“I need to find a tempting treat for a chicken,” Ula says aloud to no one in particular one afternoon this past winter while she distracts herself from writing one of her college essays.  She has plans with her boyfriend for the weekend, so she really needs to get her work done.  But her mind is elsewhere.  She’s been befriending a young pullet all winter, who has come to be known as Tina.  But Tina had been spreading her wings, figuratively and literally, as her feathers came in, and had taken to ignoring Ula.

“Tuna fish,” I call over my shoulder from my desk.  I keep working.

There’s a surprised silence.

“How would you know that?”  

It’s an understandable question.  We all have different strengths here at Sap Bush.  Mom, Dad and Ula are the animal whisperers.  Bob and Saoirse are the source of strength and endurance.  I’m the cook and the communications person.  I’m not supposed to know how to befriend a chicken.  Animals aren’t my strength area. But I wasn’t always here at the keyboard.

“I had a pet chicken, too, when I was your age,” I remind her.

Her name was Tuna, actually.  My brother fished her out of an above-ground swimming pool we had at the time.  While out grazing, she’d been chased by the dog,  and she’d flown in there and was failing at her attempts to swim.  My brother walked into the kitchen where I was making lunch, heaved the nearly drowned bird  across the counter, and said, “Here.  Keep her from dying.”  Then he left.

I pushed everything aside and gazed at this cold, wet sexlink.  She wasn’t far from death, so I figured there wasn’t much to lose.  I went to the bathroom and got my mom’s hair dryer, sat down on the kitchen floor with her, and gave her a blowout.  Then I went to the barn and got her some corn, but she refused to eat.  I didn’t want to return her to her flock until I was certain her appetite was restored, but cracked corn wasn’t cutting it.  I picked her up and put her back on the counter while I resumed preparing lunch (I know.  That wouldn’t pass inspection in the cafe.  But hey.  I was a kid.).  I picked up the can of tuna fish and began pouring off the oil.  She cocked her head and watched me.  On a whim, I pushed the can in her direction.  She attacked it with voracious enthusiasm.  Hence, her name.  Tuna:  Chicken of the sea. 

Tuna and I became good friends that summer.  In the evenings, my family would sit out on the porch to watch fireflies or listen to crickets.  Provided the dog, who just couldn’t not chase chickens, was tied up, Tuna would leave her flock and come to the steps.  I’d sit on the bottom step, she’d climb into my lap and settle down.  We’d spend hours like that.  I needed a good friend.  I had grown apart from my school girl friends, and was unsure about the attention I was increasingly receiving from boys.  A chicken was a safe bet for emotional attachment.  

Only it wasn’t.  Things ended badly on the day we came home from dropping my brother off at his summer camp.  The dog had gotten loose and killed half the laying hens.  Tuna was among the casualties.  

I was horribly distraught.  When I recovered, I chose to let chickens stay chickens.  They didn’t become my friends.  I started dating boys instead.  

Ula doesn’t make the same either/or distinctions that I did.  She’s 17, and she’s had a few relationships now.  She seems capable of balancing romantic relationships with her love for a few chosen pet sheep, two donkeys, and Tina, who also wound up loving tuna fish.  So she now goes by Tina Tuna.  

Like Ula, I dated a lot, too.  Especially in college, like she is now.  I found that having a boyfriend to do things with was easier than running around with a gang of girls.  And I had a knack for falling in love.

I also had a knack for falling out of it.  And that was brutal.  Like Ula, I (mostly) dated nice guys.    I liked them a lot, even when I stopped loving them.  And, being a nice girl, that led me to stay in my first relationship longer than I should have.  It stretched on for nearly two years.  He was a really good person, and I didn’t think he deserved to be hurt.   Therefore, I concluded I wasn’t entitled to my own feelings, which were screaming for freedom.  That was a toxic combination inside me, leading me to take my frustration out on that poor guy with cruel humor and immature attempts to change or fix him to become the person I needed.  That, of course, failed.  I didn’t even know the break-up was going to happen.  We were out on a walk, and suddenly I just called the whole thing off.  It was horribly painful for both of us.  So next time out, I developed a different tactic.

It was during the total solar eclipse in May of 1994.  I was out walking with my next boyfriend when I realized the relationship had to end.  Again, he was a nice guy.  He didn’t deserve the pain of a break-up.  So, since the end of the semester was only a few days out, I didn’t break up with him that moment.  I scheduled it with him for the last day of finals.  I felt resolved and at peace to walk through the streets under the solar eclipse, and he thought I was just being funny.  

Yeah.  That tactic didn’t go so well, either.  The semester ended and I went off to enjoy my freedom.  And he was left wondering where I went.  

At this point, I should have figured out that the short life span of a chicken didn’t matter.  The friendship that the average laying hen could offer exceeded whatever was available to me in the boyfriend arena.  

If only my daughters weren’t so much like their mother.  

It was a week before the solar eclipse when Ula came to me, eyes wide.  She cared for her boyfriend a lot.  We all did.  But she was no longer in love.  She confessed to me an experience that I only knew too well: Shame that she would try to change him, that she could accept him for who he was as her friend, but that she couldn’t do the same as his girlfriend;  guilt over the idea of possibly causing him pain in order to honor her longing to be free…to just be with her donkeys, her sheep, and Tina Tuna.

The eclipse loomed on the horizon, and all those feelings and memories from that time of my life came flooding back to me.  And watching my daughter, I saw it all differently, with ruthless clarity. 

Yes, causing pain is awful.  

But so is staying in a relationship as a result of guilt and a sense of obligation.  These are not conditions for love.

Ula understands this.  She knows their mutual friends will be angry with her.  She knows her clarity will not be construed as kindness.  But she breaks it off.

We have a rough couple of days, worrying about him, worrying about her.  Her ex sends back the love letters and demands more explanations than she is equipped to offer.  She turns off her phone, hands it to me, and when she’s not looking, I hide it in the coffee beans.  We move forward toward the impending eclipse.  And I get to bear witness to the miraculous resilience of youth, particularly when in the company of a good chicken.  The burning pain that would take an older adult years to grapple with cools considerably within a few days, by the time the moon’s shadow falls across our patch of the planet.  

When that happens, we stop pulling meat and doing chores and plop ourselves down right in the barnyard to watch it.  Tina Tuna joins us.  I alternate between watching the moon cross over the sun and gazing at Tina, reflecting on the pain of my own long-lost chicken friend, and all those other relationships in my life that came to their end for various reasons.  

Tina lets me stroke her feathers, but she prefers to nuzzle under Ula’s chin.  I don’t want to think of the day we will lose her.  I didn’t want to think of the day Ula would break up with her boyfriend, either.  But these days come.  And this chicken under the eclipse reminds me that my life is better for all the relationships I’ve had and lost, whether it was Tuna the chicken, or my countless dog companions, or the friends and loved ones who were taken from me against my wishes.  My life has also been enriched by those boyfriends and other friends I chose to break away from once I realized that the relationships could not continue in a healthy way.  Sure it is sad and painful.  But it is worthwhile pain. It’s having had the relationship that matters.  Each one helped me become who I was meant to become, just as this past week’s pain will form my daughter.  It will teach her to recognize her deepest truths and needs so that someday, she will be able to love another person as purely and as deeply as she loves that chicken. 

If you enjoyed this, please share this podcast with friends & family to get the ideas to spread.  Better still, you can help make the magic happen for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.  Or, if it’s easier, you can also donate to support the podcast by sending a check to Shannon Hayes, ℅ Sap Bush Hollow Farm, 832 W. Fulton Rd, West Fulton, NY  12194.

And that’s a really important thing to do, because all of this— the podcast, the blog, the books and the creative recharging that happens over fall and winter—   are a result of the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Viv Lapp and Andrea Yoder.  Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you! 

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