (a la Kentucky Fried) for the local wildlife population. Surely some little baby foxes had full tummies thanks to our provision.

I have on purpose not fallen in love with these chickens. Leave it to me to be away for a few days and then hear from my husband by phone, “Guess what I bought?” I came home to find 15 little chicks in a big box under a warm light. Various different colors and breeds and sizes. They grew. Fast. There were the big red ones, and the little ones with feathers on their feet, and the tiny white one with black trim around his feathers as if someone carefully used a black magic marker to outline him. They really have their own kind of beauty.

Once they outgrew their box, we moved them onto the back porch (it was still too cold to put them into their coop). Finally, when the weather broke, we put them outside, opening the coop door for them each day to strut down the special walkway my husband built and wander the yard. I love watching them strut about and peck the ground. I love hearing the rooster crow. I enjoyed having them wander the entire yard, staying in their little groups together, sitting under the bushes on the hot days. When they wandered too far, we chased them back, with them “cawww”-ing at us as if annoyed that we dared to chase them back to safety. Once we even had to chase them back to our yard from across the road. Yes, they crossed the road. Why? I have no idea.

Dumb chickens.

After the horrifying fox attack, we lost a couple more (including one more of the “Amigos”)–feathers in a pile beside the tall grass of the adjoining field revealed yet another attack. We have since put up chicken wire and are keeping our free-range chickens penned up to try to protect them. From certain death.

And I guess that goes for the sadness I feel every time I see some poor animal by the side of the road. From my perch shotgun on a recent lengthy trip to the Northeast, I counted ten deer by the side of the road–and that in just one stretch of highway. Poor sweet deer running and skipping and then . . . well, I don’t want to talk about it. Seriously, I can’t even watch those nature shows where one animal kills another. It’s all just too sad.

We’ll never be hunters. We’ll never be able to kill and eat (these chickens are for “pleasure” only, and maybe eggs; we could never hurt them ourselves). Not that I have a problem with those who do hunt (bless you sis and bro-in-law), but somehow I just can’t yet stomach death in the country.

I know they’re just creatures and it occurs all the time. I just don’t want to see it, hear it, feel it.

But that’s part of life, right? Hard things come. We buck up. We get through it. We rejoice with the three little chickens who are the survivors. We protect what we have. We do our best with what’s left.

Sure, there’s pain. But there’s also survival. There’s life. Real life.

And that’s what we celebrate.

Guess I better go close up the chicken coop. They’re counting on me to protect them as best I can. Even though they don’t have a clue.

The Sound of Silence

lindaktaylor8 Comments

After the ice-hail-sleet storms of last week left a glossy sheen to the little coating of snow that had already fallen on our vista, yesterday we had a different kind of snowfall. I’m beginning to get used to seeing snow “fall” horizontally past my kitchen windows. The wind whips across the cornfields from the west, the way our house faces, and the snow rushes past as if in a hurry to be somewhere else. In fact, most of the accumulation we get is on our front steps, where the wind sends it into drifts. Gives new meaning to “snowed in.”

But yesterday, the snow fell vertically in those fat snowflakes that act like they have all the time in the world between heaven and earth. Of course, I’ve seen it before. I’ve lived in enough snowy places. Yet there’s something about that kind of snowfall that always makes me pause and watch. It’s peaceful. The wind didn’t stir as the flakes frosted the branches of the huge pine trees outside my kitchen window.

When I let our puppy out, I too stepped out onto the porch. And that’s when it happened.

Silence.

It was literally so quiet it seemed like I could hear the snow fall. I did a mental accounting of the sounds that normally circle my world. Cars on the faraway highway? No. Dogs barking next door? No. Wind rustling through the trees? No. The crunch of a shovel as a neighbor attempts to clear his driveway? No. The hum of a snowblower? No. Not even the rustle or call of birds.

Nothing. Just silence.

It actually startled me. I called to my husband, “Come here. You gotta come hear this,” when I was actually asking him to come hear . . . the sweet sound of nothing.

Why is that so unusual? When was the last time I was in complete silence? I can’t remember. Silence is rare.

The snow was falling so hard that the barn across the field in front of our house—bright red that provides me with daily delight—had disappeared behind a white curtain. The snow covered the glossy sheen with white powder, evening out the ruts our cars had made earlier and covering the road in front of our house.

I could have stood there all day, soaking in the blessed silence. Of course, it wouldn’t be long before the snowblowers fired up and a four-wheel-drive made tracks down the pristine road.

But for a few moments on a Saturday morning, I stood in wonder . . . and silence.

Of Hyphens

lindaktaylor7 Comments

My friends, I have been lax. I know that writing a blog is supposed to be a regular thing, but perhaps it’s because I live with deadlines in every other part of my writing life—work and school—that I rebel against them in my private writing life.

But then again, I should be a bit more disciplined. I could rattle off all kinds of excuses of my busy work schedule, teaching schedule, school schedule, and wedding planning, but I know that you haven’t been crying and wondering where I’ve been. You have so much else to do—and read—in your lives. I am humbled and honored that you take a few precious minutes of your day to check in with me whenever I find the inspiration to write . . . and post.

I began this blog to talk about us city folks newly moved to the country. While I’ve enjoyed telling you about the big sky and the critters that have made their way into our home and hearts, I got myself uninspired. I mean, I still love the fact that the sun sets off of my front porch across the farm field and behind the red barn, but for some reason life closed in again. Busy.

I’ve been thinking about hyphens lately. As a writer/copyeditor/proofreader, I am well aware of the differences between hyphens and en-dashes and em-dashes. It’s probably more correct to call it an em-dash. Whatever it is, it represents a life.

And my life is busy.

Sometimes when I visit my parents in Pennsylvania, I enjoy a quiet walk through the cemetery across Route 427 that runs in front of their house just outside Corry. It’s a long-standing cemetery, with some new headstones tall and straight—shiny granite with loving thoughts; others are tipped at odd angles—moss-covered and nearly illegible. A group of three small block headstones, dirtied with time, are clustered near the turn in the path and always catch my eye. There’s a woman, her husband, and a baby with just one day noted on the tiny headstone. I wonder what is in the hyphens. By the dates I can tell that the husband was eleven years older than his wife, and he died twenty years before she did. The tiny headstone represents a baby who died at birth and didn’t even get a name or a hyphen. This married couple had one very terrible day in their hyphens—one day that surely caused pain for the remaining twenty years of the husband’s life and forty years of his wife’s. At one point, the woman laid her husband to rest and then lived as a widow for another twenty years.

Did they have a happy marriage? Other children? What occupations had they performed? Was the man a banker or a chimney sweep? Did they have financial struggles or did they live a life of ease? What kind of life was in the hyphens?

All the headstones have hyphens.

Another group of three in a new part of the cemetery share the horror of a car accident that took the lives of three young teenagers in the community. The parents had even paid for pictures of their dear daughters to be etched in the headstones. I always stand in front of these and wonder about the hyphens. Young girls—worried about their hairstyles, their weight, their next date, their future husbands—got into a car on the way to who knows where and ended up there, together forever in granite. The different starting dates and identical ending date of their lives are etched below the pictures of young smiling, hopeful faces. That first date had seen a mere fifteen birthday celebrations before there were no more. Now it is a mere etched hyphen on a headstone.

And then, nearby, my dear Grandma Grover is buried. I know more about her hyphen. Some of it joyous, some of it painful. All of it a blessing to those who knew her.

I don’t mean to be morose, but when I think about being busy—too busy—I think about my hyphen. One day, that’s what will be left of me for some future writer to consider as she walks past my gravestone on a sunny summer day.

I want my hyphen to matter. Nothing wrong with being busy—I think I’m generally busy with pretty good things. I’ve tried to live a life pleasing to my heavenly Father. I’ve tried to enjoy the sun on my face or the snow blowing horizontally (at least here it does) past my window, the smiles on my children’s faces, the feel of my husband’s hand in mine.

I was doing my bi-weekly four-hour commute last week playing one of those old Wow! CDs with Christian music from the 1970s. I sang at the top of my lungs with Phil Keaggy and Don Francisco and The Imperials and Andre Crouch. I cried unabashedly. And suddenly I was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratefulness for all of you—the many people who have touched my life across the last five decades. I don’t know what snippets you remember about me, but all of you have a spot in my memory reserved just for you. A word. A smile. A bit of encouragement. Some wise piece of advice. A hug. Moments of uncontrolled laughter. Times of tears.

You make up my hyphen. God put you in my life at that moment, and into now, for a reason.

Thanks for making my hyphen matter. I hope I have been able to give as much as I have received.