Show Me the Way to Go Home

(I wrote this on Monday but didn’t have the energy to post it until today. Watching it back, you’d think I was half pissed or something but nope, just good ole emotions settling in).

It’s been a day thick with emotion, the kind that settles into your ribs like a second heartbeat. I started the morning picking up eggs down the road, kicking the ATV into gear, tearing out of the driveway, fishtailing down the snowy hill, and cutting through the long tunnel of trees to Serge and Beverly’s place. Their house is tucked so far in you’d think they were hiding from the law, but really, they just didn’t want to cut down any trees to build it. I respect that.

What I don’t respect is the weasel that got in and killed 50 of their chickens over six days and didn’t even eat one of them. I know circle of life - but still. When Serge handed me the eggs—brown, white, and that perfect Robin’s egg blue—I felt my throat tighten. I know that kind of loss. I’ve lost chickens too.

Once, I spent a week nursing a hen with a prolapsed vent—hand-feeding her, coaxing her along, only for the vet to come to the farm and send her on her journey. That kind of heartbreak leaves a mark. I still miss them all: The Supremes, the perfect quintuplets. Judy Garland, Flo, Johnny. Vinnie and Warren, the roosters, who liked to cock-a-doodle back and forth at each other all day long, as if they were arguing over who got to own the morning.

At sundown, they always put themselves to bed like clockwork, waiting for me to latch the door, keeping them safe. But if I had to get them in early? Forget it. Chasing them was a fool’s game. They’d scatter like dandelion fluff, just out of reach, always faster than I thought they could be. Then one day, out of desperation, I started singing:

"Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I wanna go to bed..."

An old campfire song my uncle used to sing, whiskey-throated, under a sky so dark it could swallow you whole. And somehow, it worked. The chickens lined up, quiet and super interested all of a sudden and followed me straight into the coop. Then they’d sit there, roosting, watching me like an audience waiting for an encore.

I miss that. I miss them. It makes me want to build another coop, start over, fix what I got wrong the first time.

Today, Lisa and I made an announcement that took a lot out of me. After 25 years, we’re putting the band on pause. It’s strange to say it out loud, to let it settle in my bones. But I feel that same pull—the need to begin again, to step into something new. The chickens always knew when it was time to turn in for the night, when to close one chapter and wait for the morning. Maybe I do too.