There Was A Town

I read Beck’s post There Is A Town In North Ontario, and sighed. Sighed with contentment for she said it well. But also exhaled with a certain amount of longing. Her evocative post (and the subsequent comments) was a reminder of what we are losing when we aren't even looking. Or remembering to look.

My summers and winter holidays and every chance I had to be on my grandparent’s farm shaped the landscape of my childhood. There was a river at one end of the property and a big wooded area at the back. In between there were horses, goats, sheep, a barn and hayloft, an old farmhouse and grandparents who believed without talking much about it that it was healthy to go out and do your chores and then vanish into whatever real or imaginary adventures were there to find.

To live in a small town with plenty of wide open space is a great gift and a lifelong legacy for your children. I long for a smaller life. Smaller in the sense of community, and a longing for my child's boundaries to be safer, edged with nature instead of traffic. To instill a sense of wonder and respect for the natural world, to witness the birth of a foal, or tend a garden of vegetables, or help bring in a winter’s worth of hay is to understand your place in the universe just a little bit better.

We chose the city, but almost, so close my heart started settling in and unpacking boxes, chose an island.

In choosing to live where there would not be a commute, where our days and work and schooling would not revolve around a ferry schedule, or necessitate car trips for groceries, we un-chose a whole different version for our child.  A whole different childhood.

I think I was lucky: it is easy to idealize my time on the farm because I also lived in the city where I had the opportunity to experience diverse friendships, daily bus rides and the flasher we had to watch out for on the walk home form school. I learned some very valuable life skills, and never once felt as a young adult the lure to seek or live up to some glamorous expectation of big citydom.

I had already lined up for the bar downtown and tasted the 24 hour a day fresh bagels, just as I had already ridden bareback under the silent stars.

I’m pretty sure I would still make the choice to create our family life where we did, but I read Beck's post, and a great many by daysgoby, and I hear the tinkle of the bell on the door at the gas station cum corner store in the town where I did so much growing up, and I smile. I also ache just a little, for my child will not know the sound of that "Drink 7Up" screened door slamming behind her as she runs off to green and secret places to eat penny candy and skin her knees and dream.

But I do.

This is an original post by EarnestGirl for Canada Moms Blog.
EarnestGirl also writes at YummyMummyClub