The person who first suggested that I raise chickens reassured me that the basic chores took no more than ten minutes a day. That was all the convincing I needed.  Even someone with as speckled a history of pets as I have could manage that. We have failed at bunnies, cats, hamsters, and fish. But to be fair, it had more to do with the fact that I was raising a bevy of small children. The chickens are now gone, along with most of the children, but the memories remain. 

 

Yet what my friend did not mention was that while the feeding and watering only take a few minutes, I would want to spend an hour each afternoon just enjoying their company. I puttered around adding perches, and getting fresh nesting material, giving extra scratch or simply holding them. 

 

There was a broken limb hanging over the coop that I looked at from my chicken chair. It was shaped rather like a wishbone, and was suspended precariously above my birds. Since it was perhaps eighteen feet long, it had the potential to pierce the roof, and kill my flock. Or me. It broke off of a larger branch in one of those fierce windstorms years ago and has been teasing me ever since. 

 

The proper name for a wishbone is a furcula, and it is the bone between the neck and the breast. It is created by the fusion of the clavicles, and "strengthens the thoracic skeleton to withstand the rigors of flight."

 

When I sat in the chicken yard, I decided to pretend that it was my wishbone. Although I stopped eating turkey back in college, I do have a fondness for my father holding up the Thanksgiving wishbone to me and my brother. According to the rules of etiquette, two kids tug-o-war on the bone and the one who ends up with the lump in the middle wins. 

 

So every day, I made a wish. 

 

I have renewed my commitment to prayers, especially for others. The book Praying for Strangers encourages that resolve. 

 

Often it is for someone whose struggles have come into my peripheral vision. Other times it is for the well being of people I spoke with that day.

 

The shape of a wishbone is suggestive of two people, hanging in the balance. Like a marriage. The appearance sometimes is that those two people are at odds with each other, and only by sheer force of will can one come out ahead.

 

Yet when we summon the strength that rests between our stiff neck and beating heart, it can grant us the ability to withstand the rigors of flight.