hard thoughts

[kragore]

Things I've known that my children probably never will:

Walking down a quarter mile dirt driveway in all weather to catch the "short bus" not because we were special, but because there were so few of us on the route, they only needed to haul 6 skinny little butts.

Having your bus driver lady pull over and be a few minutes late for school because you all sat in the frosty early morning light and watched another generation of bovine greet the world, and then take it’s first few wobbly steps in a lonely field.

The smell of engine oil and gasoline from the old tractor on the cool fall air – playing in the waxy yellow beech trees, listening to the growl of the chainsaw as my father thinned trees for firewood.

Walking up that driveway again, watching the sunset with my father. Not understanding at the time why he'd stand and gaze at it so, and I'd dance there, impatient, but now I understand.

Tossing hay down the shoots into the horse's stalls, and listening to them chew, from up in the loft, and thinking about how all I wanted was to get home to dinner, and how all I'd like now is to be up in that loft, listening to them chew.

Traipsing through the forest with my sister, with no destination in mind. Just exploring. I always hoped to find old things – an arrowhead, a bit of metal, anything that gave the land the age I could feel. I never did find anything, but I never have stopped looking.

The inevitable turn of life; the calf of two years ago now a steer, making his debut on our dinner table, and all the respect and thanks that went with it.

The smell of damp newspaper – we got the daily and the Sunday every day of my sentient life. My parents read it every day, usually from cover to cover, over tea.

Building "dams" in the streams and trickles of water that ran all around. We didn't need much of an excuse, and I don't understand our diabolic drive to dam back the water, but it was good dirty fun that could keep us busy for hours or even days. Then a good rainstorm would come though, as if god was judging our engineering skills.
We passed if it was still standing.

The peepers and the fireflies and the path of stars through the sky… will they ever know these simple things"



All these things make me sad.
Makes me realize how far I've gotten from myself.
These are things that changed me, molded me, gave me an appreciation for life and the things around me.
I feel like I've turned my back on that simpler, slower, quieter life. And though it was a life without sushi, without Thai, without the variety of radio stations, without many of the creature comforts I’ve come to take for granted… There is something Missing. An important lesson that's gotten lost on my path...

It's as though as soon as I fill one hole in my life, I discover another slow leak…

These are the thoughts I think, in the late and the dark, when I can't sleep because my heart, while full, is so tired.

- k.