I know it might be difficult to conceive or understand, but I have received divine confirmation that Spring is just around the corner.

I was driving through Schuyler the other day on my way into work, already feeling the stress that mounts every day as I get closer and closer, white knuckles start to form, fingers starting to make an impression on the steering wheel and there it was…a literal sign from above: “CHICKS ARE HERE!”

Maybe if we were in downtown New York or in some seedy part of any big city, that phrase might make you conjure up all sorts of lewd mental pictures and it might even be offensive to some of us.

However, those three simple words; boldly, yet innocently on display in the middle of the marquee in front of our local farm supply store, made me smile, made me reminisce, made my day. I turned the blinker on, made a right and spent 5 minutes de-stressing while I took a quick peek at the new life skittering around the cattle tanks in the middle of the store, before proceeding on work.

Somehow that smell of sawdust always takes me back and it hit me as I walked through the door. Hundreds of the fluffy yellow peeps would arrive at our house as if by magic, in half-shoe box sized crates with tiny air holes, toward the end of every winter of my young childhood life. We girls must have looked like foreign giants as we gathered around and tried to catch a peek at them before Dad opened the boxes. It generally took plenty of repeated reminding but we wouldn’t be opening any boxes until we got their new home ready. This unrestrained anticipation insured many able hands were available, so we all quickly set to work.

Down in the basement kitchen; we would unroll the corrugated “fencing” until we had a good-sized circle just big enough for the amount of chickens we had. They needed to be kind of bunched together to stay warm, but not so close that they would smother each other. The adults in the room must have had some sort of mystically, scientific equation involving Pi that went into figuring out the exact size of that circle. Without a care for the specifics, we happily used two hands to clothes-pin the pen in place with the extra roll of cardboard there handy so we could easily enlarge the circle as the chicks grew out of the original one. The large, belled, warmer lamp would be hung from the rafters, perfectly centered over our miniature corral, a new bulb inserted, flipped on and tested to make sure it worked. We kids were then allowed to jump in and spread the sawdust in a nice even layer. Mom would get out the small chick feeders with the holes and we would have to wash the pieces of the clear glass, bell jars and the glass attachments that, together, became their watering stations. The pretty jars always started out so clean and the chicks never seemed to care…they just pooed all over them. I still remember being mesmerized, watching the bubbles float up as each round, glass tray filled with water and though our little hands weren’t able to master the technique; Mom could always expertly flip the water-filled jars over and get them set down in the dry dust, without spilling a drop.

Now we were ready to meet the new additions to our farm and we always got excited until we were reminded that the boxes would be set in under the lamp for a while to warm up and then eventually we’d let the chicks out. They were counted and tallied and released at some point and I remember spending hours just watching them “do their thing” there under that lamp. Any sudden movement from me on my little stool next to the fence and they would bunch up and start their quiet cacophony of chirping like a bunch of kids on a playground when a tractor trailer approaches; they back away, talk about it, then move toward it as it passes by to get a closer look. The tiny chicks’ memories were even tinier and it only took seconds for them to resume their positions and activities of drinking, eating, scratching, excreting and of course, dozing….they were just babies after all.

Our chicks co-habitated with us for a few weeks until they sprouted a sufficient amount of feathers, March got closer to April, and the mercury got farther away from zero on a more consistent bases, at which time the little chickens would be moved to the “chicken house” along with their warming lamp and all of the paraphernalia. At that point, they became additional chores on our list, the newness long worn away, and the sweet little fascinating fluffiness just a fleeting memory replaced by pink skin, pin feathers, and sharp, demanding, little, always-hungry beaks. The sweet cuddly memory gone until that smell of sawdust returned again to our basement the following year.

As I stared down at the incredible variety of skittish, newly hatched fowl there at Bomgaars that morning; it reminded me of the importance of taking time for these moments within the seasons. Even though, I don’t raise chickens, at least not yet…maybe someday, I enjoy the preparation and anticipation for new life that comes fresh in the early Springtime. I’d obviously forgotten that as I let myself become wound up and stressed out before I even get to work each day and time just goes by without my knowing what day of the week it is. The presence of this seemingly insignificant, three-word “sign” that was thrust by chance, into my daily routine, reminded me to start watching the ditches for that tell-tale green haze as I drive to work, to take that time during the day to walk and deeply inhale the approaching Spring, and to slow it down because my white knuckles would not have been conducive to life, should I have decided to pick up one of those fragile babies, I stopped in to see, at my local farm supply store.