The Hen and the Chick

On spring arrivals, and what our children already understand

Four spring traditions land within weeks of each other in our extended family: Eid al-Fitr, Western Easter, Passover, and Pascha (Greek Orthodox Easter). A one-year-old at an egg hunt understood the essential thing about all of them without knowing any of their names.

Colors of the season on Cayman Brac: Spring emerging on a southern island.

The chickens knew something we didn’t

On Cayman Brac, the chickens were everywhere.

Along the roadways, numerous signs warned, “CAUTION: Iguanas on Road.” We hoped the iguanas would eventually materialize, like the donkeys had during our January trip to another southern island.

One morning on a run, I came around a bend to find a single dog-sized iguana crossing the road at full speed. It was the only one we would see during the entire trip.

He made it across.

The chickens needed no such signs. They were everywhere, and entirely unbothered.

In the yards, the hens kept their chicks in close range. The roosters, too independent for companionability, strutted nearby, displaying their tailfeathers. They offered insistent dispatches, designed to reach anyone still sleeping.

When we stopped to listen to birdcalls while out and about, our phone’s Merlin app identified the roosters’ vocalizations as those of the “jungle fowl,” which to us seemed like a ferocious taxonomic upgrade for birds that looked very much like the ones my sister raises in Maine.

The chickens followed us back to Littlejohn Island.

At the airport gift shop, my husband stopped and bought our granddaughter a fluffy-tailed stuffed hen. He said nothing about it. Separately, I purchased a stuffed chick. It was only at the gate, bags at our feet, that we discovered we had already made a pair without knowing it.

The hen and the chick rode home together in my husband’s backpack.

House Series: The Seasons by Willa Vennema

Some things complete themselves without us needing to arrange them.

We gave our granddaughter the hen and the chick upon our return. She reached for them immediately. Held one, then the other.

Made her version of a chicken sound, which is its own music.

Four traditions, one turning

This is the time of year when four traditions arrive near the same point on the calendar for our friends and members of our extended family.

Western Christian Easter was last weekend.

Passover concludes tonight, the old story of the Exodus retold at every seder table for thousands of years.

Eid al-Fitr, the feast that closes Ramadan's thirty days of fasting and prayer, arrived on March 20.

Pascha, the Greek Orthodox Easter, falls this Sunday.

Last Saturday, our granddaughter joined her many cousins for an Easter egg hunt at my mother’s house. She is steady enough on her one-year-old feet to move through a room with some authority.

One of our nephews helped his slightly younger cousin with her first egg gathering expedition. He pointed out what to look for. She bent down, closed her hand around the bright object in the cold grass, and understood in her body that she had found something. She held it out to her mother, reaching for words she didn't yet have.

What eggs have meant across centuries of spring celebration is not something she carries right now. She knows the color. The weight in her palm. The finding.

A toddler doesn’t need the theology in this moment. She already knows the part that matters: bend down, close your hand, appreciate what you find.

New life doesn’t announce itself with certainty. It arrives wobbly, reaching, making sounds that don’t quite have words yet.

My father would have been there, helping my mother host our family’s Easter traditions. He loved this kind of day, with the grandchildren running in every direction, the house overtaken.

This is our second spring without Dad.

The house was full. The children sprinted around the snow-free but still frozen grass, adding Easter treasures to their baskets.

A Dusk of Memories by Emma Ballou

What Virginia knew

On Easter Sunday, my husband and I flew south to Virginia to visit his family. The cherry blossoms were almost past their peak; the dogwoods were in full bloom. We stepped off the plane into a warmth that Maine won’t reach until May.

We stepped off today’s return flight to cold wind and whitecaps.

Alongside Casco Bay, the buds on the trees are not yet open. The greenest thing visible from my office window is the hardy boxwood. Spring is on its way, moving at its own pace.

---

Where the Light Waits by Brenda Cirioni

Here on Littlejohn Island, the days are getting longer. The ground is releasing its cold by degrees. We wait to see what emerges.

If you're nearby, we're gathering next Wednesday at the Portland Art Gallery for an evening called Emergence and Light.

I’ve known our four evening panelists not only from our video podcast, but also from across different chapters of my life: one for decades, one from when my children were young, one from our shared medical leadership roles, and one whose work hangs in the gallery itself.

In a small state like Maine, relationships like these both deepen with time and surprise you by staying new.

Pause + Reflect

Who do you wish were at the table this spring, and what would you want them to see?

This week, may we find what is reaching toward us. May we recognize the things that completed themselves before we thought to look.

✨ Thank you for walking this bountiful path with me.

Lisa

The Bountiful Path: Offering seasonal practices for real connection, rooted in medicine, leadership, and art.