I’ve been looking forward to this one! “Rooster Stories” is by Anna Mitchael, and the description on Kindle Singles says, “Part memoir, part screed, part whatchamacall it, Rooster Stories shows that sometimes the life that makes you happiest is the one you never, ever, not-in-a-million-years imagined you’d be living.”
Perfect. And a tad profane, but I don’t mind. In full disclosure, I edited an early draft of the book, but I still enjoyed reading the final version last night. It’s short, the equivalent of 40 pages.
Anna writes a monthly column for the WACOAN magazine called “Notes From a New Mother,” although she’s not so new at motherhood anymore or at country living. But she combines the two in ways I, as a city girl, would never think to.
My favorite part is near the end, when after returning from a sonogram appointment, she sits on the front porch “for five solid minutes,” and she has, shall we say, a moment with a chicken. Followed by an imaginary chewing-out from her rooster, (King) Kenny III.
My children are nearly grown—one in college, one a junior in high school. I have no advice for moms, new or otherwise. Some days I think I’m going crazy. “But crazy felt more honest than yet another apology.” Observations about the behavior of a succession of roosters named Kenny (after Rogers) and a duo of chickens nicknamed The Uglies in the context of early parenthood makes so much more sense to me than the latest mommy manual.
And when Anna said she had stopped flashing forward because “I discovered it was not in my nature to flash forward to times of sweeping happiness,” I nodded my head in understanding. Like her, I’ve found happiness in unexpected places, even in a fresh egg.
