Memoir: Still Life With Chickens
Catherine Goldhammer Rebounds from Divorce by Relocating
Sep 16, 2006
In Still Life With Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea, Catherine Goldhammer leads us quickly through the death throes of her long-term marriage and then gets on with the business of making things work for herself and her almost-teenage daughter. Armed with good humor and a can-do attitude, Goldhammer tackles some very difficult life challenges that she chronicles in this fun and inspiring little book.
The chicken project begins as a desperate measure, a semi-bribe Goldhammer comes up with to give her very precocious daughter a new focus as they both struggle to adapt to a changed family dynamic and a drastically altered lifestyle. The chickens are to be a hobby, an amusing distraction while the two cope with moving out of their large, upscale home in a well-heeled town and into a house by the sea - a house of shack-like proportions in dire need of repair in the midst of a lower working-class neighborhood.
Mother and daughter begin their poultry journey together by poring over a Murray's Hatchery catalog like kids in a candy store. And they come up with pretty much the same candy store kind of a mixed bag. Taking a "one of those, one of these" approach the two pick out a collection of well-pedigreed but severely mis-matched fluff balls.
The chicks arrive early - before the big move - and the amusing distraction Goldhammer envisioned becomes a serious disruption as she goes through the process of trying to sell her house - which qualifies as stress enough all by itself - with a flock of chickens ensconced first in the bathroom and later in the library.
As the move progresses, and as Goldhammer oversees the construction of increasingly grander chicken coops and runs, mother and daughter find new and mostly better ways to deal with life and with each other.
While the chickens serve as an obvious metaphor, they also emerge as well-developed characters all by themselves. Their carefully-chosen names and distinct personalities add a vibrancy to Goldhammer's story and give this memoir a satisfying depth and richness.
Once the move is complete, Goldhammer finds herself in a house that is barely livable, a job she dislikes intensely, and with a daughter, a dog, and a flock of chickens to watch over. It was not an easy transition but, Goldhammer says "I carried on. It was a year of carrying on". And it was a year of taking on challenges and slowly making things work.
Goldhammer's prose is poignant and often funny. Her story is heartfelt, and occasionally heartbreaking, but it is always a story of hope and renewal. A former poetry fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Goldhammer has previously been published in the Georgia Review and the Ohio Review.
