Friday, April 8, 2022
A Charmed World
At one time, the world as I knew it, was an amazing place with unlimited room for unexpected, out-of-the-ordinary things to happen. It was a long time ago. It was before I went to school. Before I suffered my first big disappointment. Before I found that my dreams of flying were nothing more than that, only dreams. Before I learned that someday I would compare myself to others and find myself wanting. It was my true and real world as a child. The only world that mattered.
Childhood was glorious in its simplicity. For most of us anyway, and I wish I could say that it was true for all of us. I didn't know how glorious it was at that time, of course. No one does. It's only later, in reflection, that we can think back and realize, "Well, wasn't that just a great way to start off in the world? Me, as a kid? In fact, it was nothing short of genius."
This was my world. I was short. I slept in a very large crib in mom and dad's bedroom. I could easily crawl out of it. My house was populated by tall people. Mostly long-legged girls...soon to become young women but I didn't know that at the time. In my world, they would always be exactly the way they were in my first awareness of them. No more surprising than my place at the supper table where I stood to eat. There weren't enough chairs for all of us. Two parents, one grandmother, and seven children required an awful lot of chairs. More chairs than I knew how to count back then. And clearly, one more chair than we had. This was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It just was. Just like the houseful of tall people around me.
None of the other children in my pre-school Sunday School class had a whole raft of those tall people living in their houses with them, and you know what? I felt just a little bit bad for them. Figured their houses must have been rather empty. Maybe quiet and dull. I had no idea. What if I were the oldest in a family? Or the second to oldest? I wouldn't know how to behave, I thought. Good thing I was last.
In addition to the long-legged girls in my house, my world was populated with a tall, curly-headed boy with exceptionally long arms. The others were referred to as Sisters, but he was a Brother. I thought it was probably good that I had only the one. As near as I could figure, he'd been granted the unique job of making things challenging for me. Apparently, that was what a Brother did. None of the other tall people caused me trouble in any way. In fact, everyone else was pretty nice to me.
In my world, everyone had a job. That seemed to me to be as it should be. Everyone was busy. There were very few disagreements about whose turn it was to do what was asked of them. Maybe a little bit of grumbling by whoever dried the dishes. But that was because when my grandma washed, she liked to pour hot water over the dishes in the drainer, just when they were nearly dry. Some of the Sisters were annoyed by that. I figured grandma knew best.
Mom's job was to cook and clean and do the laundry. She hung the wet clothes out on the line all year round. Her fingers turned red and chapped in the winter especially. She canned peaches and blackberries and vegetables, but it was the peaches and blackberries that were important to me. She fried fish at least once/week and once in a while, made liver, which I could smell from upstairs. She made eleven loaves of bread each week. We had mashed potatoes when we had company, which I would have liked a little more often. In her spare time (meaning, in the evenings while the family watched TV) she made us popcorn. And then she sewed. Often late into the night. There were a lot of us to sew for. Once in a while, I found her napping. I tried not to wake her by tiptoeing into her room very quietly so that I would only wake up one of her eyes.
Dad's job, of course, was making the farm run. He decided things and told us at the supper table what was next. There was no arguing about any of that. When he said, "Well, let's get outside, then," the other tall people got up and went out, too. When it was time to work, it was time to work. Dad milked cows morning and night and three or four of the other Sisters and Brother did, too. Dad could do almost anything on the farm, it seemed, except that he called a neighbor if the tractor needed fixing. He always wore overalls and a straw hat and a white shirt in the summer. He was good to the cows and the pigs and I knew he loved horses even though we didn't have any. He built fences and blew up a stump with dynamite which was really exciting. He could be stern but he made jokes too. When he whistled, we knew he was happy and that made me happy, too.
Grandma's job was to help with cooking and canning and shelling peas. In the summer, she lived in a separate little house on the next farm. I think she liked having her own place. I stayed overnight sometimes and got to pump water at the cistern. We went to sleep when it started to get dark, so we didn't have to use the kerosene lamp. She took me into the woods with her to pick walnuts and she carried a big long stick in case we came upon a rattlesnake.
With a houseful of big Sisters and one Brother, there were a lot of things that we could do that would have been nearly impossible at the homes of other kids. Softball, for example. We had enough young people on our farm for a pitcher, a catcher, two runners and two outfielders, while the seventh of the clan (me) would have been the cheering section. (Bats are heavy for four-year-olds.) And in my gilded world, I would have been allowed to run the bases alongside the batter. I admit it was a charmed world.
LOVED your story! Brought back so many good memories of you and your family.
ReplyDeleteCousin Bonnie