Front Room Heritage
My Grandmother's Chicks
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FYI Carol has an MA in Theater Arts and is available in Central Iowa for group reading performances of her work.
In January, when the cannas came up in two weeks instead of two months, I put them on the floor of my sun porch—the room in my house with the most natural light.
When the elephant ears followed suit, I lugged those to the sun porch as well.
In March, I brought in a set of wire shelves and filled them with geraniums. Then I moved in trays of succulents.
The sun porch is by far our most beautiful room, and the ten houseplants that normally live there flourish. However, with the 179 additional plants it looks—quite frankly—overrun. And it smells like dirt.
Watering the plant multitude, I wonder if I should roll back the area rug. Then I hear across the decades my mother’s voice, recounting the family legend of her mother-in-law’s “front room”—the best room in that family farmhouse. Rarely used, the room was appointed with pristine furniture protected by hand-crocheted doilies. It was used only for guests—and only on Sunday evenings.
Then, according to my mother’s often-told tale, each spring the furniture was removed, the rug was rolled to one side, and the room became a chicken coop—a home for baby chicks. The front room of my paternal grandparents’ home then had its own earthy smells. Each time Mother told this tale, she grinned widely when she said, “The best room in the house—hardly ever used. And every spring Ma and Pa rolled back the rug and raised chicks in it!” She shook her head and chuckled again at this absurdity. I chuckled along.
As I consider rolling back my own rug, I remember other details of my grandmother’s story. Her unmarried daughter who lived at home eventually became the family cook; Grandma cared for the chickens. On summer days when I visited there, she walked to the chicken coop each day to feed the hens and gather eggs. Sometimes she let me help. I can still see the huge boxes of eggs, trucked to Chicago from my grandparents’ Northwest Iowa farm. Even when Grandma’s knees and hands were gnarled with arthritis, she made the twice daily walks to the multiple coops until she and Grandpa retired to town, leaving their forty-year-old daughter and her new husband to run the farm.
At birth, I received her first name as my middle one: Jane. She died in 1985, when I was thirty-seven.
This morning, for the first time, as I survey my sunroom floor, I have no superior grin when I think of my grandmother’s indoor chicks. I see them through her eyes. Her chickens were her passion as my plants are mine. And both of us made space, even in the best room of the house, for our passions. The sacrifice is so small and the pleasure so great.
In a moment of sudden longing, I wish I could tell her that today, after all these decades, I finally understand.
Adapted from Tending Beauty: Forty Moments in My Gardens. (Copyright 2018. Out of print. To obtain a copy, email me at carolvk13@gmail.com)
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