Holding my breath

It's Mother's Day.

If you read about my determined hen you know that I have been counting days. Specifically, I've been counting the twenty-one days until today, Mother's Day. Not because it's Mother's Day. That happened to be an appropriate coincidence, and nothing else.

Today is the day our Nest Queen has been sitting on her eggs for twenty-one days, the day I marked on my calendar "Chicks due!".

I didn't expect to find babies this morning when I visited her, and I was right.

She has oatmeal all over her beak in this photo (which was taken with my unbelievably amazing, obnoxiously large new lens which I am, by the way, absolutely head-over-heels in love with) because I brought her a treat. My husband, by the way, thought I was a freak for using a telephoto lens in the coop.

Whatever.


She was sitting there. Grumpy. Doing her usual thing. I tried to prepare myself for the fact that they just might not hatch. So many things could go wrong.

We got home late from church, and had to get the kids fed and the baby down for a nap. I raced out to the coop the first chance I got.

Something seemed different, but I wasn't sure exactly what.

I squatted down quietly beside her nest. She wasn't happy with my presence, but she didn't move. Her body was in the same position on the nest that it always is. No fuzzy little heads peeked out from beneath her.

Then I heard it.

I could so easily have missed it.

If it wasn't for the three-day-old baby chicks that my chickens used to be a year ago when they arrived in the mail, I would have missed it for sure. That sound is imprinted on my mind forevermore. My heart beat faster before I even realized what I had heard.

I very carefully reached beneath her and gently pulled out the most beautiful shiny brown egg.

It was hot.

It quivered and vibrated ever so slightly in my hand.

It was alive.

I held it to my ear. After a moment, I heard the tiniest "peep peep peep" you could imagine.

Quickly I tucked it back into it's warm space under it's Momma.

As I sat there, every so often I would hear one of the babies, "peep peep peep" from within it's shell. Every time I heard it, Momma Hen heard it too. She would put all her feathers up on end, and glare at me. She knows, although I wonder if she really knows. What mother truly does know what she's getting herself into?

There are still at least a hundred things that could go wrong. But right now, I am completely amazed. An egg, people, it's an egg. You know, those things that you crack into a hot pan and cook. But these ones are ripe with life. It's a mystery to me really why, or how... but right now, at this exact moment those baby chicks are probably only hours away from hatching.

This is my gift on Mother's Day. I am once again overwhelmed with awe of my creator, filled up with excitement of this mystery, in anticipation of the joy of seeing those fuzzy little beady-eyed babies.

I know for a fact that Momma Hen didn't lay a single one of those eggs she incubated, and chances are good that they won't all survive. But they are all hers, and she is their mom.

Happy Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day to adoptive moms, to stepmoms, to moms who have given birth to babies, and to moms who hurt today because they have lost children. We are all moms, and what a mystery it truly is. My love to you all.