"Seven Chickens for the Soul"

Sometimes I joke that motherhood is often like being slowly pecked to death by chickens. In fact for many years "7chickens" was my password of choice for all sorts of things.

Sitting in Melissa's chair while she applied product to my roots, I caught her gaze in the mirror in front of me. She said, "I feel like you've completely transformed from when we first met."

I told her It's because after nearly three and half decades of sleepless nights due to either nursing babies, sick children, or waiting up for teenagers, I'm now finally able to get a full night's uninterrupted sleep. Melissa has been doing my hair for nearly fourteen years and now has two pre-school aged boys of her own. Speaking to her in the mirror I smiled and said, "You'll get there before you know it."

Recently the phone group-chat I have with all of my children and their spouses has been a non-stop stream of updates on their individual stage of sickness either they or one of their littles is in. Since caring is sharing, we must have cared quite a bit over the last several weeks as we seem to have a continual round of some sort of flu going through each of us at different times.

I was never sicker than when I had young children. It seemed that just as the last child to get sick was finally feeling better, it was only a matter of days before the first child would catch something else. I would wish with all my might that I could be the one to be sick, that I could take all of it if only they wouldn't. Their stuffy noses, tight or croupy coughs, high fevers, stinging, glassy, watery eyes, I'd do anything to take it from them. Their continual cries of "Mama, Mama...." and all I could do was hold, rock, nurse, bathe, repeat. And then exhausted and weary from care-giving, inevitably, I'd usually succumb to it myself.

One year, around January 1998 in Boise, Idaho; I remember celebrating all of us finally being fever-free. My sister, who had also been sick and recently recovered, picked us up in her car and we went for a long drive. Anything to be out of the house. It was a bright, sunny, bitter cold day; but inside the car was warm. The sun shining on us through the windows felt healing. We got out of the car and stepped into the wind long enough to walk a short distance from the road-side. "See this right here?" she said pointing to a large groove in the mud. "This is part of the Oregon trail!" Stepping my right foot into the wagon-wheel groove, I felt a small surge of excitement. History right here beneath my feet. But along with that was an instant knowledge that so many people in those wagons all those years ago suffered from exposure, illness, and even death. Mother's holding feverish babies and children, likely sick themselves, and no warm bath to draw or medicine to administer, no humidifier to run or popsicles to offer. Just complete helplessness. Perspective. Sometimes it's brutal. "Let's get back to the car, it's freezing out here."

It's a different world now where you can see a doctor over a Face-time call, do a drive-up pharmacy visit, and have groceries bagged up and delivered to your car; things that I could never have even dreamed up thirty years ago.

When my children have birthdays, it not only mark the number of years they've been earth-side, but also seem to mark the exact same number of years I feel I've been earth-side. How is it that my oldest just turned thirty-seven, but I still feel thirty-seven? And how is it that now when they don't feel good, I still would do anything take it from them.

As the years have passed, my role as a mother has changed in so many ways; it's just the feelings I had as a mother of littles really never does. A constant push-pull of knowing when to interject myself and when to wait in the wings. I'm grateful that they check in with me and with each other.

A couple of days ago, I felt sluggish and my throat was scratchy. "Oh boy.....I guess now it's my turn..." I took some chicken bones that I had saved from a Sunday dinner, out of the freezer to make some broth. As I chopped up carrots, celery and onion to add to the soup pot, I couldn't help but think of the saying "feed a fever, starve a cold". Or is it the other way around. Either which way, my seven children don't peck at me; they feed my soul. Now all I need is a warm bath and a mug of hot lemon/honey water.