Caffeinated Memories

God save me because I want to be ambitious, but I fear to wander from safety.  It is so thrilling to dream the dreams, but there's comfort in assuredness.   There's the fear of failure and it's unknown consequences.  If I can know, with firm security, the definite losses or the limit of losses to be incurred, then I would feel better about taking risks.  But dang it, that's the whole crutch about risk-taking that is so scary.  There's just no way to be sure and there's no guarantee.  It's one thing to know that there is a risk of losing everything and it is another to suffer losing everything.  One is hypothetical, pure gamble and speculation; and the latter is a nightmare come true.

But worst then the fear of failure is the fear of success.  A man who loses everything will gain a world of friends.  The world will pity that fool and rush to kill him with kindness.  More money is to be made from misfortune than from good honest work.  But a man who gains everything will also gain ill-will and distance from the world.  It's so much easier to love those with less when you have more, than to even try to like those with more when you have less. 

Failure, success, or the status quo?  I don't want to lose what I have, but I also don't want to gain more just to lose even more.  So I straddle the status quo and convince myself to be content.  Things for me, are pretty good right now.  I have what I have and I do what I do.  If misfortune befalls me, then I would hope for the best.  If wild success is my fate, then I guess I will have to learn to accept it graciously.   But what would I do if I succeed beyond what I intended to do?  What if I become rich beyond my wildest dreams when I really only want to be mildly successful?  What will I do if my hobby becomes a monster that I can't tame?  Success can be a beast.  Those are the fears that have kept me from jumping in whole heartedly into small ventures that I would like to attempt.

One day I would like to venture out of my comfort zone and attempt at self-sufficiency - I want a little farm.  Nothing on the industrious scale because I don't want anyone to rely on this farm to provide anything but entertainment.  This would only be a hobby, something in the purely experimental phase.  I just want a farm because I think it would be fun.  I bet that sounds ridiculous and naive, and it is.  And that's the problem.

I just want a nice organic garden to eat out of,  hens to lay eggs, a rooster to make it feel like a farm, a couple goats for the kids to play with, a small field of fruit trees, and plenty of bright sun to warm my days.  It's seems so nice and simple.  But it isn't.

I would be happy to only collect eggs and leave the hens alone.  I don't want to kill chickens.  I don't have the heart to do the killing, and my children absolutely refuse to even think of helping.  So if I do have this farm, it would be only to rob the eggs and spare the chickens.  The chickens would only be expected to lay eggs until they can't, and they would be free to roam until old age, death, and then a resting spot in the garden.  I know this isn't anyway to run a "farm" but it's the only way I know I can.  So eventually I would have a flock of retired chickens overrunning my land.  What would I do?  I don't want a chicken sanctuary, and that's what my farm would eventually become if I don't kill the chickens.  It would be woefully embarrassing.  And I certainly don't want to go into the  business of selling chickens.  I don't want a chicken farm - even if I could make millions.  I just want chickens for eggs and for my pleasure of waking up every day to collect the eggs.  Why am I so soft and cuckoo?

I've watched too many chicken deaths.  Vietnamese people can't just eat like everyone else.  They have to eat fresh.  They grow their own vegetables and herbs so they can eat fresh and  it's great that way.  Chicken can't just be chicken from the store, it has to be the whole dang chicken ALIVE!  Meat can't be just meat from the butcher, it has to be the whole cow or hog bought and killed at the farm and hauled home, chopped, and stored in the freezer for the year.  Seafood isn't seafood from the store, it's bought directly from the boat by the hundreds of pounds for the year, hauled home in coolers to be bagged and stored in a freezer.

I grew up knowing where my food came from.  Some people say that plants do have feelings and they hurt when you cut into them, but I would rather pull or pluck or wring or chew on  fresh plants than wring the necks of fresh chickens.   The methods to killing chickens are gruesome.  I had a friend in New Orleans who killed his chickens by wringing their necks using a broomstick.  I don't know how that is done because I refused to watch the one time he offered to demonstrate.  He assured me that it was a quick death.  I can only take his word.

Maybe I would feel better about killing chickens if my mother's method to killing a chicken was as quick as my friend's .  Chicken meat is good and sweet if it is fresh and the blood is drained from it, and so the death of the chickens were of course slow and painful as they literally bled to death.  I could go into details with all the gory and blood but I will spare everyone, especially my inner child who had to hold the poor chickens while they were bled, and hear their last breaths before they expired, and feel their rigor mortise set in.  I had other siblings but they were boys so they were entitled to skip out of this chore because it was women's work.

I remember one time when I must have been ten years old and we women had to kill another chicken.  I must have been daydreaming because my mother was screaming at me to hold the chicken tighter because I had lost my grip on the wings, and the bleeding chicken was thrashing around and flapping its wings.  It was a mess.  I was lost in thought sending up one of my crazy prayers to God.  Somehow I was wishing that God would send social workers to our house and have them give my mother the riot act.  Something like:

Madame, this is cease and desist order.  You must never kill another live chicken again, and your daughter doesn't have to hold the legs or wings anymore.  You are in America now, go buy stinky, dead chicken meat from the store like the rest of us. 

And of course, my mother would have complied because she would have believed every word.  

Where am I going with my thoughts?  I guess I am afraid to have my chicken and eat it too.  I just want to have some fun, raise cute, fluffy chicks, collect eggs, and eat veggies.  I just want to have fun.