GREENWICH, N.Y. — I think, and I hate to whisper this too loudly…but spring is here in the Northeast. The birds are chirping and I am seeing the robins…
And when I see robins, I think of a funny spring story that I know many of you will be able to relate to in your own funny way, uniquely to you and your children.
The setting was our farmhouse about 6 ½ years ago…
Spring had arrived, green grass, robins, and eggs. Most of them, the eggs that is, stayed in their nest, but one fell out.
It was a picture perfect robin’s egg blue, and it was waiting for my middle son, Jacob, aged 6, to find it under one of our apple trees in the yard.
This egg that we are talking about traveled with Jacob for days. He had brought it to nursery school (came home unbroken, can you believe), shown it to every member of our family, every employee on the farm; even the mail lady had seen it.
As the mom, I knew that it was going to break, I just didn’t know when and I didn’t know how. I knew that the novelty would wear off, and was hoping that I could quietly make my move to confiscate it and “deep six” the robin’s egg “somewhere”, and that would be the end of it.
This robin’s egg though, no such luck; I was doomed from the beginning, I could feel it.
On the last day of the life of the robin’s egg, Jacob and Tyler were setting out to help wash their great grandfather’s car in our yard. Of course, the egg, which had come out earlier for it’s showing, had been handed off to me, to put somewhere “safe”. So, like any good mom, I did. At least I thought that I did.
I ended up sticking it on an eye level shelf that was on our enclosed back porch. I wanted it up out of the way, out of reach from 14-month old Sam. And, like most moms, I was in a rush. I needed to get back around to the front of the house where I could keep my eye on the car washing activities. So that was that, egg forgotten, until….
Just before supper time. I ran into the house, via the back porch, with a disgruntled, 1-year old Sam in my arms. He didn’t want to be torn away from the sandbox for a moment while I checked the macaroni and cheese that was baking in the oven. And honestly, heaven forbid, I just needed to go to the bathroom.
So I set the baby down on the floor in what I thought was a baby proofed back porch, which was, until “the egg” came into our life.
My eyes were off of Sam for no more than 3 minutes—and looking back, it had gotten awfully quiet. When I came out onto the back porch I saw my one year old crouched over something that was in the middle of the floor. When I leaned in to take a look and see what he was looking at, he turned his head up towards me with a big yellow grin. Oh no! The egg!!
As Sam held out his yolk and broken egg shelled hands to me I heard some crunching in his mouth as he rolled the foreign texture of broken eggshells around in it looking at me for explanation.
Of course he was un-alarmed. I was grossed out! In all of my haste, I was the one who ended up breaking the little blue robins egg. It must have rolled off the shelf.
I ran for the washcloth, wiped inside and outside of his mouth. Grabbed a fresh sippy cup of water, and made him drink down as much as he would, thinking a good mouth flushing would be appropriate in this situation. This coming after I fished out more bits and pieces of shell that he hadn’t swallowed. How terrible! The only thing worse would have been if the egg had been fertilized. I couldn’t even go there…
So after moments of disgust, a call to my mother, slight panic, and annoyance with myself, I decided to take a lesson from my son, Sam. He was completely un-phased by eating the egg. I couldn’t take the situation back and I reminded myself that it was just a raw egg. People all over the world ate them all the time. Yes, we are more accustomed to having them cooked and originating from the chicken species, but it was still just an egg.
And because it was one of my finer moments of motherhood, I found a few more lessons to take with me:
1) When you are a mother, always rethink the decision to go to the bathroom.
2) The egg will always break at the worst possible time. Better to confiscate early.
3) There are lots of eggs out there, and you never know what you are going to find inside, be it unfertilized or fertilized, scrambled or Easter.
My suggestion, despite the horribly comical situation of 6 ½ years ago, would be to keep searching for eggs. You never know when you might find “your golden one”.
Happy Easter, here’s to eggs!
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