I ’m not a land female child by fosterage . I grew up in the suburbia of Birmingham , Ala. , with a major interstate highway a stern - mile outside my bedchamber windowpane . It was n’t as bad as it sounds , though .
My childhood home , which my parents still live in , backed up to a wooded hillside with a run - off stream that pool in a hole under a largetreeand finally ran into a ditch in front of our menage . That ditch was a “ brook ” in my eye , where we — me , my sister and our neighbor — would play for minute , sift “ gold ” out of its sediment and making “ rouge ” out of the flushed , Alabama clay . This was country life in the big city .
And while there was also a McDonald ’s a half - mi from our home ’s front door , my parent institutionalize me to an elementary school day a county over , where the close fast - food eatery was at least 15 miles in any direction . That little church service school resting on a windy hilltop surrounded by grassy fields offered me a taste of country life that I would n’t have experienced at the school in my vicinity . break were spend playing on a wooden garrison and find fault bouquets ofwildflowers . scientific discipline classes were hold at a nearby pond where we observed tadpoles and possibly even the occasional crawdad . One mean solar day , we even madebiscuitsfrom scratch at our teacher ’s nearby house . This was my so - call body politic life on the weekday .
I also got my dose of country life when visit my good friend ’s house on weekends . I thought it was so cool how everyone in her family — grandparents , aunty , uncles , cousins — had a planetary house on the same route . We rode herhorses , dally King of the Mountain with her uncle’sgoats , hiked to waterfalls and drovefour - wheelerson wooded , scarlet - dirt trail . We only play inside when it was raining .
There were other brushes with country life growing up , like the trips with my parents to Spruiell ’s Dairy in Leeds , Ala. , for somehomemade ice cream . It was n’t a fancy shoes and there were n’t 31 flavors , but it was the salutary trash cream I ’d ever had . … Or represent in my paternal grandfather ’s large veggie garden . His cornstalk , twice as grandiloquent as I was , made a great spot to get lose during game of hide - and - seek . … Or tastinggrapesstraight from the vines encircling the oldclotheslinein my maternal grandparent ’ backyard — the same yard my mother run around in as a shaver .
Now that I have a new girl — our first child acquit 11 week ago today — I’m thinking about how she will experience childhood and , all of a sudden , the square maculation of grass we call a backyard just does n’t seem to cut it . Yes , it ’s enough way for a vegetable garden and a fort of some sort , I ’m sure . Yes , there is coast banksia growing on the fencing for her to tickle her taste buds with and even the periodic lapin family that hops through . But will it be enough to give her the simple pleasure I experienced in puerility ?
I want her to relish playing by a pool or in a proper tree theater like her dada did growing up in rural Kentucky . I desire her to take tractor rides at her grandad ’s house and try the rhubarb growing under her grannie ’s windowsill . Although the “ creek ” at my puerility home plate has long been covered up by the city , the run - off watercourse still pool at the groundwork of that old tree in the woods . I require to take her there and find out her splash her feet where I used to .
As Laura Ingalls Wilder put it , “ It is the sweet , wide-eyed things of animation which are the real ones after all . ” As I think about my daughter ’s years ahead , the inclination of what I need for her is long , but it ’s these elementary things I want her to experience while she ’s young . perchance it ’s time to trade in our bandage of grass for a country backdrop . While I ’m not a country young woman by upbringing , maybe my daughter will be .
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