Of Angels and Eggs

If anything, my life has given me a wealth of stories to tell.  Or perhaps I've given life to the stories myself.  I'm still not sure which way it works.  But one will always stand out as a favorite; if I titled it, I might call it "Of Angels and Eggs."  In the past month, I've been working on some memoirish pieces for a mixed-genre collection I may never finish, and I was reminded of this sweet, sweet story:

Once upon a time when I was thirteen, I found myself walking, lost and alone, down residential streets in San Diego.  (How I ended up there is another, much longer, story.  If you're interested, you'll have to wait for me to get published.  Or just stop by my house one night with a block of good cheese, a bottle of cheap red wine, and the question on the tip of your tongue.) As I wandered the dusty roads, my face tear-streaked but my back already perpetually straight, I passed house after house of suburban California architecture: pink stucco and white gravel, tiled roofs and cacti.  But then I noticed an alley, an even dustier dirt road that cut between the back yards of two rows of homes.  Curious, not wanting to return to where I'd been, I turned down the lane and realized that I was now seeing the reality of working-class San Diego life.  People here might put up a good front, but their back yards told the truth: rusting old cars that only Southern rednecks might envy sat on blocks, abandoned plastic riding-toys littered overgrown lawns, and laundry flapped, forgotten in the evening breeze.  Somehow, it was all very comforting.  It was then that the angels appeared.  My angels.  A young couple sat in a mis-matched pair of woven vinyl lounge chairs, drinking canned beers and watching two small children chasing chickens in the dust.  I smiled my smallest smile, and the man walked over to lean his arms along the top of the chain-link fence as I walked by.

"Hey.  You okay?"  he asked.

"Yeah.  I'm fine," I lied.  And he knew it.

"You have some place to go?"

"Yeah."  I did.  I just didn't want to.  But I knew that when I was ready, I could find my way back.  I just wasn't ready yet.

"Anything I can do to help?"  The kindness in his eyes almost made me cry again.  Almost.

I shook my head.  "No.  I'm good."

He looked around his yard and then back at me.  "How about some eggs?"

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I'll eat almost anything except eggs and milk.  I blame my grandmother entirely for this.  I can still remember growing nauseous as she forced a glass of milk to my lips before bed, a fork full of scrambled egg down my throat at the breakfast table.  I felt sure at a very young age that my body was not meant to ingest aborted chicken fetuses or milk meant for baby cows.  But in that moment, tired and hungry and alone, I was overcome by his offer.  More than anything, he wanted to give me something and I wanted to take it.  I needed that connection, that care. 

So I said, "Sure."

He left the fence and wandered into the house.  The woman smiled at me from her repose, and the children eyed me curiously.  After reaching into the hen-house, the man returned with a brown paper lunch bag full of fresh eggs.

"Take good care of yourself," he said.

"Thank you."  I smiled and headed back to where I'd come from. 

Almost a month ago now, I moved myself and my two little loves into a house that I lived in once upon a time.  It's small and snug, quite worn and weathered from hard use and the general wear and tear of life.  But it feels like home.  In my mind I've been calling it my hobbit-hole and I've set to making it my own in a very hobbit-like way.  Right off, McLean and I climbed onto the roof and cleaned out the overburdened gutters.  Then Chloe and I buried "baby seeds" into clay pots and set them in the large, east-facing front window.  I've been working on rerouting the fence in the backyard around the raised beds my last tenants built in an attempt to save any future fruits of my labors from the return of Blade Beak and Star Baby (or perhaps two new chickens--since leaving our girls with my sister's flock out on a mountaintop in Leicester, she's afraid that the neighboring foxes and coyotes might have picked them off, but she has so many chickens, she's not entirely sure) as well as the dog my kids think we're getting.  Then yesterday, while McLean and Chloe played ninjas and dug for worms in the backyard, I turned the soil in the top bed, tossed out weeds and acorns and rocks, and planted some early spring crops.

Just as I was finishing, I heard a noise in the yard next to ours.  I knew that a young couple lived to our right, but I hadn't yet met them.  A man in a ball cap and flannel shirt held a beer in one hand and rummaged through a pile of wood scraps in a makeshift workshop with the other.

"Hey," I called, smiling. 

"Hey."  He turned and smiled back.

That was all of the encouragement my social children needed.  Before I could wipe the dirt off my hands and make it to the fence, McLean and Chloe had scurried over and had found out all about our new neighbor's chickens, big brown dog, and toddling little girl.  Before long, his wife and daughter had come out to meet us, and we stood chatting over beers while McLean chased and caught every single chicken, Chloe climbed and hung from the roosts, and their little one looked on in wide-eyed fascination. 

 

And of course, we went home with a sack full of fresh eggs.