We just moved to the country.
Not the have-to-send-telegraphs kind of country,
but the kind with grassy hills and mature trees, and with enough space between you and your next-door neighbor that you don’t accidentally wake up holding hands.
I, a country girl at heart, had dreamed for years about such a move.
I’d say, “I could live in a tiny house if only the kids had more room to run outdoors.”
I didn’t know if Justin could take it because of dust, and mud, and bugs;
but I wanted it so much.
It feels like a prophesy, almost,
saying that, when I look back.
And it’s not that I wasn’t thankful for our home then, because I was.
It’s just that I’d rather hear crickets and roosters than sirens and police helicopters,
and I wondered if my kids could even ride actual bikes anymore,
or if they now could only ride the ones on Roblox;
Not to mention our old neighborhood was starting to feel kind of stabby…
I often thought about my own childhood as I looked at the girls,
their faces lit up by screens, and the noise of traffic outside.
I felt like they were missing out on something so pure and necessary to the forming of their spirits, and I felt at a loss for how to give it to them.
I worried it was too late to start over.
Childhood to me was open air,
and legs itching from sitting in the grass.
Childhood is not coming in if you didn’t absolutely have to,
because if you did you’d definitely be given a chore.
And not a light “kid” chore, either.
More like,
“Here’s some leather, now learn to tan it professionally.”
My childhood had been on a small, hidden lane out in the country, in a beautiful, classic small town.
Then one day my mother,
who had lived with us for over a decade, announced she was moving 3 hours away due to the cost of living here.
The change would be drastic.
We scrambled to come up with how we could afford to stay living in the big house we were in without her.
(California does not make these things simple)
For weeks I was torn up with stress and worry over what we would even do next;
when suddenly,
there it was:
A post on Facebook from my childhood best friend.
The friend who had lived right next door to my childhood home on that very same small, hidden lane.
The one whom my imagination ran away with most often.
She was asking if anyone would be interested in renting her 3 bedroom house.
The very house she had lived in all those years ago,
and the one that sat right next-door to mine.
Friends,
I stared at that screen like it had just proposed to me.
Years ago my parents had divorced,
leaving that neighborhood I loved,
and making me feel like I would never again be able to truly go back Home.
My mind almost could not take that post in in a steady stream.
The rental was affordable,
it would be available right when we’d need it, and the yard – enough room for pets, and garden boxes, and a fire-pit to surround with friend’s amber-glow faces.
Three hours later I was showing Justin the neighborhood.
Three months later and here I sit inside of that house,
writing this story in the exact same spot I used to sit to watch Saturday morning cartoons as a kid with my friend –
Directly next-door to my childhood home.
I cannot describe the way it feels to have such big dreams being granted lately.
To watch,
when the prayer for it had been so silent inside me,
my girls ride off on bikes down the same exact street that I once used to ride on.
The second week here and I taped cards to their spokes.
“There. Now you have motors.”
The sound of them riding by brings back the feeling of how it felt when that was me.
Of when it was my magic, too.
I had wished my kids could have a childhood like mine,
and now they are getting almost the same exact one.
(Minus intermittent leather tanning)
There have been some adjustments.
We downsized by at least half.
We got rid of things that stung more than a little to part with.
I did the thing where you sneak lots of kids’ stuff out at the bottom of trash bags so they don’t become suddenly reattached.
But what we have gained has been far more valuable than anything we parted with.
This morning Paige, my 6 year old,
woke up long before me.
When I asked her what she had done in that time, she answered,
“I went out in da rain and I digged in da mud,”
and I cannot tell you how happy that sentence made me.
Because
I just didn’t want them to miss it –
True childhood.
It would be so easy to miss it.
Childhood’s voice is small,
and easy to drown out.
Its light is soft.
Its rules are simple.
Its feet move fast and quiet,
But its hands…
They can hold so much into place.
As I carried things into the garage upon moving in here, I came across a nearly forgotten box.
Inside was a collection of letters I’d written my brother upon my parent’s divorce.
I stood in the driveway as the kids played happily on the road and I read what I’d written to him 15 years before.
I had been so sad to lose our tiny house with room to run.
I had grieved it like a death.
But there I stood beginning a whole new life just steps away,
and in awe, and through tears I read:
“I kept my key….
Maybe just as a sign that Home is not ever completely gone.
That we can make it wherever we are.
That Home is where we and our children are, and I think I’ll maybe always hang onto the key.”
And so, here we are.
Six people and 5 pets in a small house in the country
thats backdrop is the same as most of my best memories;
And it feels so very good to be Home.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
