Cracking the Shell

Eggs are still on my mind a bit these days.  It's spring--I'm allowed.  And with eggs, of course, come thoughts of motherhood.  That's the one, sure thing that's a prerequisite for eggs: a mother.  Even modern science hasn't been able to top that one.  And with a mother comes a certain amount of personal idiosyncracy, neurosis, even madness on occasion--because you just can't make it through raising those chicks without a crack or two in the old mother's shell.  After all, it takes a lot out of a gal to weave a home out of horsehair and twigs, to keep it clean, to stick with it during thunderstorms and drought, to make it work.

                                                                     

Those little mouths are always open, wanting, needing, opining, dreaming.  And mom's ears are always open--even if she says "huh" and "what" a lot.  It doesn't mean she isn't listening.  It just means her inner ear is finely tuned to the buzz under the surface, to the unsaid, to the past, and to the future.  It takes a lot out of a gal--all that listening and tuning in, all that hearing and tuning out.  

                                                                    
                                          

And then one day the chicks are standing right in front of you, looking you in the eye, or perhaps you have to look up at them.  The horsehair and twig nest has weathered a lot, the old ears have listened a lot.    

Sometimes the old ears have just been grateful for an overheard conversation because at least it's their voices you are hearing.  And when they say, "Mom, are you always going to ask me how my day went?"  the answer, of course, is yes, even though they say, "You know I'm just gonna' say 'fine.'"  

You will always ask because one day they will really tell you, and the old ears will be listening, listening hard and listening deep.