Thursday, July 28, 2005

A Good Place to Grow Up

Not long ago a visitor paused in our front yard and looked around. She took in the old-fashioned house with a big white porch, the homemade swing set in the yard, the green grass, and the trees and said, “Do your children appreciate growing up in such an idyllic setting?”

“No,” I said, “they don’t. But someday they will.”

I have a feeling that ten or fifteen years from now one of my children will be teaching in some inner city or immunizing children in a dusty village overseas, and suddenly they’ll get this incredible appreciation for growing up where they did, where the creek beckoned on hot summer days, the water flowed clean and delicious from the tap, and the kids slept outside on the trampoline all summer long with no danger beyond the cat pouncing on them at 3 a.m.

We are very blessed.

Quote of the Day:
“I can put up my hair in exactly 12 seconds.”
--Emily, who wraps her long hair around her wrist, twists it once, and skewers it with a plastic chopstick. Her Aunt Lois took an hour to put up her hair at this age, Paul says.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, Emily...and I thought I was fast!!!

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  2. I grew up there (minus the porch) and I loved it. Phil picked some wild blackberries this morning so I got to snack on them all day. Every time I tasted a berry it took me back to summertime and all afternoon at the creek with my cousins, swimming, picking blackberries, swimming, playing in the gravel pit, and swimming again. I really do love summer.

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