Monday, July 20, 2009

FAMILY – NEW EXCURSIONS, NEW PLEASURES

A new home in the country provided new horizons, new venues and new places to explore. Of course living in the country provides wide-open spaces where children can run and play without the slightest need for supervision or structured entertainment. A favorite place at this home was the surrounding pasture where we spent many happy hours exploring and dragging up rocks and old discards of other families who had come and gone, using anything we could find to build our houses. Building houses was a favorite pastime for us. We would line them out with rocks and would build tables and chairs and other items of "furniture". Then, of course, the visitations would begin as we would visit back and forth to share the news and the gossip of the day. In the front yard of this home (the Benjamin house we called it) was a tree that provided many wonderful, beautifully colored leaves in the fall to roll and jump and tussle. I have no recollection of what kind of tree it was but the leaves were big and made a wonderfully soft pile when swept up with the straw broom. I can still see within my mind my sisters and me playing in the leaves we had piled high as we completed our chore of sweeping the front yard. Chores were so much more fun when they ended with playtime! FAMILY – TOGETHER IN WORK AND IN PLAY