The first round of eggs goes in the hands of a man who helped me move the chicken coop into place. Up a hill.
Smashing into low-hanging branches. Betwixt raised garden beds. A pilgrimage I hope to never make again.
For his trouble, he received 12 boxes without hinges, keys, or lids, yet golden treasures inside they hid. That’s the least I could do.
I should have bought him a bottle of Ibuprofen. Or at least a shot of whiskey.
Another half dozen went to another set of hands that were there. We have an understood IOU. Our rain check is better than the ones you find at your local grocery store’s customer counter.
More requests came in.
Our daughter demanded a round for her reading tutor. She picked out two light blues from the Easter eggers.
She handed them over with a backstory about each hen. She told the woman the hen’s names and how she likes to let them roam around the backyard. There she catches them, holds them, and starts the process all over again.
This story has to happen before she hands over the carton. Nothing is a straightforward transaction with her. She gets it honest.
Another dozen flew the coop earlier this week.
Our children become more feral as the day wears on. They speak in grunts and shouts. We have found no remedy. So we did what we knew—subjected our neighbors to them.
The plan was to walk to a local playground. Let them fill their shoes with sand.
Let them fight over a slightly deflated basketball. Let them reconcile the way only two sisters can.
We never made it that far. A few houses down live three brothers around their age. Our girls are drawn to them like my wife is drawn to expensive antique glass.
We stopped. The children played. I said “don’t do that” until my tongue went numb.
As bodies rolled around on the ground, I watched and counted the grass stains that I knew would never come off. The five tiny anarchists moved like a herd of drunken raptors, falling over each other, terrorizing all that came into their path. They could have brought down the walls of Jericho in less time than those ancient Israelites.
I kept my distance, preferring to take my chances near the road, where motorists seemed to accelerate as they approached the well-placed speed bumps. That’s when I heard a heavenly and out-of-breath voice.
“Can we give them some eggs?”
I looked down to see my oldest.
Her eyes the color of a sky promising rain. Her hair, free from its ponytail, runs wildly down her back like the Colonial Spanish Mustangs found on the Outer Banks, equus ferus caballus. She’s posed with her hands on her hips, her stance defiant.
What a creation—thoughtful, sensitive, compassionate. All things she must have learned from strangers.
“Of course,” I said.
Her orders given, she scampers off to reconnect her chaotic energy with the others.
“I’ll be right back. Going to grab them some eggs,” I said.
My wife looks at me lovingly as I move in to peck her on the cheek. “Hurry,” she whispers.
As I pull back, I see the cry for help plastered on her face—this SOB is really going to leave me alone to watch the kids destroy this person’s yard? My eyes tell her I understand, and I move with a fast clip.
The eggs are on our kitchen table. I stick my hand into the belly of a wire basket in the shape of a chicken. My grandmother had the same one sitting on her farmhouse counter.
It never gets more than halfway full. It never gets less than halfway empty.
Each time I go to it, I think of Jesus feeding the 5,000. Like the bread and fish, the eggs multiply when needed. I keep giving them away, and more keep showing up.
It’s a damn miracle each time. One I don’t want to take for granted.
Going back, I can hear the shouts before I can see them. The children have moved to the backyard, where they continue to bring down the property value.
The small container of eggs, a small gesture, is tucked under my right arm. In a time where the world appears to grow madder by the day, I know eggs aren’t much. But, then again, they could be everything.
Twelve little brown and blue mysteries tell my neighbors something my words can’t. They tell him I see him and his, and I care enough to share what I have with them.
Acts like this are likely the best thing I’ll ever do as a minister. Feeding people, especially in times where access to food is being denied and SNAP benefits are snatched away from the least of these, is good news I wish I saw more of.
I step into the backyard, and my wife looks relieved.
My neighbor takes the eggs and thanks me.
My children wail like the people of Nineveh when we tell them we have to get going.
My family and I walk home, where I think about who’ll get the next dozen. I wonder, “Who will need them?”
His name is Jim. His wife of over 50 years passed after a long bout with cancer.
He welcomes me into his home, which has just grown uncomfortably quiet. We sit at a table. I place a bag filled with eggs, cornbread, and a few other things down and listen.
He talks of the woman he loved. He tells me stories about his younger years. He thanks me for coming by.
I don’t talk much because, believe it or not, in the face of such loss, I don’t always know what to say. No magic Bible verse is going to make the pain stop, but somehow I believe eggs and cornbread might.
I think this way because of the words of a Baptist preacher who wrote about how food heals people inside and out. Will D. Campbell captured a truth I knew all too well—that food said what words couldn’t.
In a scene from Brother to a Dragonfly, he shares,
“Somehow in rural Southern culture, food is always the first thought of neighbors when there is trouble. ‘Here, I brought you some fresh eggs for your breakfast. And here’s a cake. And some potato salad.’ It means, ‘I love you. And I am sorry for what you are going through, and I will share as much of your burden as I can.’ And maybe potato salad is a better way of saying it.”
Maybe eggs are, too.
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Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University, Wake Forest University School of Divinity, and McAfee School of Theology where he earned his Doctor of Ministry. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.
