What does it mean to crack open? For a chick, this means escaping from an increasingly tight environment after a series of exhausting efforts. For a chick it takes about 21 days to enter a huge world. For me, it meant leaving a cushy job after 10 years. For me, this moment came after some of the most challenging and painful moments of my life. For me, it took 31 years and some very intense struggling and suffering before I was ready to ‘crack open.’
In April of 2020, when it was apparent this pandemic did not have a foreseeable end, we decided to incubate 12 fertilized chicken eggs. We repeated the process again in August with 24 eggs. My daughter was thrilled and it became a family affair, all of us pitching in. After 18 days dutifully rotating the eggs three times per day, you stop and wait about 3 days for what is called a ‘pip ‘- a small hole in the shell and the first sign of hatching. This was all new to me and incredibly fascinating. I could not believe that a combination of heat, humidity and rotating, could turn a delicious breakfast food into a tiny fuzzy creature. The excitement grew and it appeared our work, time and energy was all paying off. Let them all come out safely, I would think to myself.
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