How I Became A Country Woman

I wasn’t one to keep in touch with childhood and high school friends, but I’ve often thought of them and wondered where time has taken them.  Then, yesterday, I received a Facebook friend request from my childhood friend Yvonne.

Immediately I was flooded with memories of happy days and nights I spent at her family’s farm, where she and her three siblings lived with their parents and maternal grandmother.

The house was a traditional foursquare. It was heated by a huge wood-burning cook stove and, on special occasions, by another wood stove in the living room. Water came from a hand pump over a sink in the kitchen. The toilet was a privy behind the house. We ate supper by the light of kerosene lamps and carried a lamp upstairs when we went to bed.

I remember picking huckleberries at the woods's edge in summer and bathing in a big washtub on the back porch. I remember searching for eggs laid by their free-ranging chickens. I remember going to bed in the winter weighed down by several quilts and waking to windows heavy with frost from our breath. I remember the day Yvonne reached into the bin of chicken feed and was bitten on her finger by a mouse.

I loved everything about visiting Yvonne and never declined an invitation to spend the night. My dad was a farmer, too, but his farmhouse burned to the ground before he and my mother were married, so we lived in a bungalow in the nearby village. Although I went to our farm and played there, my only real experience of farm life was when I visited Yvonne.

Every detail of Yvonne's house is imprinted in my mind. Whenever I read a novel set in the country, that is the house I picture.

Today it dawned on me how my friendship with Yvonne evolved into my life dream of living in the country. Of course I don’t live as Yvonne and her family lived. I have every modern convenience I desire, but I also have a garden and chickens. I listen to the coyotes yipping at the full moon. Deer and wild turkeys frequent my front yard. I pick wild gooseberries and raspberries. I also have two kerosene lamps. They come in handy when the electricity fails.

One never knows how important friendships will be. I’m thankful Yvonne was, and is, my friend. Yes, of course, I accepted her invitation to be a Facebook friend.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer