Her Mother
Her mother did not enjoy growing up on the family farm.
She did not enjoy the lack of playmates she experienced living down the Morgan side road in the undeveloped Prince Edward County of yester-year. She did not enjoy the chores she was expected to do alongside her mother, sister and brother – especially working in the garden behind their large, old, red-brick farmhouse. “I didn’t have dolls to play with,” she still laments, “I had weeds”.
She did not enjoy the laying hens too eager to defend their eggs from her small, searching hands and she certainly did not enjoy the rooster with his sharp beak, glinting eyes and raking spurs. She really, really, really did not enjoy the garter snakes that regularly appeared around her house to bask in the sun.
She did not enjoy the farm dog that was loyal only to her father and she still bears the scar on her arm where it bit her. She did not enjoy the manure of the dairy cows nor the rooting of the swine in their pen.
She was not able to fully enjoy the company of her sister and her brother whom, being older, tended towards each other exclusively and to activities she was not old enough to join in. Sometimes her sister wanted to play at being a teacher which meant she was required to play at being the student. She did not enjoy being on the receiving end of her sister’s instruction and of her strict, disciplinarian measures.
As she got older she did not enjoy the distance she lived from the only nearby town and the activities that went on there. She always knew she was a displaced “city mouse” and looked forward to leaving the farm, and all the things she did not enjoy about it, behind her someday.
Yet - YET - along with everything she did not enjoy about growing up on the family farm there was one thing she did enjoy very, very much (the memory of which still, to this day, makes her eyes go dreamy with longing).
As she got older she did not enjoy the distance she lived from the only nearby town and the activities that went on there. She always knew she was a displaced “city mouse” and looked forward to leaving the farm, and all the things she did not enjoy about it, behind her someday.
Yet - YET - along with everything she did not enjoy about growing up on the family farm there was one thing she did enjoy very, very much (the memory of which still, to this day, makes her eyes go dreamy with longing).
Both as a child - and as a young woman - she enjoyed lying in her bed at night and listening to the chorus of the spring peepers drifting through her window from the swale in the back of the farm. She drank in this welcome country sound into the depths of her city heart. It was her lullaby and it made her feel, if only for a short while, that she was home right where she was.
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