| Well, here I am |
[Jul. 8th, 2006|12:41 pm] |
My first blog. I'm slightly terrified, because I'm flashing back to my failed attempt at keeping a diary when I was a kid. Every day, the entries ran something like this: "Nothing happened today." And they finally dwindled to "NOTHING!!!" and "Still NOTHING."
Granted, it was summertime in Decatur, Indiana (population 6,000 and shrinking) and right on the edge of town, where the excitement of the city turned to the smell of freshly manured fields. I lived in a hundred-year-old farmhouse with an acre or so around it and a weedy 7-acre field across the yard. I was the youngest of seven children, and the youngest by a lot. My two oldest brothers were already in college by the time I was 5. My sisters were gone all the time — frankly I can't even remember where they were. Two other brothers were four and six years older than me and pretty much played with army guys and BB guns all day. If I dared to wander near them, they usually tried to think of a way to ruin my day by staging an army invasion of my Barbie Pool and RV set. Not much to choose from in the way of playmates around the house.
Didn't matter much, though, because from the moment my father woke up and finished breakfast, the period of Hard Labor began. It was time to tend the almighty garden. His uber-project. Every winter and spring he'd pour over the Burpee Seed Catalog, laying out his biggest and best garden yet. The lettuces in the spring garden at the side of the yard, and the rows and rows of corn and tomatoes and countless other vegetables in the big garden out back.
My father worked late and slept late, so by the time he'd eaten his breakfast, it was about 10:30 in the morning. After the sun had burned off the morning dew and the cool breeze had turned into a stagnant layer of humidity, we were herded to the old chicken coop, which was our garden shed. We each were issued a hoe and assigned a section of the garden. There was even a kid-sized hoe for me — just a full-sized hoe with a broken handle.
I was given the task of hoeing the new corn, because this was deemed the easiest job in the garden. Most five-year-olds probably couldn't tell the different between crabgrass and new corn shoots, but I could. I learned very quickly when my father, upon reviewing the troops, discovered to his dismay that I had carefully hoed around a variety of weeds that looked more interesting than the poor corn plants. My father has a colorful, awe-inspiring temper usually reserved for things of little importance, but that garden was his baby. I learned to treat it with care.
Once the daily hoeing was done, we were released from garden duty. Of course, there were always other jobs to do. My parents were as old as my friends' grandparents, but they were always energetic and always busy. I didn't seem to inherit the same fervor for Doing. I was content to spend all summer reading books in my room. My mom would inevitably yell at me to get outside and get some fresh air. So, I'd pick up my book and move outside to the porch swing. If a bee happened to buzz by, I'd run back inside until the coast was clear.
I guess if nothing ever happened to me, as I duly recorded in my sad little diary, it was probably my own fault. Some kids with access to fields and huge yards and bikes and balls and trees for climbing could have an amazing time. But I was never the Tom Sawyer type. Even if something new and different had happened to me, I probably would have interpreted it as nothing. That's what happens when you live inside books. If I wasn't reading a book, I was thinking about the the story and just biding my time until I could get back to it. I was so consumed by my favorite stories — and I'd read them over and over in an almost compulsive fashion — that I lost interest in my surroundings. All I knew was that I was not Laura Ingalls listening to Pa play the fiddle in the moonlit Indian Territory. I was not Nancy Drew fearlessly exploring a haunted mansion. I was just me. Just trying to make it to the end of the corn row and my return to freedom. Staring at the clouds and dreaming of other times, other places, other people. Not seeing the sweet little town, the wide open fields, the caring family, the promise and the prospects. The truth is that a lot of great stuff happened to me when I was a kid. I just wish I'd seen it. |
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