
To Raise a Son
The hens have started laying again. So with renewed gratitude this Easter Sunday morning, my young son and I clean the chicken coop (fowls' foul nests, we joke) and sift rabbit poop from the chicken food. I tell him about Eostre, goddess of spring, who (stories say) saved a bird with frozen wings by transforming her into an egg-laying rabbit. "Why?" he likes to ask. "For luck," I guess, "perhaps in overcoming death," which makes me bring up the dark ages, when ever-hedging humans began to color eggs like flowers, like jewels containing precious suns. "That's what we'll be doing," he adds, and we chat with each hen by name, pondering the meaning of her calls, then free their dinosaur bodies to run and scratch and sprawl in sunny oases of sand— "Do you think dinosaurs loved our sun this much?" I ask. "More," he says, "if they were cold-blooded," knowing this is something scientists question, and at last, we open the laying box: "Four eggs!" he shouts, bloomed and warm.
1 reply on “To Raise a Son”
An interesting mix of myth and your day! Thanks.