Fowl play (ode to poulet).

“You die twice. When you draw your last breath, and the last time someone utters your name.” – Egyptian proverb.

“Have you ever noticed that your shit is stuff, and other people’s stuff is shit?” – George Carlin.

“What’s the matter Colonel Sanders, chicken?” – Dark Helmet.

This is a story about a chicken. Or, maybe about wine, I don’t really know. I just know it begins with a chicken, and it’s usually best to start at the beginning. Just so.

I spent a couple of weeks in Kansas recently. That’s a story in itself, but for another time. I was there because my mother had moved, had been moved, to memory care. It was time, and it was necessary, but it still sucked. I’m sure many of you understand. I felt bad initially, but the gloom worsened when it was time to go through eighty nine years of possessions, from a house she had lived in for forty eight years. Self absorbed as usual, I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about how someone will be doing this with my stuff in the not-so-distant future. Makes one want to contemplate simplifying one’s life and possessions. Anyway, the plan was for us to all go through the house and earmark what each of us wanted, then sort through any instances where more than one person wanted the same thing. There really wasn’t any quibbling, perhaps that will come in time but for now all is sweet agreement. I tried to get a pod and settled for ten feet of space in a U-Pack trailer, plus whatever small and delicate items would fit in my car. It took a week and, although I paid young and strong people to do the manual labor, it exhausted me emotionally, perhaps even spiritually.

I was staying in my mother’s house, a house I had only lived in for seven years, yet one that had been my place of rest and security when I came home from whatever career I was pursuing at the moment; navy electrician, perennial student, veterinarian. Through all the last five decades I had travelled to this welcoming domicile whenever duty or familial love called me here. It had been a safe place in the world and this was the last time I would be here. I said my goodbyes to family the night before, spent one last night of restless sleep here, comforted by the familiar noises that every home makes when you’re alone and care to listen. It wasn’t any kind of eeriness, or even sadness that kept me tossing, I was resigned to the necessity of it all. I’ve also been more than a little fatalistic in my thinking recently, and I recognize that change is not only inevitable, it is to be expected, perhaps even welcomed, at the turning points of our lives. This was a turning point, perhaps my nighttime unease was in recognition of this shift.

I got up early, drank a cup of coffee and did a final walk through of the house. I could have taken it all, every last remnant of both my parents’ lives. I don’t give into this, it’s all been settled anyway, I just move slowly through the rooms and try to fixate on anything that has meaning, that holds memories, that resonates. I pick a final few small things and pause as I prepare to go through this particular door, to this particular garage, and away from here forever. This is the type of home I hope to build in the Finger Lakes, a place where family and friends can always feel welcome to gather. A place of memory, and dreams, of failures and successes. And now it’s to be sold to someone who will hopefully make their own memories here. But for now, it’ll just be a house. The inevitable end of the dream. It’s just a bit heartbreaking. I glance around the kitchen one last time, and I see the chicken.

It’s a piece of pottery, a life sized statue of a smallish hen. Done in white with highlights in brilliant colors, yet not all primary, there is a touch of restraint, of class, in the appearance. It’s an autumn motif of what I think my mother always called French Countryside, and it in some ways defined her. My mother has always had impeccable taste, more than one of my wives and girlfriends have commented on this over the last fifty years. She kept a tight house, cleaned constantly, vacuumed nearly obsessively, all before her back begin to ache, and far past. I can only ponder what havoc was wreaked on this system by raising three teenage boys, I only know the effects it has on me as a parent today. She liked country themed furniture and decor but shied away from campy or coarse, and especially from being too boastful. The ribbons and bumper stickers of all our alma maters were tastefully confined to a common bulletin board in the guest room. (That was the bulletin board that fell on Addison in her crib right as I arrived home for some planned visit once. The howls were tremendous. See, I should have taken that bulletin board.) So, French Countryside. And here it was staring me in the face.

For the life of me, I can’t remember how long she’s had this chicken. It doesn’t really have a purpose, the head doesn’t come off to access the interior like a cookie jar or flour canister. It’s just a solid single piece of pottery. I pick it up and it’s a little light for it’s size, if it were some high end piece of pottery, but this isn’t that. More like a somewhat mass produced item found mostly in Macy’s back then. Not high end, but not the cheapest either. My mother would have never bought the cheapest of anything, nor would she overspend, she always bought the nicest stuff she could reasonably afford. This is a trait that I am trying to cultivate at a very advanced age for such things. This chicken has the feel of something she saw and bought spur of the moment. It has that provincial feel to it, and it goes perfectly with all the other pottery items that have accumulated over the years, both gifts and items bought on trips to Europe with my father. If you don’t take the time to look for a potter’s mark on the bottom you won’t see that there isn’t one, just some generic store mark. This damn chicken probably delighted her for the fact that it was a likely bargain – she had an eye for spotting bargains in the middle to mid-high range of the quality spectrum. (It may be confusing to some of you that I use the past tense for my mother when she is, in fact, very much alive. I understand, but her memory has deteriorated to the point where she is someone different, still my mother, but changed. The woman who filled this home with these items in many ways no longer exists. I actually started to go back and correct the inconsistencies of tense in this article, I ended up thinking it correlates well with the confusion in my head.)

I grabbed the chicken and ransacked the kitchen towel drawer for padding. I locked the house up, placed the chicken dead center in the back of my SUV, and closed the tailgate. And I drove away.

Eleven hours later I pulled into my friends’ driveway in Columbus, OH, grabbed my bag and left everything else in the car. I was here for a two night stay to catch up, drink and perhaps play some guitar, in no particular order. At some point during the trip I had spoken to my friend on the phone and told him of a plan I was percolating. Since we all live until our names are last spoken, I can preplan to keep my mother alive by spreading some of her belongings to the wind, or at least giving them away to people that knew her, that know of her, or that at least have the proper mindset for such things. My friend wasn’t having any of it. “We have enough junk in the house already, we don’t need more.” I demurred and bided my time. See, I had been talking to Bryan, whereas I needed to speak with Beth. She would understand. I waited until Bryan was at work and asked Beth to help me bring in a couple of things from the car. I had explained my plan to her, and she seemed reluctantly on board. But what item should it be? I fumbled around in the backseat without inspiration, then I went around to the tailgate and opened it. There sat the chicken, beak peaking out of a kitchen towel, standing sentinel. “What about this?” I asked.

I like this idea of sending a person’s possessions, perhaps something of their essence, out into the world to continue their own lives that, while inanimate, can seem to absorb a kind of consciousness from the people they come in contact with, particularly if there is a certain bond, a talismanic feel to the thing. Do we leave something of ourselves behind in these possessions, these cast off belongings of a long life, well lived? I confess I do not consider myself capable of a reasoned argument either for or against. I hope it is true, yet I have no personal experience to go by, unless this dissertation be that argument, in which case I proclaim I am for the thing.

Winemakers send a part of themselves out into the world with every vintage release, every bottle purchased and carried away into the world, or onto the dinner table, hopefully with some inspired, or at least interesting conversation to pair it with. Do they feel this attachment? Do they think of their wines as children? I know some that do. Do they see them as emissaries? Evangelizing to the world. Saying; “Look at this, it is unique, it is of this place, and it is of me. All I ask is that you try to understand, to find the context, to find the part of me I instilled in it. Buy a bottle and drink it, buy three and keep two, buy a case and watch it evolve over the decades. It is my take on what nature provided in that year, that vintage, that time in my life. I would love to share its story with you.”

Of course, I am paraphrasing.

That last part, though, kind of sticks; to share a wine’s story means that you take the time to ponder and at least try to understand. To learn its past, to enjoy its present, to try to read its future, these are all games that take time. Can it be any less with people? When a wine, or a person, is gone then memory is all that is left. Memories left behind in our brains, memories embedded in the possessions of a life. Most possessions become meaningless with death, but some talismanic few can become of such import to us that they can trigger emotional responses. Why would it not apply to wines? These possessions, these wines, these talismans, should not be more important than the life that continues to flow around us, but they tie us to what came before and that is a very powerful thing.

Bryan caved. Beth sent me a picture of the chicken in it’s new home, firmly ensconced on the top shelf of the cabinet in their dining room. It looks right sitting there, out of its element for now but ready to make new traditions and memories. To absorb more emotional baggage. It looks up to the task, though a fall from this height would surely shatter it. That’s always been true, yet here it sits patiently. There were a lot of other talismans of my mother in that ten feet of trailer. They now sit strewn throughout the house, sometimes peaking around the latest case of wine waiting to be carried to the basement. If any of you happen to be sharing a meal with us sometime, don’t be surprised if I invite you to pick something off a shelf or a table and take it with you. Don’t feel it’s rude, although I suppose most times it would be. Not here though, I would like nothing better than to send you away with not only some useable object, but an interesting story. A talisman hiding in the guise of something ordinary. Even a chicken.

Cheers, Jerry.