The Boy Goes to School

I wonder what would happen if we all gathered up the things we swore we would do one way but ended up doing differently and put them together into one big This Is Your Life slide show illustrating how sadly mistaken most of us are when we predict what our lives will turn into.

I'd like to think I would have a great big laugh and then spend the next week thinking about how glad I am that I didn't dedicate my life to working in the DC Public Defenders Office (that job prospect withered when my interviewer asked how aggressive I was willing to be with the 80-year-old woman accusing my client of rape; um, not very) or to sitting at a beaten old desk somewhere in New England wearing an off-white fisherman's sweater and long permed hair that looks like Andie McDowell's in St. Elmo's Fire writing short stories that are short on everything but precious, tormented descriptions of what it's like to feel depressed (something I'm sure I would have done after college if only I'd had the confidence to apply for the advanced fiction writing class despite learning in the intermediate fiction writing class that my short stories were short on everything but precious, tormented descriptions of what it's like to feel depressed).

The more time has gone by and the more times I've changed course, the more I glory in the unexpected change of plans. There are those who have accused me, in various ways, of being a bit of a dilettante or who view me with the bemused fondness one might feel for a neighbor's small child as having a rather broad flaky streak for someone who has a degree from Columbia Law School and once worked for a big, stuffy DC law firm. (My fondest memory of my 21 months there was when the one openly gay associate told me I had taken over the mantle of the single female associate who tested the boundaries of acceptable lawyer dress. In the early nineties, that meant, most notably, my mini-skirted tangerine DKNY suit paired with black stockings and two-inch black pumps that hurt my feet but looked kind of sexy. I still miss that outfit.)

So I forgive myself for not following my declared intent to post to my blog every day, er, every week, um, well, I had a really big legal project that took me two weeks and it seemed important to finish it even though it meant that the two people who read my blog regularly have given up on me and everyone else has forgotten that I am supposedly writing about our life in Asheville and in fact has perhaps forgotten that I moved to Asheville. I forgive myself for writing three and a half pages of my yoga teacher-sleuth series before being distracted by the aforementioned legal project (hey, a girl's gotta pay the bills) and never managing to have that conversation with the literary agent who happened to be an usher at my wedding and therefore is probably being kinder to me than my meager output justifies. I forgive myself for the dwindling time and attention I have been giving to my yoga practice and for not following all the generous admonitions of friends and former students to start teaching it again. I even forgive myself for not breastfeeding for an entire year, although that turned out to be a bit of an impossibility, a story for another day and another medium in case anyone is really all that interested.

Most of all -- and here, finally, is the point of this post-- I forgive myself for sending The Boy to preschool before he could walk.

That was my very clear plan. I work at home, I like having The Boy at home, and when we were in Long Beach we had the most amazing sitter five hours a day so I could do my work. Which mostly meant the work of washing bottles and doing laundry and shopping for groceries and getting the occasional pedicure. But that wasn't her fault.

How much better would it be, I fantasized, to have the same arrangement in our new Asheville home, where I have a large, sunny office instead of the cramped end of the kitchen table that was my office in Long Beach. Imagine how much more work I'd get done when I no longer had to hide behind my laptop while The Boy was being fed lest he become distracted and abandon the bottle for loudly voiced demands that Mommy come play with him. I believed babysitting rates would be lower in Asheville so I could have more hours closed up in my little sanctuary and I would not only get tons of writing and legal work done but would also have time to read all of the New York Times best novels of 2006 and listen to a daily podcast of Fresh Air.

I was, of course, wrong about every detail of this fantasy, although that's not why The Boy ended up in preschool at the Jewish Community Center.

Here's another one of those moments when I wonder if the person reading this is someone who knows me well enough to cry, "The JCC?! Who cares if she put The Boy in preschool before he can walk? You want to talk shocking, she joined the JCC! Next thing you know, the most non-Jewish Jew I know is going to tell me she's had The Boy circumcised so she can have him Bar Mitzvahed in a bizarre cross-cultural ceremony where every Hebrew prayer is followed by a chant of ohm and The Boy reads from the Torah while sitting in lotus pose1"

Never fear. I remain what The Hubby lovingly calls a "self-hater." I still hide when my friends send out invitations to seders and I never know when Hannukah is and I probably wouldn't fast on Yom Kippur if I didn't already have kind of a self-denial thing where food is concerned. In short, the only reason I joined the JCC was because I am now a mother and mothers do things for their children that they never thought they'd do. Like sending their boy to preschool before he can walk.

It all began innocently enough. The Boy had his nine month check-up with his new pediatrician and Hubby and I were once again congratulating ourselves on how clever we were to move to Asheville, where the pediatricians and young and hip and non-interventionist and, most importantly, charmed by our baby (not, I hasten to add, that Long Beach pediatricians weren't charmed by him as well). Then the subject turned to preschool.

"There are a few really good ones in town," Dr. C. informed me as The Boy clapped his hands wildly and I clapped wildly back. "But there aren't enough for the demand. It's a good idea to get yourself on a waiting list now."

Ah, another milestone of parenthood, one of those moments where you feel a surge of pride and love that your child is growing up while working hard to ignore the nagging voice somewhere in the back of your mind whispering that you will regret this sign of progress when you realize it means that parenthood just got even more difficult. Preschool, after all, means colds and tuition bills and your child preferring his caregivers over you.

But we weren't talking starting preschool. We were just talking about waiting lists. It was a beautiful day, so I decided to take a walk to one of the ones Dr. C. recommended, just to take a look and imagine the distant day when The Boy could walk and I would enroll him in preschool.

This one was in a Episcopal church about a mile from our home. There are many Episcopal churches in Asheville. Billy Graham is Episcopalian. The Billy Graham Training Center is located near Asheville. These are things I did not know before I moved to Asheville. This particular Episcopalian church, however, is not, as far as I know, affiliated with Billy Graham.

The Boy and I casually entered the church office, acting for all we were worth like it was the most natural thing in the world for a transplanted faux Jew and her uncircumcised son to enter the office of an Episcopalian church in Asheville.

"I wanted to learn more about the day care program," I explained to the perfectly welcoming woman there. People in Asheville are very nonjudgmental. "And maybe put him on the waiting list."

"Oh, the child care center is completely separate from the church," she said. I had a fleeting image of her waiting until I left the office and then snorting, "She's obviously not Episcopalian," to her co-workers, but decided she was too nice to do anything of the sort. She proved me right by adding, "I'll take you there."

And so she did, through several doors, across the lobby, and past the group of volunteers bickering about how best to sort donated sweaters for a church sale. She pointed to a pair of doors with bright children's drawings around them.

I walked through them and wandered down the hall clutching the stroller like a golden ticket into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Surely there was no better proof than a stroller -- with a little boy in it, no less -- that I belonged there and was not a bad person like the spy who I vaguely recall being in the Gene Wilder version of the movie. I remember him being very scary and having small glasses with lenses that I took to be the kind that turn dark gray in bright light.

I headed for the one open door and found an office staffed by a woman with the practiced but genuine smile of someone who works in a preschool and explained why we were there. She didn't seem to wonder why this strange woman had wandered unannounced into her preschool to gaze upon the vulnerable sleeping children. If we had been in Long Beach, I'd have been face down on the ground by then with my wrists in handcuffs and my boy in the arms of a Social Services worker.

Luckily, we were in Asheville, and instead of calling the police, the woman took us to the playground, where a few of the kids who apparently take short naps were playing. The Boy was entranced. I was hooked. The woman told me spots usually open up in the spring. Perfect.

Two days later, on one of our Mommy and The Boy Fridays, The Boy and I were playing in City Bakery, one of his favorite places in the world because everyone smiles at him and the floors are clean enough that Mommy lets him crawl around and sometimes Daddy comes to see us in and doesn't even flinch when The Boy slobbers cookie crumbs on his work shirt. We were just getting ready to go when we spotted our neighbor, M.

I told her The Boy was now on a waiting list for preschool. "R.'s school is right up the block," she said, referring to her three-year-old daughter with the huge grin and joyful laugh. "Come on. I'll show it to you."

This preschool, by the way, is also in an Episcopalian church. As I may have mentioned, there are many Episcopalian churches in Asheville. Which means the odds didn't exactly favor The Boy ending up at the one Jewish preschool. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Right now, we are at R.'s school. Jack is surrounded by R. and her classmates, smiling his almost-three-toothed grin as they pat his head and cry, "It's a baby!" I have noticed that three-year-olds are thrilled with babies, as if in their newly found state of consciousness small, nonsentient beings are proof that they are the big boys and girls their parents assure them they are when coaxing them to go to bed or to stop teasing the dog.

Quick as a wink, I was in another office, filling out the forms to put The Boy on another preschool waiting list, thrilling in the delicious and rare combination of motherhood and efficiency. I thought we had an in when the director mentioned that she had once attended Cal State Long Beach, but all she offered was a discussion of our old neighborhood and how much we both missed Trader Joe's. When she told me she had adopted her sons from Vietnam, I eagerly told her about The Boy's forthcoming Chinese sister, but that didn't seem to buy us the right to leapfrog over even one waiting list kid either.

Still, I reminded myself, we were in no hurry. True, the pediatrician reckoned The Boy would be walking by his one year check up in December. But that was still a few months away and surely some parent would leave Asheville in January so my boy could have their child's place in preschool.

To complete the trifecta of best-preschools-in-the-area, I had to visit the JCC. I had heard good things about it. The Boy's cousin once went to some after-school programs there and loved it. It is a lovely half-mile walk from our house. But, as I many have mentioned, I have this weird fear of being associated with people who are like me.

Our first visit didn't help. The JCC lobby was filled with loaf upon loaf of challah bread to be distributed for Sukkhot. My skin began to itch.

We were stopped in the lobby by a sign-in log and a volunteer retired schoolteacher from New Jersey. How was she to know that, while it might thrill her to inform me two of the other mothers in the preschool were lawyers, it made me want to run screaming out the doors and into a nice, safe Episcopalian church?

When the head of the preschool appeared with Blackberry in hand to schedule an appointment when I would be allowed to view this well regarded preschool, I was pretty certain I knew which one was running a distant third to the others.

The scheduled tour didn't help. Along with The Boy and I, a miserable looking pregnant woman trudged after the preschool director as she informed us of the name of each class (Hebrew words that the two-to-five-year-olds in attendance would be far more qualified to define for you than I) and how long the teacher had been at the school. Relevant information, I suppose, but where were the kids crowding around The Boy and convincing both him and me that he had to start school tomorrow if not sooner?

By the time we crossed the street to visit the separate little house where the children under two play, I was merely being polite. The most interesting part of the tour, as far as I could tell, was hearing that the sullen pregnant woman already had three boys, had been on "the Depo Provera" when she got pregnant, and was carrying twins.

Figuring The Boy should at least have some fun at this school, I helped him stand holding onto a toddler-sized table. He grinned at me, and the happiness his smiles spark melted over just a little bit to the preschool.

The director peeled herself away from the discussion of how not thrilled the pregnant woman was to be pregnant and crouched down so as to better coo at The Boy.

"You know," she said with her first smile at me since we had met, "I could get him in here right away if you join the JCC."

Joining the JCC entitles you to jump to the top of the preschool waiting list. Being Jewish does not entitle you to jump to the top of the preschool waiting list, as I learned after writing "Jewish" in big letters on the waiting list form. It was the first time I had written anything on a form asking my religion and will undoubtedly be the last.

We went outside in the yard, where the kids were playing on a small plastic slide and in a colorful playhouse. They waved buckets and action figures at the caregivers. The Boy sat by himself for a while examining pieces of grass while I chatted with one of the caregivers. I liked her, I noted.

"Do the kids who can't walk yet get to come outside too?" I asked. The Boy crawled toward another child and grabbed at his ear.

"Oh, of course," she assured me as I pried The Boy's fingers from his new friend's head. "If they don't like crawling on the grass we'll spread out some blankets for them."

The Boy enthusiastically reached for another child's nose, and I reasoned that he is too social a being to be shut up at home with a marginal babysitter (I didn't have high hopes when I resorted to Craig's List, but I was out of options). He'd be walking within a few months and he can get around pretty darn well crawling and I convinced myself he wouldn't end up sitting in a corner crying while the other kids played and distracted the caregivers. I didn't have my checkbook with me, so I didn't join the JCC until the next day.

The Boy has been going to school for a little over a week now. He still can't walk, but he loves to crawl after one of his classmates who can. He also, they tell me, loves music and playing ball and having his diaper changed by anyone but his parents. And though he was so angry at me when they called me to come pick him up on his first day that he refused to look me in the eye, he plainly loves it now. Every evening on our stroll home, instead of the protruding bottom lip and pointedly turned head I got on that first day, I am treated to a babbled monologue about his day, or at least that's what I believe he's telling me since I don't pretend to understand what, if anything, he's saying. But the tone is unmistakably that of a ten-month-old who is quite thrilled to be going to preschool before he's able to walk.

And, hey, I'm a member of the Asheville JCC. That's got to be worth something.

Natural Livin'

It's been a week since we went to the Natural Living Fair, but it must not have rubbed off on me because I've spent every day since then being a lawyer. Which, for me, is not very natural. But it does help pay for our support of local, sustainable agriculture and green household cleaning products and the energy efficient (and, not coincidentally, vitally important to my well being) storm windows we are still looking for someone to install. Not only is it not easy being green, it's not cheap either.

It is, however, a nice way to spend our dedicated one weekend day per week exploring our new environs. On other weekends, we've driven to neighboring Weaverville to sit at a lovely bakery/cafe that was undoubtedly nicer than the Starbucks The Boy favored in Long Beach or kind of scuzzy but reputedly hip Insomnia in our our former haunts of West Hollywood. Still, sipping a decaf hazelnut latte and working my way through a chocolate chip macaroon so rich I wasn't hungry for three days doesn't exactly count as authentic hillbilly living.

Then there was our Sunday foray to Mars Hill, home of Mars Hill College. Established in 1858, Mars Hill College appears to uphold a fine tradition of closing everything on Sundays. Everything. College library? Check. Dining hall? Check. Dorms? Check. Quaint stores on Main Street not owned by the College? Check, check, and check. The single exception was a soccer match we watched for about fifteen minutes because there was a small square of shade in the stands and it was really hot out and, as I might have mentioned, everything in Mars Hill was closed. Aside from the players on the field, there wasn't a student to be seen anywhere in town. Where do they go? Do they work in the fields or carve their corncob pipes on Sundays? Or does the answer to this mystery lie somewhere in the website's mention of the school's Baptist tradition?

Last weekend our exploration led us to the Natural Living Fair in Mills River. Who could resist an event billed as "a celebration of sustainable living in the southern Appalachians"? Certainly not us. Hubby pulled on his Birkenstocks, I gulped down a breakfast of organic oats and almond milk, and we loaded The Boy into our reasonably gas-conscious Honda CRV.

Soon we were headed down the winding road toward Deefields retreat, lined up behind a Subaru Outback and a Honda Pilot. Plainly we fit the target demographic of the Natural Living Fair -- people who really want to save the environment but also really want that extra cargo space and so purchase a crossover while apologetically telling all their friends that it's not an SUV.

We parked in a dusty sort-of field and marveled at the clear, warm skies. September was drawing to a close and I could still wear open-toed shoes. This California girl was feeling good and open to a sustainable living adventure.

The adventurer in me wavered a bit at the sight of the meager array of activities set in a straggling line on the grounds that reminded me of the dusty faded-ness of my long-ago summers at Camp Kennolyn. A group of children galloped by bearing the unmistakable signs of homeschooling: longish hair, sturdy shoes, and clothing that their mothers only hoped they would wear unself-consciously for the rest of their lives. No, that boy in the tie-died tee-shirt and shiny black stretch pants tucked into white socks will one day rebel with all the fury of a fourteen-year-old boy. Puberty, as we all know, happens whether you are home schooled or not.

We opted to pass up the lecture on building your own greenhouse, although the couple buying tickets in front of us seemed quite eager to ensure that the whole thing hadn't been built during the Saturday lecture. Instead, we headed for the vendors because what could be better than living sustainably but still getting to buy stuff?

The best stuff to buy, apparently, if you are live in the Asheville area and are into natural living but aren't really doing it, are drums. The drum vendor was, in fact, doing a cracking business. Excuse me, a thumping business. Everywhere we went, smallish men with shaggy hair and Birkenstocks were comparing their shiny new drums with shy, happy smiles. I tried to picture our neighbors setting up a drum circle in the middle of the street one Friday night and couldn't quite do it. While there are undoubtedly some happening drum circles in Asheville, we just don't live in that world. But I'm happy to know it exists.

What we are also unlikely to see on our block, even with its rich history of chicken farming, are goats. And, because The Boy is unlikely to see goats on our block, encountering them at the Natural Living Fair was worth the price of admission.

He perused them carefully with that fat-cheeked scowl of concentration he gets when pushing buttons on the Tivo remote and fast-forwarding the show I'm trying to watch or grabbing the pink Razr phone he covets from my hands as I call the West Coast. Four legs, fur, he seemed to be thinking. Yet somehow not dog. His mouth worked with the temptation to say his favorite word, but he resisted the urge. He didn't know what to call these things, but they sure were interesting. Until we pulled out a camera and the goats were forgotten in his eagerness to pose with that big, two-toothed grin we love so much. At least we have pictures of him with goats in the background.

The goats were definitely the high point. A lot better than the garbled, PC puppet show where a yellow space creature traveled to India to make fun of western notions of yoga and say a bunch of Hindi words that no one in the audience was likely to remember if they didn't already know them. (The term "preaching to the choir" comes to mind.) Definitely more interesting than the hopeful collection of food stands -- except that one from Greenlife, where Hubby got a decent brautwurst but, sadly, couldn't buy a beer. (Beer, it turns out, is perfectly natural but a big pain if you are getting permits for a natural living fair.) Of course, we didn't have to drive out to Mills River to buy food from Greenlife, since it's a 10-minute walk from our house. And while Hubby and I thought it was pretty fun to dance with The Boy to the bluegrass band, he didn't find it nearly as hilarious as we did and looked kind of dizzy and bored.

Still, we spent a lovely couple of hours outdoors, and I did learn a thing or two. I learned that I will never home school The Boy, not that it was ever a consideration to begin with. I learned that I'm not all that interested in owning my own drum or in socializing with people who do. And I learned that the Port-a-Potties at natural living fairs are pretty much the same as they are everywhere else, except maybe a little bit cleaner, which was nice.

So does this mean that I am destined to live unnaturally? Maybe. Or maybe we all do what we can and just strive to do better. Honestly, it feels pretty good to live someplace where people care about these things. Because I do care, and that must be worth something.

Audrey Catches a Chicken

When you live in California, there are many things that run through your mind when your new neighbor tells you your dog "got a chicken." Usually it is something like, "Can Audrey really steal those chicken breasts I was defrosting out of the sink?" or, "I've really been meaning to wash that dirty stuffed chicken toy."

But when you have just moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and when the people who come to build you a fence or put on storm windows say things like, "Ah'll bit that hawand o' yers cewd ketch hersef sem chickens," and when your neighbor, R., is standing on your front porch, breathless and slightly wild-eyed, it occurs to you that maybe the chicken in Audrey's mouth is alive.

Or, worse, isn't.

Before I could figure out how one should respond when one's new neighbor of barely two weeks informs one that one's dog has dispatched a neighbor's chicken, R.'s partner, M., dashed up the walk. She leaned forward, hands on knees, like a runner recovering from a particularly spirited 10K. R. and I waited wordlessly to hear the chicken's fate while Audrey slunk guiltily past me and inside the front door, where she plopped down with the heavy regret of someone who has done something she knows is terribly wrong but would do again in heartbeat.

"I yelled at her to drop it, and she did," M. panted approvingly. M. is a lover of dogs and perhaps more forgiving than the chicken's owner might be.

"I was just really worried for her," R. explained, unaccountably more concerned for Audrey than for the chicken. This was good news. Perhaps dogs ate live chickens as a regular matter in Asheville. Perhaps my block was home to a roaming flock of feral chickens and Audrey had done everyone a favor. Maybe they would ask me to have her do regular chicken patrol. "I was driving home and she ran right in front of my car."

"I was working out front, and R. got out of the car going, 'Dog. Chicken." M. smiled, and I felt grateful and helpless. "I knew right away she was talking about Audrey. I saw her wandering around about half an hour ago, but I figured you were close by somewhere. I guess she got into S.J.'s yard."

My brief moment of relief evaporated. This was no roaming feral chicken, but the pet of a soft-spoken neighbor who had stopped by to introduce herself just a few days before.

Worse, for the past half hour, as Audrey stalked her prey, I had been inside playing with The Boy, coaxing him into a nap, blending sweet potatoes for him, all in blissful ignorance of the fact that I had locked the dogs outside without blocking the stairs from the deck to the as-yet-unfenced yard with the disassembled Weber kettle and dented metal trashcan that were supposed to prevent things like Audrey getting out and eating a neighborhood chicken.

"You know," M. continued, as I continued to stare helplessly, rooted to my beautiful new porch as my beautiful eight-month-old baby snoozed upstairs in his very own room. "I'd better go see if the chicken is still alive."

She set off with the confidence and purpose I sorely lacked, having been raised in Los Angeles where most people are unfamiliar with the etiquette that accompanies your dog catching someone else's chicken.

R. turned to me, her skin a shade paler than usual, her eyes bluer and wide with fear. "I just know she's going to wring its neck," she informed me. "She's a country girl."

I hasten to draw attention to this designation. All evidence to the contrary, we do not live in the country. We have moved to a city, where one does not expect to find chickens roaming the streets and only country girls are equipped to deal with the fallout when they do.

"I don't know what to do," I finally admitted, as if stating this obvious fact would prove a corrective.

It didn't. But that was okay because M. reappeared, gently cradling the chicken, now wrapped in her tee-shirt and looking around with a vigor that would suggest she was, at least, not at death's door. The bird was actually quite pretty, with fluffy gold feathers that I could too easily picture against the soft chocolate brown of Audrey's muzzle.

"I don't think S.J.'s home," R. informed me. I wish I could say that at this point I sprang into action, but the truth is I was even more woefully unprepared to deal with this situation than I would have guessed. "Maybe we should call a vet."

Relieved, I watched her pull out her cell phone. Paying for a vet's bill I could do. We had, after all, just paid nearly double what we were quoted to have our furniture delivered (a story for another, less amused, posting). How bad could a veterinary bill be?

Quite bad, according to R., when she told me our only option was the emergency vet that charges $200 when you walk in the door. Asheville, it turns out, is home to two chicken doctors, but neither of them works on Wednesdays.

"I really think she's okay," M. said. The chicken was looking around with a fairly calm expression. On the other hand, I'm not really sure what expression a panicked chicken would wear. I'm not even sure chickens have expressions. "Do you have any moving boxes? We could put her in one and leave her by S.J's front door."

Moving boxes I had. With the glee of a useless person who finally has a job to do, I rushed into the room that will one day be Hubby's office (Hubby's office! My office! We have a real house with lots of rooms!), dumped some books out of a box, and lined it with an old pink towel. Ironically, we bought that towel at the Target in Lancaster, half an hour before we bought Audrey. She slept on it during her housebreaking period when we relegated her to the kitchen during the night. Perhaps she was now wreaking her revenge.

Back on the front porch, I proffered the box and watched as M. lowered the chicken into it. "I'll bring her over to S.J.'s," R. volunteered.

One may note that I had not, at this point, touched the chicken or anything touching it. It's not that I'm afraid of chickens. I'm just not used to seeing them on my front porch. Not that I've ever had a front porch before. Still, even when imagining the front porch I would one day have, my fantasies involved rocking chairs and porch swings and a hound or two, not chickens. Hubby, who has longed for a front porch far longer than I, no doubt concurs that one does not expect an injured chicken in a box to be part of the picture.

"I'm going to write S.J. a note," I declared. Here is something I know how to do. I know how to take responsibility for property damage and how to commit one's responsibility and remorse to writing. I know this not only from three years of otherwise shockingly pointless training at Columbia Law School, but as a human being who was truly, truly sorry that my dog had, at the very least, traumatized S.J.'s chicken.

As I scrawled words of apology and promises to pay for vet bills or, if need be, a new chicken, I saw that S.J. had joined R. across the street. Fine. Good. I deserved to fess up to the sins of my hound in person. I was prepared to be contrite.

I crossed the street waving the note and yelling that I was sorry, so sorry. S.J. stroked the chicken as she sized me up. "It's okay," she said quietly. "It's what dogs do. If these chickens were fatter they couldn't of got through the fence."

So at least Audrey hadn't gone hunting in S.J.'s fenced yard. At least the chickens were hanging out in front of the house, casting the scent of dinner and a few stray feathers into the breeze. A bloodhound could hardly be expected to ignore that.

"I'm not supposed to have them anyway," S.J. confessed. I am pausing here to consider highlighting that sentence. People who live in the city limits of Asheville are not supposed to have chickens. This fact seems to be of immense importance to every member of my family to whom I have related this story.

Just as I was feeling better, S.J. added, "I wonder what scared them out of the yard." I couldn't read her look. It was no secret that the logical cause of the scare would be Audrey. But that possibility somehow rendered her more guilty and me a worse neighbor for letting my preoccupation with my baby create this mess. (Said baby, by the way, was now awake and perched on my hip taking in the commotion with great interest. In case you think I'm an even worse mother than I am a neighbor and would leave my sleeping baby alone as I wandered across the street to offer mea culpas to my illicit-chicken-raising neighbor.)

"Please let me know if I can pay for vet bills or anything," I repeated, since there was really nothing else I could say. Somehow I suspected she would not take me up on my offer, which left me feeling worse, as if making the payment could wipe out my error, a Catholic confession for Jewish owners of chicken-hunting dogs.

"I'll just see if she's okay in the morning," S.J. said matter-of-factly. "If she's not, I'll fry her up."

This plain lack of sentiment lifted the slick wash of nausea I had been experiencing for the past hour and allowed me to even look forward to telling Hubby about the excitement when he got home from work.

He leaned back in one of our porch chairs, drink in one hand, The Boy in the other, and on his face I read extreme pride that he found himself a homeowner in this neighborhood of hounds and chickens and homes with front porches where you can sit with a drink after work.

From next door, M. waved. "Thanks for helping with the chicken!" Hubby greeted her.

"Oh, you didn't hear the best part," M. informed us. "I went into S.J.'s yard with her so she could show me how to put the chickens back in the coop if they ever get out again, and there was a rat in the coop."

"Ergh!" Hubby and I both exclaimed like the city folk we are.

"It was trying to get out, but its hind legs were caught and it was scrambling and going 'eeeech, eeeech!'" M. gave us an impressive imitation of a rat with its hind legs caught in chicken wire.

Hubby and I leaned over the porch, a rapt and slightly disgusted audience.

M. smiled and reeled us in. "I was like, 'oh,'" -- expression of similar disgust -- " and S.J. just said, 'Well we can't have that,' and picked up a two-by-four and just brained it."

"Aaaah," Hubby and I gasped in collective delight at the beauty of this horrible image. M. showed us how she had hidden her face as S.J. gave the rat its send-off, proving that she is not much of a country girl after all and probably wouldn't have wrung that chicken's neck had the situation warranted it. S.J., on the other hand, surely wasn't kidding when she said she would fry up the chicken if she didn't recover.

I ran into S.J. the other day, both of us taking a walk at the far end of the block. A middle-aged couple from New York, a thin young mother from Nantucket, at least one artist, and an Audi TT separated us from the chicken coop.

"How's the chicken?" I asked, expecting to hear either of a full recovery or a mighty tasty meal.

"Not so good," S.J. said with more honesty than I would have liked. "She can't stand up."

"I'm so sorry," I breathed in disappointment and genuine sadness. I could have made the vet bill offer again, but apparently people who own chickens understand that there is some fundamental difference between them and the kinds of pets you would take to a vet. Which perhaps explains why chicken doctors in Asheville have Wednesdays off.

"I'm not supposed to have them," S.J. sighed. Which, I guess, is the moral of the story. And an apt summary of what it is like to live on our block, where you can just see Asheville turning into a place where a family from Long Beach can fit right in.