City Girl, Country Girl

Entering the building for the first time, I tripped, dropping the pencil case I had fashioned from a watercolor paint box. Clearly an inauspicious start to fifth grade, my hopes to be as popular at the new school as I was unpopular at the last were dashed, along with my No. 2 pencils.

The fixer-upper we bought when I was a
kid. It looks like it could stand to be fixed
up again.Courtesy: Google Maps.

My parents chose the school for its status as the cheapest private school in the area. We drove from city, through suburb, to country to get there. We planned to build a house, but when our home sold too quickly, we purchased a fixer-upper in a hurry--a house chosen for its money-making potential rather than its excellent public school system.

Shy in social situations, I found making friends difficult. So I sat on the step at recess, secretly annoyed that they recited the jump-roping chant wrong, yet longing for an invitation to join in.

Manure, just right for pelting your
friend. Courtesy: Newsvine.com

Johnna took initiative, and I accepted an invite to her dairy farm. Mortified by her proposal of a manure fight, I declined to participate. Only as an adult, scooping manure to fertilize our garden--and paying fifty cents per bucket for the privilege--did I realize she wasn't referring to fresh manure, but rather, the composted variety--clumped grass bits bound with what looks like dirt.

The following Monday, Johnna reported the social faux pas. My city ways didn't pass muster. Ostracized for refusing to sling cow dung, years later, my dad put it into perspective: While teaching, he heard of a kid, taunted, because his firefighter dad perished in a blaze. I won't repeat the wording, lest it haunt you as it has me. As I recall my first year at the new school, I shed no tears. But I weep inside for a boy, who, in his moment of greatest need, experienced cruelty rather than compassion.

My fifth grade teacher (I could inject "bless his heart" here, but won't) took me out of class one day, a few weeks into the school year. The aide admonished my classmates to include me while the teacher assured me that Lisa would be my recess playmate. She was--for a few days. Walking back into the classroom following the 'be-nice-to-Laura' lecture remains my life's most humiliating moment. That the teachers were trying to help provided little salve for my embarrassment. I chose to homeschool, partially, because of my experience.

Our back yard.

For years, I replayed this in my mind. As an adult, I live just a few blocks from the Raymond Avenue house where I resided while attending the country school. I love my neighborhood, and hope never to leave. We have an extra half lot, cultivating more garden than grass. When people ask, their eyes glaze over before I'm half-done reciting all the herbs, vegetables, and fruit we grow. We pickle, dehydrate, can, freeze, brew vinegar and beer, make wine from our own grapes, cook everything from scratch, compost, forage, and--aside from being poultry-free--run what might be considered an urban homestead. We buy raw milk, farm-fresh eggs and local honey. I keep meaning to learn soap- and cheese-making.

Recently I googled Johnna. She runs an online store, like I do. She's a homesteader. She teaches classes on making cheese and soap, and foraging wild herbs. She homeschools.

Oh, my. She could be my friend.

Here's Johnna. Doggonit, I even owned
the same dress. Courtesy: Publicradio.org.

Here I am, picking blueberries.

If only I had more initiative, I'd pick up the phone. Maybe it's not too late to have that manure fight.

But I know myself too well. I still bear the social reticence that kept me a fifth grade outsider. So I'll pick up my No. 2 pencil instead, and write how I now realize perhaps Johnna and I are more alike than different. The city girl can befriend the country girl.

Children grow up, and time turns manure into soil.

Next up: An unlikely piece of '80s nostalgia brings back more memories than you can imagine: A Tinful of Memories

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