Finding a path to parenthood

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This article was published 20/09/2023 (914 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“We don’t need to be related to relate

We don’t need to share genes or a surname

You are, you are

My chosen, chosen family”

— From the song Chosen Family by Rina Sawayama

Last year, when our neighbours told us they had gotten a young turkey from the small Newfoundland outport where I grew up, I was quick with a joke.

“Now you know two turkeys from Chapel Arm,” I said.

The turkey — whose name is Taro — was ostensibly intended to be the guest of honour at Thanksgiving, but she quickly endeared itself with the family and is now likely the safest turkey in all of Canada.

She joined an ever-growing menagerie that now includes rabbits, a dog and chickens that roam freely in their yard alongside an organic vegetable garden.

Taro was formidable addition to the backyard, always alert, her beady eyes watching out for any intruder that might invade her little fiefdom.

But I would soon learn that Taro had a gentler side, and that she and I had more in common than where we were both hatched.

My neighbours, having witnessed Taro’s dedication as she tried several times this year to incubate her unfertilized eggs, feared the bird was becoming despondent.

Taro, it seemed, wanted a family. (And, yes, I know I’m anthropomorphizing here, but clearly she was feeling the biological imperative to hatch and raise offspring).

When our neighbours heard of some fertilized duck eggs in need of a nest, they immediately thought of Taro.

For four weeks Taro sat on those eggs, rarely taking a break to eat or drink. When two yellow fuzzballs emerged, with their flat bills and broad webbed feet, she might have been forgiven for doing a double take, but she took to parenthood like, well, a duck to water.

It was amusing to see the imperious turkey doing a stately promenade around the yard with two ducklings tumbling behind her, and they have been inseparable ever since.

*****

Baby Penny was a doll that came with her own plastic bottles. As a child, I’d fill them with water from the tap and line them up on the shelf inside the door of our fridge, diligently watching the clock to time the feedings.

Water being water, and gravity being gravity, those bottles of water would cause Penny’s cloth diaper to get wet, which meant I also had to change her and keep on top of the laundry.

It was a lot of work for a four-year-old, and I took the responsibility seriously.

“You’ll make a fine little mother someday,” my mother would tell me.

Except that, as much as I wanted children, it didn’t work out that way.

Through time and circumstance, motherhood eluded me.

It was a loss I mourned.

But life’s path often deviates from the linear road that leads from A to B to C.

On the cusp of 40, having given up any hope of ever knowing the joys and challenges of parenthood, I met the man who would become my husband. His two younger children were 10 and 11.

When it was clear our relationship was serious, I met them, with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.

This was going to be a lot more complicated than babysitting nephews and nieces for a few hours at a time; light years away from minding a doll.

There was another set of parents in this equation to consult and consider, another household with its own — sometimes conflicting — rules and rituals, competing demands for vacation time and family gatherings.

I was fortunate; the children approached the situation as I did, with hearts wide open.

That was almost 20 years ago. They’re out of the nest too now, living in different provinces and spreading their wings; adults taking paths of their own.

They have two sets of supportive parents and an expansive network of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.

Taro’s ducklings are also grown.

We’re not sure if they think they are turkeys or if Taro thinks she’s a mother duck. But who needs labels, anyway?

The turkey leads her two charges on daily forays into the neighbours’ yards — including ours, where they survey the property with all the pomp and purpose of a royal walkabout.

The ducks have shown their mother the joys of the small water pool where they cavort and frolic.

And when I see her with them, high stepping on the lawn, her head held erect, her wattle trembling faintly in the breeze, the two rambunctious ducks waddling and chattering in her wake, I think I know how she feels.

Loving. Proud. Protective.

Like a parent.

Pam Frampton is a freelance writer and editor who lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com