On Keeping Things Forever (and What Happens When You Can't) *Spring 2008*

(Maybe I'll give you this whole thing eventually, cause it's a bunch of vignettes. Some prose to start the week, and if you've ever met Chickee, you just get it...)

There is only one thing I possess that I have owned forever. It’s my chickee. Chickee is a white chicken, with a yellow beak, yellow feet, and perfectly circular brown eyes. One fairly pitiful sprig of yarn hair adorns the very top of his head, and he is holding a few faded flowers. I have sewn a new body on him out of a cotton t-shirt, and he is stuffed with brown heavy socks that were never soft enough for me to wear. He and I have been inseparable since the time before my memory reaches. Someone bestowed him to me on my first Christmas, two months after I was born. I never considered giving him away, and around age five started declaring that I would be buried with him.

Countless photos exist of me at school, at home, on the porch and in the kitchen, always with this fowl under my arm. He might be dirty, but that dirt represents the combined histories of every important place I’ve ever been. I took him with me to my first sleep over at Caroline Martin’s house when she lived on Old Kennet Pike and we sat next to each other in Mrs Hodges first grade class. I took him with me to sleep overs at my Momom’s house, where my cousins also brought their respective animal companions along. I took him on every vacation with my parents, to Florida and London and Washington state. I took him to a sleep over two weeks ago when I went upstate to visit my roommates parents, and sit by the fireplace. His comfort knows no bounds, and his presence seems unending and entirely necessary. He’s sat with me on planes and trains when I’m nervous, or sad, or sometimes anxious. He always waits patiently if I stall going to bed on time, and he’s always waiting in case I wake up from a nightmare and need something solid to hold. He never judged me harshly through my terrible twos, and wild-child adolescence, and self-involved teens. I’m not sure if twenty-somethings are supposed to share a bed with inanimate birds of any kind, but so far he’s the only thing that’s managed to stay put and put up with me everyday that I’ve remembered being alive. I have never gone to sleep unsure of his whereabouts. I’m not sure if it’s me whose managed not to lose him, or him that’s managed not to lose me.