While living in California has many wonderful perks, from endless sunshine to never-ending weekend activities, I often wonder what I might be sacrificing by raising my child here in suburbia. Today, I felt nostalgic for my own rural upbringing.
When I was a girl, I spent the majority of my childhood on our hundred acre farm in Southwest Missouri. On any given weekend, my little brother and I would swim in the creek, build forts out of hay, swing on the porch and let our imaginations run wild. I pretended to be a character out of Little House on the Prairie. My brother was a soldier, pirate, ninja or cowboy, depending on his mood and toy weapon of choice. We wandered without cares and played with reckless abandon until the sun set or we got hungry.
Though both of my parents worked at the local hospitals and we went into town every day, we all tended to the land and the animals in mornings, evenings and weekends. Our mini-menagerie included cattle, a couple of rabbits, a lamb, assorted reptiles, and my wily horse named Vince.
Some of my finest childhood moments were defined by summers of wandering through the woods and winters of sledding down steep hillsides and autumns galloping on my wild steed in the harvested pastures.
It's amazing how just an ordinary weekend outing today triggered a flood of memories about my own childhood. Even if my own sweet daughter can't run wild in the untamed hills of the Midwest, for now, I'll take a chat with a petting-zoo pony as our California substitute.
Don't forget to spend a little time admiring the natural world today. A friendly farm animal or a nice neighborhood dog will set your mood right and remind you to pause for all God's creatures.
Jane Austen quote poster from Flourish Cafe on Etsy.
My mother too was raised in a rural area. I would often hear her reminisce about her childhood in East Texas. Like you she would tell of wandering into the woods to pick berries, living with a menagerie of animals including ponies and with her brothers making her own down-home fun.
ReplyDeleteHaving lost everything in Georgia during the Civil War, my family migrated in a covered wagon with other families at the end of the Civil War. They could travel sixteen miles a day. The covered wagon is now in the town's museum. Sadly, what we've lost by living in suburbia is our past, a sense of our family's history. The family still gathers in Mt. Vernon at Thanksgiving and the children at least for a moment can share in that history.
The pumpkin patch . . .
ReplyDeleteI too took my children to pick out their own pumpkin. There's something about autumn -- the autumn harvest that ties us to the land.
One year in our garden in the suburbs, we planted pumpkin seeds. Our five-year old daughter was ecstatic to see the vine produce a HUGE pumpkin -- so big that we have a photo of her sitting on it.
Regrettably, most of us are too removed from the countryside. Good for you to share this experience with your little daughter.