Henny Penny Obituary

Henny Penny

Henny Penny Thomas, 8 years and several months, a Barred Plymouth Rock Hen, slipped peacefully away to Poultry Heaven on August 16, 2018 after years of faithful service to the art of laying large brown eggs. 

Henny enjoyed dust baths, hostas, and eating ticks and other bugs, but pecking cracked corn was definitely her favorite pastime. During her long life, she managed to avoid getting eaten by foxes, kicked by donkeys and shared an unusual indifference toward her feline cousins. While not the top egg producer in the coop, Henny did all right in that regard. A quiet chicken, she kept her clucking to a minimum, unlike her one time companion, Guinea Hen.

While it did annoy her that chipmunks and squirrels could easily run under the pen fence and gobble up her coveted chicken feed,  as a peace loving chicken, she let it slide, watching the activity carefully with her golden side eye. True to her breed, she had a sweet, easy temperament, and as one of four in a backyard flock she got along well with both humans and all other animals.

Henny is survived by her coopmates, two aging Rhode Island Reds and her sister, the Other Barred Plymouth Rock hen. Extended family includes Jasper Horse, Harvey Donkey, two cats, Elmer Fudd and Magoo, Mean Old Marilyn Bunroe bunny and distant canine cousins Gertrude Bassett Hound and Scooter Beagle.

She was an active contributing member to the farm and her feathery energy will be sadly missed by all.

Head of the farm, Laurie Thomas, says, “The old girl gave me eight plus years of dedicated hen service. What more could any farmer want but to have such a sweet pullet pass away peacefully at home, with her sister hens by her side.”

She had been left under the care of the FarmNanny for a week but authorities say the hen died of old age and suspect no foul play on behalf of her caregiver.

There will be no visiting hours or funeral service at the request of the family. 

However, condolences may be sent directly to farmer Laurie Thomas, Henny’s aunt Karen Thomas and grandmother Hazel Thomas.

In lieu of flowers, please send cracked corn. Lots of it.

Mother's Day Lesson #ermalator

I wish I could post a photo of the Ermalator doing something crazy and age-inappropriate, like throwing wood down the bulkhead, wielding a chainsaw, climbing a ladder…but on this Mother’s Day the Ermalator is in bed, struck down--if only temporarily-- by the ravages of two weeks of chemo. Taking chemo is in itself a feat at 93-in-two-weeks, but not nearly as photogenic. Plus, she’d kill me if I posted a photo of her today.  Like my mother, I have a strong will to live.

My mom is a force to be reckoned with, but today, she actually looks and acts her age, and it reminds me of all we have to be grateful for.

First and foremost would be her incredible will and stamina, and the indefatigable strength she has that has willed her to live 93 years. My mom was born in survivor mode. The sixth of eight children, born barely 10 months after her sister, she was delivered at home, and kept in the wood stove oven for warmth the first few days of her life. She was the color blue at birth, and she proudly recalls that she wore her sister’s doll clothes and her tiny head would fit inside a teacup. Apparently the family doctor grossly underestimated the fighting spirit in this bitty baby, as her birth certificate did not document her given name. Instead it read: Child #6.

She didn’t find that out until she was nearly 80 and in the process of applying for her first passport, when she obtained a copy of her original birth certificate from the state records.

The doctor’s disregard for her longevity didn’t faze her much then and I doubt it would have bothered her much when she was younger. My mom is an “it is what it is” person, and the irony that she is the last survivor of all her siblings is not lost on Child #6.

But as I sit by her bed today and spoon-feed her strawberry Jello, she looks fragile and vulnerable and so very very mortal – much like she did the day she was born, I suspect. And yet here she is, 93 years later. It is at these times that I marvel at her fortitude, her fighting spirit, her incredible strength. I’m not sure I would be able to face fighting colon cancer at 93 and have the guts to try spirit-killing chemo for the privilege of living a few more days on this earth.  I have asked my mom how she keeps doing such incredible things for someone her age-like climbing ladders, stacking wood, taking chemo-- and she says, “It never occurs to me that I can’t.”

My mother is not gregarious or outgoing like her daughters, and was so shy in school she wouldn’t speak even when the teacher asked her a question. But those still waters run deep with courage. My mom simply has no fear.  Perhaps that is because she survived a hurricane while tenting on an island back in the 1950s. She has had other brushes with nature. She loves to tell of the time she and her sister Fern came up close and personal with a bear while berry picking as young girls. She once had to walk by a moose standing in the camp road she was walking on with our two dogs. She did have a fear of flying until she went up in a friend’s two-seater plane and that “cured” her.  She hadn’t even heard of the motto, Feel the fear, do it anyway. 

Long before HGTV and YouTube to guide her, mom would dive into DIY projects– tackling home improvement projects, knocking down walls, painting, sanding floors, with little to no experience. She just did it.  And still does it.  Like three years ago when she painted her grout by hand in her tiled kitchen floor on her hands and knees with a paint-by-number watercolor paintbrush.

At the age of 80, due to some SNAFUs on a trip with other family members, my mom found herself alone to navigate Heathrow Airport.  I couldn’t navigate Heathrow when I was with five other friends who knew the way. At 82, she went to Costa Rica, drank beer at the bars in the day time and went zip lining and white water rafting. A few years back, a guy stole $700 cash from her purse inside her house, so she called up his friend and said, "Your friend stole money from me!!" He claimed he knew nothing about it, but that guy did get caught, and my mother testified in court, and the state trooper said she was cool as a cucumber up on the stand. And the guy went to prison, and my mom got her money back.  Thank heavens the thugs were too busy committing other thefts to circle back to cause her harm.  Although she does have an old antique baseball bat leaning against the wall near the front door, and I’m fairly certain she would use it.

As I sit and watch her today, uncharacteristically sleeping soundly during daylight hours, I pray for better days ahead for her. And more Ermalator stories and more incredible photos. And I pray that I can carry on her legacy of strength, her silent resolution, her “ermalator-ness.”

On this Mother’s Day, she is the one giving the greatest gift: As I look forward and backward and try to focus only on today, I vow to hang on to that resilience, that matter of factness about life. “It is what it is.” And we must move forward with all the grace, and calm, and endurance of the Ermalator.  And we too, may see 93.

Happy Mother's Day!!

Two homes. One heart.

What being home (in Beaufort) means to me

Having two "homes" can be very conflicting, especially when they are so different and you can't put all the things you like about one into the other. My mom's home - an old Maine farmhouse - is not my idea of a comfortable house. It is home, because that is where she is. But the house itself causes neverending daily annoyances that threaten my patience when I am there. It is always difficult to wave goodbye to the Ermalator as I leave the driveway of 1121 Webber Pond Road, but as soon as my back is turned, I am looking forward to being back in my space, even if that means being apart from those I love.Being home to me is being able to walk across a floor in my bare feet and it doesn't feel like I'm walking across the driveway in barefeet. Home means hot water comes instantly from the tap, which by the way, has pressure. A remarkable luxury. At home, taking a shower doesn't involved walking down two flights of stairs, through a garage, across a dirt basement to empty the water filter so I have enough water pressure to actually rinse off the soap, and then going back up two flights again to get in the shower, all the while hoping mom doesn't forget and flush the toilet while I'm in there, draining all the cold water and more importantly, since the water doesn't get that hot anyway, reducing the shower stream to a dribble. Home means I can get out of bed and not have to put on three layers and two pairs of socks before even going to the bathroom. Home means not having to brush my teeth in the same sink my mom cleans her dentures in.Home means no cluster flies creeping out of the upstairs windows every damn hour of every damn day. The sound of flies buzzing sends me into a PTSD-like frenzy to kill.Home means comfortable furniture, like a sofa.  Watching something on TV other than Judge Judy, Dr. Oz and the Young and the Restless.Home has flourishing outdoor plants living on the doorstep in December. A yard with no snow or mud or ice. Home is enjoying my morning coffee sitting on the back step in my bathrobe.Listening to songbirds. Seeing palm trees and spanish moss. Blue sky.There is no fleece at this home, or flannel sheets, or electric mattress warmers.Home means no dust, cat hair or wood smoke to clog my sinuses and make me sneeze. But what this home doesn't have is the hearts of friends and family I have known for upwards of 47 years. And so I will have to be content with my clean, cozy, warm environment -- did I mention clean? And warm?--until I am headed back to my other home - the real one where I can wrap myself in the warmth and comfort and meaningful connections and bonds of true and ever lasting friendships.Until the spring, my friends!! 

Feeling Christmas

The Angel from 1945

Feeling Christmas

My mother’s house is decorated top to bottom with every ornament, every Santa, every wreath and elf and angel she owns. But it doesn't "feel" like Christmas, she says. 

There are reindeer of every size and shape, from the 1920s to modern day, from Avon bottles to plastic Rudolph’s. I have watched her for a week frantically put lights and themed decorations on 6 Christmas trees ranging in height from 3 feet to 6 feet, and at least 9 tabletop ones. She has worn herself ragged putting plastic poinsettias in old bottles as vases for each step on the 12 stairs to the second floor; hanging ornaments on trees, along doorways, or displayed in bowls. Once you step into her home, there is no doubt she is singularly focused on Christmas.
Yet after the last ornament was in place, and the last proverbial stocking was hung, surrounded by empty ornament boxes, bags of bows and wrapping paper, the house glistening from floor to rafters with red, green, gold and silver at every turn, she says, "It doesn’t feel like Christmas."
And therein lies the problem. As we age, Christmas can look the same, we can use the same ornaments, the same trees, the same recipes, but it often doesn’t feel the same as we once remembered.

Her statement made me wonder: could I put in words what Christmas feels like?  It feels like family, it feels like snow crunching beneath your feet as you approach the door of those you love, laden with presents and food and special holiday grog. Eggnog. Chocolate Fudge. Homemade Christmas shaped sugar cookies with pastel colored icing and those hard silver balls called dragees we all ate despite the lead warnings. Christmas feels like fellowship and laughter and the sound of people stomping their feet on the doormat before coming through the door with snowy boots. Christmas feels like cinnamon and cloves and oranges and coffee and bacon. Christmas is timing the various parts of the holiday meal just right so that everything gets to the table warm and ready for the large crowd of smiling faces at the table, which is set with dishes used only on this one day.

All these things are in the past for my mom. At 91, her active participation in the overall family Christmas is minimal. She no longer hosts the family dinner, she no longer spends hours in the kitchen creating her favorite snowball cookies, frangipanis, or banana bread. There's no popping in town for last minute stocking stuffers, or the forgotten lime Jello for her holiday molded salad, or for anything at all, for that matter. She no longer concerns herself with wrapping—or even buying-- presents and arranging them under the tree with only the big packages in the back, and the rest arranged forward by size and color around the base. And then rearranged every time new presents are haphazardly added, disrupting the well planned symmetry of a perfect tree.
This is what happens when you outlive your generation’s family traditions, when people die, when family dynamics change, when you've outlived your ability to play Santa, to care about watching It's a Wonderful Life one more time, to enjoy the chaos of the season--to multi task and juggle all the expectations. Without those things, do you lose the feeling of Christmas? Does it end up feeling like just another day, the meaning lost along with the traditions, the loved ones, and the ability to keep up with an ever-changing distraught and torn world randomly caught on disturbing videos that go viral.

How does someone who experienced the results of the Depression, saw the evolution from radio to color TV, experienced the emotional and economic effects of several wars, marveled at the advance of medicine and technology beyond their w ildest imaginings, how does someone like that manage the meaning of Christmas today? My mom raised a family in much simpler times, when homemade flannel pajamas, a board game, and a doll was about as elaborate as the gifting needed to be. She had a loving husband, a large rambling farmhouse, her garden, her daughters and the family dog. She ruled it all from her position as wife, homemaker and mother. She made all the decisions on decorating, gift giving and wrapping, the Christmas dinner menu, when and where we would be on Christmas Eve.

Today, that same woman makes none of those decisions, but she can decide where to put that Santa that came from Fishman’s back in 1952. So, she decorates.

She decorates because she can, and while she pulls out decorations from 20, 30—oh, who are we kidding – 50 years ago, she gets a memory back of a certain Christmas past and perhaps a fleeting moment of how Christmas used to feel.

And how many of us feel the same? That the holiday season is no longer completely in our control and therefore, the feeling of Christmas has escaped us. So we put up 6 Christmas trees and every Santa we ever owned.  We patch the holes in our hearts --at least for the day-- and focus on the one thing we can control. As my mom says, it may not feel like Christmas, but I can certainly make it look like Christmas.

These days for me, Christmas is almost having a heart attack watching my 91-year-old mom climb a stepladder to put the only angel she’s ever used on top of the tree, and letting her do it. And later watching her fall asleep in her chair, chin rising and falling on her chest, after a hard day of non stop decorating. That's what Christmas has come to mean to me. And when I look at my mom, still alive and not only thriving but also still striving for goals, like trying to feel Christmas, I think that must be what Christmas means. Some days it’s not pretty, some days it’s downright scary, but it is an incredible journey and I am grateful she has given me the chance for the ride. Keep on decorating, Mom. Christmas is right here.