My morning began as all of them do. I opened up the locked doors of the three coops that house our chickens for the night. The oldest hens were scolding even as I clanked the lids of the food bins. By their standards, I was late. But still they were happy to cluck down the ramps towards breakfast, heads bobbing, and I took attendance: four reds, four blacks, three whites, three dappled, and two solitary specimens. 

Then I headed toward the Silkie's pen, who are patient to a fault. One time my daughter was hanging a heat lamp in mid winter, and a Silkie neither squawked nor moved when it singed her feathers. I unlatched their door, and one by one they tentatively stepped out into the grass, as if they were Peter and Lucy coming out of the wardrobe into Narnia. 

Finally I came to the pen that protects the eight pullets. These hold a tender place in my heart, because each time someone died this spring, I quietly drove to the feed store and brought home a handful of life. Eight fluffy chicks helped me cope with four deaths. 

After all of the flocks were contentedly pecking and preening, I came inside. Once I was online I wandered onto an article about chicken vision which opened my eyes. Chickens can see ultraviolet light, which adds an interesting dimension. Even blind chickens respond to the light and increase laying in the spring. Chicken eyes are an astonishing twenty five times larger than human eyes as a proportion of their head size. I know, I know, that means their brains are smaller. But still.   

It is like mental gymnastics to contemplate someone else, even a Barred Rock, having a perspective that I never will. Gender offers a similar opportunity to try to turn oneself into a pretzel, imagining what life looks like to the opposite sex. 

As a new bride I believed I knew how life felt for John. Oops, I didn't. But with each new dawn, I find another chance to unlock doors.