Clean Slate

It was wet, then cold last night... a two hen night here in the little Ark.

By this morning, the roosters on Davey's deck rail had sleet underwear and overcoats of snow .
Snow over the cracked-corn and gravel in the driveway; snow over the frozen ditch- mud and compost pile.
Chickens didn't go to ground until after I had trampled and planted the snow with sunflower seeds, and a flurry of Bluejays had blown in from Ohio to eat the sunflower seeds. Now the chickens have moved around to the south side of the house, and another screen of snow descends on the bird tracks. Snow blank as my magic slate or the top of this blog each day. So I start the whole thing all over again on top of the ghost marks of all the other days.

Oh well - if I was actually trying to tell my own history here, I could begin anywhere, because I don't remember anybody or much of anything from before I arrived among the Warrens in Natural Bridge. I must have been six or eight years old then, but still don't even know that.
And then I no more remember that whole first year among the Warrens than I would remember anything then if I had just been born that day when Davey looked out the back window and saw me standing in the tulips next to his dog binker.

I only know what I have been told, and I don't always believe that.
According to David, I looked like I was standing in a hole. That's his little joke on my shortness. Or maybe he thought I had dug may way up from China was just pausing to decide whether to get out or turn around and go back.
Davey would have been in favor then of me turning around and going back to China.
As Davey eyed me from the window, Moma Dothad just gone out to meet Daddy Erine who was just getting home from work.. He saw me in the garden with Binker the dog, before he even saw Mama Dot. Together they came overand asked me if I was lost, and id I had a name or parents, to all of which I said nothing. They say I just stared at Davey in the window, and the story is that he tried to hold the door shut when they brought me in.
It was no use. They were doomed to accomodate me in their home for years to come......until I began to wander and went off to Florida with Aunt Sammy some eight years later..
They might have been free of me sooner. if they had ever found out where I came from, but they never did find out, or if they did t (or knew all along) they kept it a secret.
And I really don't care, I don't think I ever cared to know who I came from; and after all these years, I am heartily bored with the mystery of who my parents were.

They are gone and whited out, left me here to go talk to the roosters who are under the South side of the house. They should stay right there tonight too, because it is going to snow again and blow down from the North, but they prefer to roost on the deck rail by the door to Davey's kitchen, where he will probably be making and sercving them pancakes in the morning.
I warned him about keeping all those roosters. I made fun of him cooking for the chickens, but I carry his pancakes in my shirt for chicken control, and have eaten a few myself.
It may have been the smell of cooking that had me standing in the garden that day back in Natural Bridge. Chicken Divan and Date Nut Cookies come to mind.