It was my daughter’s first high school cross country meet. I was there to be moral support and transportation, and a small gaggle of parents and coaches and I wandered around the course cheering on the runners. After three miles of wet grass, tree roots, and inclines (I hesitate to call anything in Lafayette by the exalted name of Hill), Samantha rounded the corner to the finish line.

She was by herself on the course, but surrounded by encouragement. The boys had run their race first; one of her teammates jogged back and ran the last leg of the girls’ race alongside her. She was not coming in first, not by a long shot, but the rest of the boys’ team was lined up creating a tunnel with their arms for her to run through as she reached the finish line.

It is a beautiful, moving thing to watch your child be loved.

None of my children have had serious romantic relationships yet, and I suspect I’ll have more mixed feelings when we get to that stage. But to see the genuine friendship of these other kids for my daughter was a great blessing. These boys had already run the same course–they knew what she had just gone through. Their enthusiasm, encouragement, and friendship helped carry her through those final difficult strides.

This was all two weeks ago, and I can’t stop thinking about the image of my daughter running through the tunnel of her friends’ and teammates’ love.

As I was reflecting on it again today, probably because another meet is coming up (way too early) tomorrow morning, the gratitude I felt for experiencing that moment was still very strong. And it occurred to me that if I can rejoice so much in seeing my child cared for, maybe a small gift I can give to God is to show this sort of care to others of his children.

It is a commonplace to consider caring for others as a duty of the Christian, but this experience helped me to see that idea in a new light: every time we go a little bit out of our way to care for another human being, to make their day a little easier or a little brighter, we are giving joy to God in the same way that watching Samantha’s friends rally around her lifted my heart.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about today. Another challenging race is coming up tomorrow, but I feel like I can count on Samantha’s little community of high school distance runners to be there to support her through it. And I hope that when God sends one of his children my way, he can count on me to be the cheering squad, the shoulder to lean on, or the water-bottle deliverer–in short, I hope I can share a little of the love he has given me through so many wonderful people with whoever he puts in my path in the future.

There is a chick living under my husband’s desk.

How it got there is a long story.

Two things happened a few of months ago: my brother-in-law asked if we wanted his friend’s silkie chickens (which turned out not to be the COVID pets she had been hoping for) and Samantha started collecting abandoned duck eggs from the pond, hoping she could get some of them to hatch. (Yes, they were truly abandoned. No nest raiding involved, I promise!)

We took the cute-in-a-scraggly-way teen-age silkies and added them to our flock. Urban homesteading at its best! Samantha started trying to engineer an incubator for the duck eggs.

When our neighbor heard about Samantha’s interest in ducks, she sent her husband up into the attic and then over to our house to deliver their old incubator. Weeks of anticipation followed.

We didn’t quite have the incubator figured out, so the duck experiment, sadly, ended up being nothing but a smelly mess and a lesson in partially-developed duckling anatomy. Samantha took it well and was very good about cleaning it all up. We considered where to store the incubator.

Meanwhile, we began to realize that two of the three silkie chickens were a little different. Bigger combs. A tendency to jump (like goombas, I kid you not) and fight. And finally, they crowed.

Our lovely hens were roosters.

This is an age-old tale, and we probably should have been more savvy. But just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait. It gets better.

I started looking for someone who would actually want silkie roosters, and was shocked to have quick success…but my friend wasn’t ready to take them just yet. So we waited, and hoped the neighbors didn’t mind the crowing too much.

Meanwhile, the roosters and hens did what roosters and hens will do: provided live Life Cycle lessons for anyone wandering through our backyard. So Samantha did some more research, and started absconding with our would-be breakfasts and starting them in the incubator.

The incubator is under my husband’s desk because, well, we have a small house. The footspace under the desk was (usually) unoccupied.

We ordered a new thermometer so the eggs would have a fighting chance. More weeks of anticipation. And Wednesday night, we started hearing peeping. Which, I now know, is what chicks do before they hatch.

Then we watched one of the eggs wiggle around for a while (it is really strange to watch). And right before breakfast today, while no one was looking, out the soggy little darling popped, to be rhapsodized by one and all. A black-and-gold Ameraucana/Silkie mix. I suggested naming him (Joseph) Pieper. I had to explain the joke to Samantha. (Given his coloring, maybe Drew Brees would be better…)

Samantha and her dad made a quick run for chick food and bedding, and she has spent the last two days fashioning a brooder out of detritus from the shed.

City dwellers that we are, we’re already at our legal limit for chickens, so the next project is finding someone interested in silkies, or Ameraucana/silkies, or Black Australorpe/silkies…you get the idea. This was not an organized breeding experiment. We’re holding out hope that the Ameraucana mix will lay tiny green eggs, but who knows!

(At this point in the writing, I had to take a break to watch chick #2 hatch.)

But as I was saying, none of this was planned. One little serendipity followed another, until we had a peeping, wriggling bunch of mutt chickens under my husband’s desk. I thought I had avoided this fate when we chose to live within the city limits…but Samantha has farming in her blood and she had other plans. We sat back and watched as she nurtured her little brood to life.

I’m sure Pieper and his new friend are grateful.

Update: In the time it took me to finish this post, two more chicks hatched. Craig’s desk is getting to be quite noisy.

The book, by the way, is Who’s on First.

This is why I like us all being home.

I’m making lunch and packing up to go visit Jacob this afternoon.

Lucy is practicing violin, working between piano, YouTube videos, and her metronome to get it “just right.”

I walked by the art room, and Samantha (who could not, would not read this time last year) is reading one of my childhood favorite books, Happy Birthday Moon, to Isaac (in Batman outfit) and Clare (caring for a baby bear).

These are the good times.  Lord, help me remember that!

The Scene:
Isaac is playing with a (purple) bow. Of the bow-and-arrow, not hair decoration, variety. The arrows (mercifully) are missing.
Samantha: “No, Isaac! You can’t shoot people.” Pause. “UNLESS they’re sleep darts. I’m OK with sleep darts.”
Anyone know where I could get some of those?

Samantha can write her name now…kind of.  She writes “Samo”.  Don’t ask me where the “o” came from.  But lately she’s added an extra circle to the end as a period.  So now she signs her name “Samoo”.

But she has requested not to be called that.

Nor, sadly, Samwise Gamgee.

I was noticing as I got out the winter clothes a couple of weeks ago, that Clare now fits (although barely!) in the dress I bought for Samantha for Dad’s funeral.  It’s funny the way time works, and the things that remind us.

Regarding a diaperless Clare…

Lucy: “That is a pretty big bottom.  I’d like to keep looking at it.  ‘Cause it’s pretty big.”

To Clare playing in the living room…

Samantha, in her sweetest cajoling mommy voice: “I appreciate you doing good.  Thank you.”

I was innocently, or at least unsuspectingly washing dishes.  The girls were playing outside.  Lucy came in to finish preparing the “tea” for her tea party in the back yard, and she calmly announced that Samantha was on the truck.

“On top of the truck?”  I asked, sure she must mean something like “tricycle”.  “The one we drive around in?”

“Yes.”

I blinked in disbelief, and headed for the door.  Sure enough, as I walked out, Samantha was sliding down the windshield.  She didn’t make a fuss, just slid down off the truck like she had done it every day of her life.

I wasn’t sure how she could get up there in the first place, since she is only as tall as the tire.  So I asked.  Did she climb the wheel or the front bumper?  Wheel.  Wasn’t it high?  Yes, she couldn’t do it on her own.  So how did she get up there?

“Lucy helped me.”

So much for my faith in the common sense of almost-five-year-olds.

“Lucy, how did you help her get up there?”

“She couldn’t do it, so I gave her a push on the bottom so she could get up.”

I’m seriously starting to be worried about being outnumbered by these three.  Clare is about to start crawling, and then there will be no stopping them.

At least I won’t have to spend much time teaching them about cooperation.

Me: Would you like some broccoli?

Samantha:  I don’t like broccoli.

Me: What do you like?  Besides cookies and candy.

Samantha: I like ice cream and cake.  And icing on cake.

My mom claims she gets it from her, and that she got it from her mother.  I think it’s time to start making some “nutritional” cookies.  😉 (= sneaky mommy face)