Dear Friends,

It seems like every morning in Canterbury brings a surprise these days: the changing light, the tree buds, vicious prickers that grow a foot overnight, new birdsong. April is full of surprises. Of course there are those surprises we keep on our calendars, like April Fools Day and Opening Day at Fenway. We get ready for these, but somehow, they still catch us off guard; they never turn out quite the way we expect. And many surprises are perennial, we’ve witnessed them year after year, yet, again they fill us with wonder. 

Every year around this time, I’m stopped dead in my tracks in the farm store. Here’s how it goes down. I stop in for specific items: twenty pounds of black oil or a 5/16 bolt to fix the bed. My objective is clear. I’m a one-woman SEAL-team tackling the to-do list; I don’t check out the seed packs or even unzip my jacket. Then I’m standing at the checkout, tucking my receipt away for future accounting, when an invisible force intervenes. Amid polite small talk and paper bag rattling and the sound of the register, the softest, sweetest sound imaginable captures me: the peep-peep-peep of dozens of chicks. 

Then the to-do list evaporates, my all-business face relaxes, and I’m navigating the labyrinth of shelves to find three wide crates alive with chicks, warmed by light bulbs rigged just for this. Who can resist setting everything down and kneeling here? Who doesn’t reach out one finger to ever so tenderly feel their soft down? 

What will catch us and open us this spring? To me it’s always a mystery. Why does this sound, this light, this song melt our hearts? Maybe it’s an ancient connection to newness, or fresh beginnings, or some relief from thinking that we’re in charge. But I do know that when we remind one another of that sweetness with some unlooked-for tenderness, some patient acceptance, we give each other a safe space to grow, maybe even with our very own heat lamp! Spring sweetness can still surprise us, can still stop us in our tracks, even if we’ve known it year after year. It wakes us up and makes us more fully human, more fully alive. 

In Peace, Becky