What Gracie Learned from Her Grand Adventure
What Gracie Learned from Her Grand Adventure
There is something more important than doing what you want to do perfectly
If you read the last issue of our newsletter, you know that Gracie put together a brilliant plan, but that it unexpectedly failed because of the wind tangling up things. She had do to some quick thinking, but even that plan did not succeed the way she expected. And yet The Sewer Rat problem was fixed as was Bessie’s heart.
Here is a link if you missed that issue.
For a long time, Gracie had struggled with thoughts that she simply was not good enough. To make up for that, she tried to do everything like she did dancing—perfectly. But Gracie needed to unlearn this and to learn something completely different instead.
I sat beside Gracie and slid my gift for her out of the paper bag. It was a shoebox.
It was not the big shoebox we had looked at together when she thought she would be safe as long as she was hidden away from The Biggest Scary Thing. That had been the shoebox I had used to bring home the first dozen baby chicks.
Her gift was a much smaller shoebox. It was the shoebox I had used to bring home only two baby chicks, Bessie and Gracie.
She looked at the shoebox. She somehow recognized it immediately and looked up into my eyes.
“So, why did you save this shoebox?” she asked.
I thought she wanted to know because she felt it was a bad gift. It was not neat and pretty like Bessie’s gift. It was beat up and ragged, especially on the corners.
“For a long time, I saved it because it was holding my baby shoes I had outgrown. Now, it has also been holding my memories of when you and Bessie were baby chicks, and the best day of my whole life, the day when I brought you here to your new home.”
I took one of the shoes out and held it next to one of the shoes I was wearing. “See? I can’t wear them anymore. My feet have gotten too big to fit into them any longer.”
“Why do you still have them then?”
“They remind me of how much I have grown.”
“Yes,” she said and nodded. “I can see that.”
She stretched out her neck to look at the other shoe still inside the box. She wanted to see if the shoes were both the same because she remembered Bessie had told her about my two left feet. But before she had a chance to ask whether I had two left shoes, she noticed something else.
“There is straw still inside,” she said. This puzzled her. Straw is simply straw, part of their everyday life as chickens.
“So why did you save the straw you put in here when you brought us home that day?”
Saving things was not something chickens ever think much about, especially saving something as common as straw.
She looked up into my eyes, and she knew I would not have saved those clumps of straw unless they were special to me. She would need my help to understand why. I wasn’t completely sure myself, but I would do my best to find the right words.
“I think it is because anything you have ever touched is beautiful to me, even this old shoebox and straw. You have made this garden a kind of wondrous place for me, even though I may never understand what A Most Wondrous Place means to chickens.
“But for more than any other reason, I saved this shoebox and this bit of straw because there is no garden without you, Gracie.”
She scooted closer to me and rested her head on my leg.
“I love this gift,” she said.
As I stroked the soft feathers of her head and back, we both began to relax. The last few days had been very tense for both of us.
“So what will you put in your shoebox, Gracie? I will find another place for my old baby shoes. You can put whatever you want inside it. The shoebox will be yours forever, along with whatever you put inside it too.”
“Owning things is a new idea for me, but I would like to start by leaving in the straw that you saved. Chickens do not own things. We do not even own the eggs we lay. All we ever have to truly call ours is an eggshell, a gift from our mother hen. It is something to protect us while we grow.”
“And you outgrew it, didn’t you? Just like how I outgrew the shoes that were in this shoebox?”
“I have done a good deal of growing lately.”
“But you have owned more than your eggshell. I gave you a name, Gracie, the most perfect and beautiful name anyone could ever imagine. It’s yours now. You own that name, and I will never give it to another. There will never be another chicken like you.
“Your memories, those are things too. Even though you can’t touch them, your memories belong to you. We never outgrow our good memories.
“I want your life to have only good memories because that is what you have always given me. Good memories help the bad ones like The Big Scary Things fade away.”
“I have so many good memories,” she said. “Many more than I could have ever hoped to have.”
“How about if we put things in your shoebox to keep your good memories fresh inside your mind and your heart? Then there won’t be any room for any bad memories.”
Gracie looked up at me with a spark of excitement in her eyes. She liked this idea. The shoebox was now too big for her, but it would certainly hold more good memories than she could count. There would be no room for bad thoughts or fears or scary things.
“This is a perfect gift. Did I ever tell you what chickens believe about gifts? Every living thing with breath is created to give something good to the world. We are the most like Love when we are giving. Chickens give eggs.
“And ballet performances?”
“Those too,” she said with a smile.
“What are people created to give?”
“People are created to give words. Words are seeds. Words are gifts. When words are planted, they can change the world, even if only the world inside one person’s heart.
“Your words were planted in my heart the first day you found me in the Feed and Seed Store when you told me that I was so much more than good enough. That was your very best gift ever to me.”
“What good memories should we put in your shoebox, Gracie? Maybe a wild Waldorf or two?”
“Perhaps your notebooks. They are filled with some perfect memories we share. You should know there is no such thing as a Waldorf, wild or otherwise.”
We hid our laughter and watched as Bessie led Blanche and Pearl off on a wild Waldorf hunting expedition into the brambles and beyond the ivy-covered stump of the pecan tree my grandfather had loved so much. They tiptoed along as slowly and as stealthily as possible.
Occasionally, Pearl would jump up in a twitch of excitement without finding anything, and that would make Blanche burp. Bessie would warn both of them to be quiet, but she could only pretend to be annoyed because they were having so much fun while bravely exploring where they had never explored before.
“It looks like everything is even more ClückŸ-BückŸ than before,” said Gracie.
“Do you think we should tell them there are no such things as Waldorfs?” I said.
“Oh, I am sure they do not care one way or the other. They are just enjoying a chance to explore and hunt. And who knows? On this adventure or the next, they just may find something no one has ever seen before. This is that kind of place, you know.”
She would usually have smiled up at me when mentioning anything about our garden being A Most Wondrous Place, but instead, she looked away.
“What else on your mind, Gracie?”
“It is something I do not understand. My Most Secret Plan Ever was not quite good enough. It was so not quite good enough that it actually failed. But if my plan had not failed, Bessie would not have faced The Tuxedo Cat the way she did, and her heart would have been closed up tightly forever without any way for more love to enter.”
“Gracie, it sounds like what you are saying is that sometimes being not quite good enough is actually being more than good enough—when what you do is done out of love.”
Gracie looked up at me with a curiously delighted expression on her face. “That sounds like a riddle—and a very fun riddle too,” she said. “Doing whatever you do out of love might even be exactly what The Robin told me I would learn about The Promise Of Seeds one day.”
Some people may think chickens are unable to smile because they do not have soft mouths like we do. Chickens have hard beaks instead. But if you know chickens well enough, you will be able to tell when they are smiling. Chickens smile with their whole bodies.
Gracie absolutely was smiling that afternoon.
And so, at last, The Biggest Scary Thing was scary no more.
Gracie learned that there is something more important than doing perfectly, and that is doing with love. Going forward, she would do things out of love and simply trust that what she had done was sufficient and that things would work out just as they should according to a plan that was much bigger than her own.
A question for our readers?
We have another poll for reader feedback.
Project Progress
We have finished the draft for Volume One: Into the Garden which comes in at slightly more than 54,500 words—not too shabby when you know that our first post on WordPress was only a few more than 120 words.
What we have been sharing is all from Volume One: Into the Garden. We are slightly more than half of the way through the draft for Volume Two: Over the Chimney in which Emily and Amelia take on the role of being major characters.
While in Volume One, Gracie seems to be the chicken who will be designated as The Key to The Living Library, in Volume Two, both Emily and Amelia will demonstrate strong possibilities as Amelia comes face-to-face with the fearful Professor Accipiter.
Another poll, if you don’t mind. How do you feel about the name “Professor Accipiter.” It comes from the Latin “accipiter” which means a group of hawks distinguished by short, broad wings and relatively long legs, adapted for fast flight in wooded country. It sounds mysterious, but it may have a difficult pronunciation (ak-sip-ə-dər).
Until next week…
As always, we appreciate your comments and feedback because we want to make the best books possible for our readers. You can leave feedback in the online comment section or email us directly at John.Spiers@yahoo.com.
Thank you for reading!
John, Gracie, Bessie, Blanche, Pearl, Emily, and Amelia
I really enjoyed reading this!
I've emailed my too-late poll votes and a possible typo.