i have a very vivid memory of a boy i had a crush on in early grade school. he left my house in a huff and said "i'm never coming back to your house because you dont have running water!"
it was pretty embarassing. i dont think i knew that that was especially abnormal at the time.
it became a claim to fame for our family. like the year andrew went back to school and was asked, in the usual school assignment fashion, "what was the most exciting thing to happen during your summer holidays?" and he said, "getting indoor plumbing." he got in alot of trouble for that. the teacher thinking he was being cheeky.
not so.
so andrew used to carry up buckets of well water to our house for drinking and cooking and bathing (although we used to go to Nana's for proper baths sometimes). and we spent alot of our childhood stacking wood and shoveling snow and singing freestyle songs about how much we hated it. but really, we must have loved it. we also had a pond that froze over and i would shovel a t-shaped path to practice my figure skating on. or we would shovel the whole thing and have people over for skating. we had 260 acres we could explore. i'm sure we didnt use anywhere near any of that. but we got to see partridges and porcupines and see deer tracks or wild rabbits.
its exactly what i want for my kids. i want to live in the forest. have a garden. lots of trees around us. somewhere for us to all run around, explore and enjoy the beauty of nature as God intended it.
1 comment:
I grew up on a farm. We had running water, but we also had to work hard. And play hard. I often think about how much I wish my kids could grow up on a farm too. Or a forest. My childhood wasn't perfect. But it was pretty close!!
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