July 8, 2026
I don’t often take the time to
think back to the summer days of my childhood. Those glorious days of playing
outside all day, not a television or cell phone in sight. I was seven, the last
summer in the little house on the paved road (all the crossroads were gravel).
The next year, we moved across the field into the “big house”, and yes, comparatively
it was big. The little house had only two actual bedrooms (and a kitchen with
an eating nook, a living room, and a bathroom). When my paternal grandmother moved
in with us, she had one bedroom, and my brother used a make-shift space just big
enough for a bed jammed into the front entrance of the house, in what we called
the vestibule. While it was his room, of course, that front door wasn’t in use.
I can’t recall if we used that
door much after my grandmother passed. I can tell you that it was my brother
who took over her bedroom. And the other bedroom? Mom and Dad, my sister and I.
I was moved out of my crib and into the three-quarter bed with my sister when I
was five.
The big house had four
bedrooms. Three upstairs, one for each of us kids, and the larger one
downstairs for mom and dad.
A whole bed, a whole bedroom,
to myself! That, my friends, was a very big deal. Outside our bedrooms was a
common area, about eight-foot square that we dubbed the hallway. It held a
bookcase, and a couple of chairs, had its own window, and of course the
protective railing surrounding the stairs.
Our houses—both the small and
the big—were situated in a rural area, not even a named community, within our
township. There were, on our stretch of the paved road, eleven houses along
about a mile of road, between the two concessions. Some of the houses had a
tree of two in their yards, but most of the trees extended behind the houses
and away from the road. The bushland hid a couple of old trash dumps and one
small structure that might have been either a hen house or a rabbit hutch at
one time. It didn’t carry any signs of past animal habitation. But there were neither
glass nor signs of glass in or around the two small windows, and neither was
there a door—just the three openings.
I recall at least one occasion
when we sheltered there during a sudden cloud burst. The roof kept the rain off
us. Walking farther away from the road through the trees and such, one
eventually encountered a privately owned stone quarry. The same one where, some
decade and a half later my husband would be employed for nearly forty years.
There were five or six of us
kids who would trek around together and make our own fun, back in the day. We
even tried our hand at building a fort out of twigs and small branches. Someone
would bring a couple of towels, and so we would have a roof, of sorts. Just
country kids out playing in the woods, yet close enough to home that we could hear
our parents call “supper”.
Wintertime didn’t bring an end
to outdoor fun. The land on the other side of the paved road, all during my
early years, was marshy at best, and sometimes sported an actual, large pond.
Skating fun was ours, and it was a learning curve to avoid those places where a
few mostly dead yet stubborn weed stalks pushed out above the ice.
David and I spent our first year
of married life in a large city. But I’d been a country kid all my life and
didn’t feel well near the end of that year breathing in the industrial pollution.
Mom still owned both houses. When her tenant left, she rented the little one to
us. Then, a couple years later when she died unexpectedly from a heart attack
(just thirteen years after my father died), David and I “swapped” houses with
my sister so we could have the “big house”.
My kids’ version of being kids
in the country was playing in the field between our house and my sister’s. And
in the winter, since our marshy pond on the other side of the road was long
gone, I would make an ice rink in that field. One year, especially, I got it in
mind to build as good an ice rink as they would ever see. That year, they were
still skating on it in early April.
All good memories, except of
course for the loss of my parents.
Those days seem so very far
away.
Our children didn’t get to repeat
our free-roaming experiences. Each summer we would take them on a few picnics
to the “lakes”—we had two conservation areas with man-made lakes not far from
us, as well as both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie within an hour or two drive.
But they didn’t get to form
their own memories of just heading out each morning and adventuring the way we
did (David steered a similar path to mine in his youth).
The rhythm of life changed from
the days of my youth to those of my children’s. Our lived experiences became a
part of who we were, and who we grew up to be. As our children grew from their
own summers.
I do wonder about today’s
children. They don’t seem to get a whole lot of outdoor time. And I think they
have more screen time than can possibly be good for them. As for making their
own fun? I have the sense that’s something they’ve never had the chance to do.
And maybe it’s not as strange
as I at first thought when I realized that I don’t envy the kids of today at
all.
I pity them. And I worry, a
little, about what their lack of daring and imagination will mean to them as
adults.
More rhythm of life changes,
and not necessarily in a good way.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
