Eggs that Love Made

The best years of my childhood were spent at my grandparents  home. It was an old Cape Cod built in the early nineteen hundreds by relatives long passed. A tall cedar hedge bordered it on the north side and acted as a windbreak against a mean northeast wind in winter.  Chick-a-dees flitted from branch to branch in the summer, weaving their a- dee-dee-dees around poor, inconsolable phoebe.

On sultry summer days, I'd amble to the orchard, serenaded by honeybees and crickets. I  laid in the tall grass and soaked in the sun and the feeling that something good was just about to happen. The wind whispered secrets in the distant pines.  Our family sat outside the summerhouse to watch the sunset. It was a frequent ritual. Inside, the smell of brown bread baking in the oven filled the kitchen and spilled out onto the back patio. To this day, the smell of brown bread takes me back to a simpler and happier time.

There were two barns, the older one collapsed in on itself, the other an endless place of adventure and mystery for a young boy to explore. There was a small henhouse where Aunt Jane's chickens used to live. Aunt Jane was quite "nervous" and prone to fits of excitement from time to time. Folks in the family referred to it as "the condition" with knowing nods and quiet sighs.

She had several dozen hens, none of which ever laid an egg. She fed and cared for those hens like they were her children. They all had names. They would come running when she called out "here biddy-biddy-biddy," in a high tremolo. She would stand out in the field tossing cracked corn and telling stories and whispering her secrets, then she'd laugh a big laugh, and clap her hands in sudden glee. 

She was disappointed that they didn't lay any eggs, and she often complained about it. Her twin brother Joe lived across the road from us. He snuck over one night after dark and placed a few procelain eggs in the nests, hoping that it would encourage the hens to lay. The next morning, Aunt Jane came whooping into the house with those ceramic eggs clutched tightly in her hand. 

"Look!" "Looky-look!" "My girls made some eggs!" she exclaimed. 

Gramp patiently explained to her that those were special eggs, and couldn't be eaten. Later that day, Joe came by the house and bought those special eggs for his collection. Once a week, for as long as I can remember, he'd sneak those eggs back into the chickenhouse, then buy them from Auntie J. later. When company would come, she'd insist they go out and meet her special hens, who laid those porcelain eggs. Those were the best eggs in the world, Jane would proudly say, and it took me many years to appreciate the love they gave.