We Are All Doing Our Best To Survive (Trigger Warning)

If you look very, very closely at that picture you can see Violet's tail feathers.

Mr. Moon came in last night and said, "I found your chicken."
And indeed he had. I have no idea how he found her where she's hidden which is in the midst of some junk over by a wall in the garage. Well, Mr. Moon wouldn't call it junk. He'd call it stuff-he-might-need-someday. And he's probably right.
The point is, though, that Violet is indeed brooding although I can't see any eggs because I can barely see her, and I sure am glad she's still around. I always get worried when a hen's on the nest. They barely move or eat or drink for three weeks. That's a long time. She seems to have found a decent place but if a coon or a possum smelled her, they could easily get to her. Chicken nature is chicken nature and human nature is human nature and I want to go and move that little wooden bowl with her and her eggs in it so bad. MY brain tells me that she'd be so much better protected in the chick box in the coop but I know damn well that once when we moved a nest of hatchlings and the mother in there a snake got in and ate two babies so it wasn't really that safe anyway. But she'd be closer to food and water, at least.
Best I suppose to just let her be and let her be the judge of all of that. She could have laid her eggs in that chick box to begin with but chose not to. She's a wily little half-wild thing so maybe she'll be okay.

I've been thinking all day long about an interview I heard on NPR today. It was on Fresh Air and the person Terry Gross was interviewing was a documentary film maker named Jennifer Fox who has made a "fictionalized memoir" film called The Tale and the subject is the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her male track coach and her female riding coach when she was 13. It sounds like a very powerful film and it's always a good thing in my opinion when the sexual abuse of a child or children is explored in an open and honest way. It helps not only the people who have been abused in their lives but also perhaps helps to prevent abuse of future possible victims. Ms. Fox insists on calling herself a "survivor" though and I understand that. I myself went to a sexual abuse survivor's group a long time ago and it helped me tremendously although it was horribly painful at the same time.
Nothing that Ms. Fox said in the interview shocked me but parts of what she said did disturb me. She talked a lot about how it's rarely acknowledged how many abused children truly loved their abusers. And indeed, she says that for thirty years she never truly thought of what had happened to her as abuse. She thought of it as a love story.

This blew my mind.

This is an intelligent, well-educated, aware woman who for thirty years kept this secret because she thought that no one would understand the sort of love she'd shared with these people.
And honestly? I'm not sure that she's yet come to a full and honest determination that love wasn't involved. Her words indicate that she does understand that but it felt to me that she is still somehow protecting them out of what seemed to be a distant memory of how she felt then.

"What happens ... is that there is a slow manipulation into the child's world by the adult in which the adult is showering love and attention on the child and making them feel special. And that's why it's often — if you talk to any prosecutor — hard for children to prosecute their abusers because they feel such a complicated feeling of love and appreciation and respect, and often that person may seem to the child to be the only adult that loves them."

But to me, it is exactly this- this manipulation of the love that a child so often feels for his or her abuser that is the greatest sin of all because the odds are very strong that the child will never grow up to be a person who can trust love. Who will be, at the deepest core, afraid to give love or to feel love because look what happened when he or she did. 

Perhaps it is because Ms. Fox was thirteen when she was abused that she was able for so many years to tell herself that what had happened was love. At thirteen, even if a girl's body is not developed, her mind is probably already filled with ideas of love and romance and what they will be like. This may well be a cultural thing but it is a reality. 

For me, at the earlier age of eight or nine, I did indeed feel very loved by my abuser at first. And oh, how I loved him! He was a new stepfather who literally stepped into our lives and filled the shoes of a daddy which I had so longed for. It seemed like a fairy tale that this tall, handsome man would become a part of our family and perhaps make our mother happy after so many years of what I now realize was her suffering from depression and who would be the father that my brother and I so sorely needed and wanted. He was kind and he was sweet to us. He took us on boat rides and gave us gifts. He made me feel beautiful and cherished which were two things I'd certainly never felt before.
All of this right up until he actually married my mother and they got back from their honeymoon and he began to molest me. 
I tried so hard to keep the fantasy of this loving daddy alive but with that first touch I knew somehow that this was all so very, very wrong and I began to fear him instead of loving him. 
And then eventually, to hate him.

Well, survivors of sexual abuse all have their own stories even though, as I discovered in the group meetings I attended, there were themes which were repeated over and over again.
And Ms. Fox's memories and her feelings and her emotions and her ways of coping are as valid as anyone's.
I don't have anything to say to tie all of this up neatly in a pretty bow to present to you. If there's one thing I know about sexual abuse, there truly is no end to the repercussions whether we realize they are repercussions or not.

I just know that I am grateful for a life where I've had the advantage of knowing from an early age that what was done to me was wrong and for the opportunity to find a therapist who knew what she was doing and who helped me to the extent that she probably saved my life. Not to mention the love which my family has given me over the years and a husband who has had to put up with far more pain than he probably ever bargained for and certainly did not deserve.

I'm going to go make him some noodle soup.

Thanks for all the good wishes about my little hen, Violet.
They mean a lot to me.

Love...Ms. Moon

Betty's Being Broody And Other Important News From Lloyd

When a hen is said to be broody, it means she's sitting on her eggs. Or, sometimes just sitting on an empty nest. Bless their little hen hearts, they can't fight their destiny and hormones and when it's time to sit on a nest, it's time to sit on a damn nest.
And so Miss Betty is. I don't think there's one egg underneath her but she's bravely sitting there in the dim heat of the hen house, patiently doing what God made chickens to do. Day in, day out.
Miss Betty is my favorite of all the hens because when she was young, our rooster Sam (who is now part of my very bones in that I ate him in a delicious dish of chicken and dumplings), used to peck at her head until she bled and I saved her life with golden seal and Neosporin. And oh yes, by asking Mr. Moon to kill Sam.
Which he did.
She wasn't broody last year but she sure is this year.
My friend K. sent me a book on raising chickens and I'm almost afraid to look at it. Every time I open it I learn something but what if I learn that I'm doing chickens all wrong? What if I get more information than I need?
Well. There can never be TMI, in my opinion, and I m going to read that book.
If I'm going to be a good chicken mama, I need to know what I'm doing although Mr. Moon and I have done pretty well so far with nothing more than our instincts and the internet and the advice of Kathleen who brought our chickens to us in the first place. She has two mama hens raising three peeps right now and I'll bet that's something to see.
"I Have Two Mothers," by The Three Little Chickens.
But still, there is something to be said for book learning.
Speaking of which, I got the results back from my homeschooling continuing education credits today and I did pass the Medical Errors course and also the course on Mindfulness Meditation and Psychology and I immediately went online and renewed my nursing license.
So there!
I am still a registered nurse in the state of Florida and although no one in their right mind would hire me as such, it's still a possibility, even if a mythical one, should the need arise.

To continue on in the book vein, Lily and I took Owen to Goodwill today to buy him some clothes because he's busting out of all of his and clothes at Goodwill are half price on Mondays from noon to eight. Lily found a few things while I toted Owen around trying to keep him happy. He was a little bit cranky but that's a man for you- unless you're shopping at Home Depot or Bass Pro World, they can't really be bothered.

Or, of course, the toy section of Target.

Anyway, after Lily found him some clothes, we checked out the children's book section and we both spent some money there. I found the Golden Books and that was about it for me. I have so many happy memories of my own Golden Books and of course my children's, too, and so I'm a sucker for a good copy of The Saggy Baggy Elephant or The Shy Little Kitten.

Don't even get me started on The Little Red Hen.
One of the very best things in the world about children is reading books to them. Owen likes books a lot and will look at them by himself and he likes to sit in my lap and let me show him the pictures of some books but his concentration time is fairly limited before he wants to start eating the book. I have great faith, though, that he will eventually learn to settle down and look at the pictures and listen to the stories.
He is, after all, my grandson.

I came home after our outing and Mr. Moon had already left to go to auction in Orlando and he actually has some car orders this week. He also has a tummy bug and I can't believe he got in a car and took off for a five-hour drive but that's Mr. Moon. He doesn't let something like a little old bout of the stomach flu slow him down. No sirree.
So the house was empty and I finished up the breakfast dishes, finally, and did the laundry and responded to comments (and if you don't come back and read my response to your comment then you are making Jesus cry- no, not really, but really? do you realize I mostly respond to your comments?) and watered the front porch plants


which is a Monday ritual for me. They are looking good, from the ferns to the coontie palm to the papyrus to the bird's nest fern to the philodendron to the whatever-the-hell I have growing out there. Begonias. Yes. Begonias. The babies of my plant world.
Eventually it will be cool enough for us to sit out there and enjoy the lushness.

I also headed a bunch of my phlox. About a month ago, Kathleen asked me if I'd ever done that. "No," I said. "I never even thought about it."
The phlox just bloom like crazy for awhile and then the blooms go away and that's it. But when she was coming over to spend the night a few weeks ago, I cut a few heads of the lovely purple flowers to put on her bedside table and this is what happened to the plants I cut them from:

Excuse me?
Do you see all of that new growth? Those are all going to be new bloom-heads. I think.
So tonight I went crazy and started cutting phlox blossoms and I brought them inside and put them in vases and here they are:


Or at least some of them.
Wow. Who knew? I get the joy of the flowers in my house AND new and continued blooming.
You learn something all the time.

So since I had my camera out I decided to try and take a few pictures of the banana spider on the side porch. This mama has gotten bigger than any spider I have ever personally seen. She is huge. She is the King Kong of Spiders.


The picture does not do her justice. Her abdomen is at least an inch thick. Babies will be showing up soon, I think. Mwa- I know you hate spiders but can you relate?
I think you can.

And then just to finish things off, I thought I'd give you this picture of a blooming phlox nestled up to a blooming Four-O'Clock. They are called that because they don't open until late afternoon.

This is just to illustrate the fact that no, even in nature some colors just do not go together.

So that's it. I have had an afternoon at home by myself with nothing that had to be done and so I have gone outside and checked out my flowers and watered my plants and done the things that keep me connected to my life. It's been a joy. Thank you for letting me share.
Thank-you for letting me be all broody and sitting on the eggs in my nest, which is really, when you think about it, what I am doing here tonight.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I believe I'll go eat some pizza or maybe some hummus or maybe some left-over salad or hell, I don't know. But I am quite sure that I will eat some chocolate birthday cake and maybe, oh just maybe, some coffee ice cream.

Well. You can bet the ranch on that one if you want to know the truth.

It's my birthday week and I am celebrating in all the sweetest ways possible whether that means with Little Golden Books for my grandson or vases of flowers or chocolate cake or coffee ice cream or a call to a friend or sitting on my imaginary eggs.
My birthday will come and go and then the hurricane lilies will start to poke up overnight and Kathleen will start her treatments and her sister-friend Vicki will come to visit and it will be as hot as it is now and the phlox may re-bloom and we'll work on the play and Owen will walk with even more confidence and will begin to say more words and all of that will be the hatching of the eggs I am sitting on and have been sitting on for days and months and years and a lifetime.

There is something to be said for broody hens. They are protecting the very eggs from which life springs.

I guess I am one too. And am not ashamed to be one. And I am glad to have my sister-hens to help raise the babies which result. Because it takes a village to raise a child and it takes a lot of love to make a life.
Or to make a life worth living.

And thus, we sit on our nests.