Coming Home to an Old Part of Myself
Today we brought home four chickens.
Two fluffy chicks and two nearly-grown hens.
On the surface, it was simply a family outing. We drove for an hour to a small, humble farm, accompanied by the dog and three excited children. The journey itself felt like part of the adventure. There was a sense of anticipation in the car, the kind that only comes when something long imagined is finally becoming real.
My daughter had been eagerly waiting for this day. We had spent the previous evening assembling the chicken coop together, working side by side long past bedtime, trying to decipher instructions and make sense of diagrams. The coop still wasn't quite finished, but our excitement certainly was.
As soon as the chickens arrived, the naming began.
Orio.
Fluffy.
Sparkel.
Hope.
Each name chosen with care and enthusiasm.
Watching my daughter meet the chickens for the first time was wonderful, but what surprised me most was what happened within me.
As I held them, memories began returning.
Not vague memories, but vivid ones.
I suddenly found myself remembering my own childhood chickens. I remembered their names, their personalities, and the routines of caring for them. I remembered how attached I became to them. I even remembered rescuing them during a flood and carrying them to safety.
Memories I hadn't thought about for years came flooding back.
Alongside the memories came something else.
Knowledge.
Without thinking, I found myself recalling things I had once known instinctively. How to hold them. How to approach them. What they needed. How they behaved. It was as though a part of me had been quietly waiting all these years, ready to awaken again.
What I realised is that I wasn't learning something new.
I was remembering something old.
And there was immense joy in that.
As parents, we often think of ourselves as teaching our children. We explain, demonstrate, guide and encourage. Yet sometimes parenting offers something completely unexpected.
Sometimes our children lead us back to parts of ourselves that we had forgotten.
Standing there with my daughter, sharing stories about the chickens I had raised as a child, I felt a connection stretching across time.
The child I once was had not disappeared.
The years had passed.
Life had become fuller and more complex.
I had grown, changed, struggled, learned, and become a mother.
Yet some essential parts remained.
The affection for animals.
The excitement of caring for living things.
The fascination with nature.
The simple joy of having chickens.
What moved me most was sharing it.
These weren't just memories living inside me anymore. They were becoming part of my daughter's story too.
She now knows about the chickens I once cared for.
She has helped build a coop with her own hands.
She has chosen names for our new arrivals.
She has begun forming her own relationship with these curious little creatures.
And in doing so, she has helped me reconnect with a part of myself.
Lately, I have been reflecting a lot on ageing and the passing of time. On what changes and what remains. Today felt like a gentle answer to some of those questions.
The years change us.
They are meant to.
But every now and then life offers a reminder that beneath the changes, something enduring remains.
Sometimes it arrives disguised as a memory.
Sometimes it arrives disguised as a child asking questions.
And sometimes it arrives in a cardboard box containing four chickens.
As I watched them exploring their new home this afternoon, I realised that bringing them home wasn't simply the start of an adventure for my daughter.
It was a reunion with an old part of myself.
And I couldn't stop smiling.
Reflection
Parenting often feels like guiding a child towards the future. Yet sometimes it offers something equally precious: an opportunity to reconnect with parts of our own past. Not to go backwards, but to carry those experiences forward, sharing them with the people we love. Some childhood joys never leave us. They simply wait for the right moment to return. 🐔🌿💛
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Dr Maliheh Taheri
M.A.L.I. Neuro-Somatic Practice
