The Chicken Lesson

Separating the bones from the meat of a grilled chicken after I’d eaten my fill, I thought of a student of mine. In fact, I always think of her as I do this project and prepare to make a soup or bone broth.

She was/is Vietnamese and had survived during the war with her family, eating what they could find and trading goods for clean water and grain, etc. She always told her history matter-of-factly, with little emotion. It was mostly memories of silly stories, and her quick laughter stood often as punctuation marks.

Being short did not make her weak or subservient. When her father had encouraged her to run away, she already had a plan and went directly to a French nunnery in the country side. Her mind was a quick one too. She learned French and English and math. How she came to America I don’t recall, but she had determined that she would never be poor again.

When we met, she was 40ish, stylish, had her own company with five employees. She had taught herself to be a head hunter and matched high-powered people into high powered jobs. Her take-home pay was never below $40,000/month.

When she stayed with my late husband and I, she was taking her Second-Degree Reiki class. She was thrilled to be out of the city and experiencing our Northern California mountain home with its solar electricity and well water. She loved the quiet. Laying on the deck considering the night sky gave her a thrill. She admitted she slept more soundly with us than she had in months.

After I thought I’d completed the task of deboning the chicken and saving the meat, she smiled when she asked if she could help finish the job. After 10 minutes, she had found another two cups of chicken meat. I have never seen such stripped ribs, neck, and back bones. “That is what it took to survive,” she said simply, then added, “That and patience.”

In the middle of all the catastrophes these days, her remembered words are growing more and more meaningful.

I have to travel once every four to six weeks, through the Bay Area traffic along any one of five options: #880, #1, #20, #580, or #680. I need to go from Willits to Pacific Grove where my 98-year-old mother sleeps in her hospital bed in a skilled nursing facility.

These highways used to have a pattern. I could navigate and miss the bumper to bumper cars between 10AM and 1PM during the week. This is no longer a truth. Traffic is horrendous for this rural driver. I must settle into patience and awareness if I am to survive this challenge.

Bombs are not dropping on me nor are guerrilla troops taking pot shots at me. I have enough food and can get clean water. There is a cloud sometimes that lives to the left or the right of my vision. The cloud is fear and worry that some decision at some level of government or some dark patch in my karma will change my current comfort level.

I make myself put that away and concentrate every day, every moment of every day, on what is (not what could be but isn’t) right now.

Salvaging edible food from a partially-eaten chicken carcass tonight took my attention. The concentration gave me a memory of a woman who had survived by her wits and determination. Whether she suffered from a painful trigger of a memory or PTSD from her childhood trauma, I never saw it. I saw her as I think she wanted to be seen and how she saw herself, simply as a survivor.

May we all see ourselves in that light with a quick laugh and the determination to make the best of what we have.