The big green tent

And there we were desolute for something to do on summer vacation. Long days of weeding the garden were not satisfying a teenager's soul for excitement. My sister and I planned the whole thing and took it to our mother for approval. We wanted to invite two girlfriends each for a backyard camp out. We had a tent the family used each summer. It was large enough for six to sleep comfortably. My parents always slept in a pup tent. When we reached our teens, the boys also got a separate tent. Anyway, we took the plan to our mother and she approved. We were ecstatic and called all our friends.

She pulled out the tent from the summer before and it had been chewed up by moths. So what to do now everyone has been invited. She had a bolt of green denim her aunt had sent to make us dungarees (that is what we called blue jeans back then! lol) but we wouldn't be caught dead in green jeans. My aunt's pecadillos will make up another blog post! So she finds the bolt of green denim and designs a tent - with screened windows and a zippered door. My mom sewed all our clothes so a tent was nothing, just straight lines. While she was busily making the tent, my sister and I took care of all the household chores. My sister's girlfriend Sandy (who seemed to live at our house) helped my mother by holding the growing tent. Mom's sewing machine was a big professional Bernina so it could handle the heavy fabric. Sandy would 'walk' the material from the front porch where my mom had the machine into the living room and back. The tent became a big green monster! When it was finished we needed ropes wrapped around tree branches at each end of the roof to hold it up. We staked the corners at the floor. It was a massive tent that all of us could stand up in and not have to bend over.

Before long, my brothers were involved and we pulled out the other tent and it was in great shape. So my brothers invited their friends. We had four boys and six girls in the back yard all under 14 not including my younger siblings. We cooked outside. My mom charged everyone a dollar a day for food but we went through that by breakfast. We played in the pool and chased each other. I still had to weed the garden every day but it wasn't so bad with all my friends helping. One of my girlfriends had a transistor radio (pre-iPod days lol) so we got to sing along to great songs while we worked. And we figured if we got up early and got the weeding done by 9am, we'd miss the heat of the day. Maybe that's when I became an early bird. I"m up at the crack of dawn every day.

I wrote a story about that week and submitted it to a couple of magazines. It never went anywhere, but Sandy told us years later that our home saved her. She laughs when we get together to reminisce and she'll ask every time, "How many mothers make tents?" I'm not sure, but mine did. And it was a BIG green tent!

Animal Vegetable Miracle

Started reading Barbara Kingsolver's book for another class. Lauren, I think you would find it particularly interesting. It turned me off during my first read through last Christmas, but I pulled it out again now it's time to read more closely and write a reflection on it for class. I realized how brave the family was to leave their home in Tucson and settle on a small farm in Virginia with the goal of eating only things they could get locally. It got me to thinking about my childhood. We had a square acre of a garden and I hated it. As a kid, my main duty during the summertime was to weed that garden. Every single day I had a set number of rows that I had to complete. When I finished my weekly chore, it began all over again. I hated weeding, bent over in the hot sun is hard work. But we also had an above-ground pool. So that was refreshing after hours of weeding the garden. We had lots of fun in that pool. I'll write another post about a camp-out I had involving the pool. Fun times. But back to food - that garden of ours fed our family of nine all winter long. My mother canned tomatoes, so many tomatoes! And the corn tasted like nothing else! We would pick it, husk it, cook it and in less than 15 minutes we'd eat it. Yum. I think today's generation misses out on some of that hard work and good eating. Our little plots of land aren't big enough to grow enough to feed the family for a winter. And so Kingsolver takes her family back to her roots in Virginia to help her kids understand what it means to eat locally. It was a neat experiment that involved the whole family. And it has prompted me to plant some veges this summer. My little seedlings are sprouting nicely and I hope to have some fresh green beans and cukes this summer. And I have to thank Ms. Kingsolver for that.

How much is public vs. private

I've been debating with myself about posting a work-related topic, but every time I re-read my draft, I edit it a little and then hit the save now button instead of the publish post button. Why? It's just too sensitive. I wrote a long post about what's been going on in my work life lately (lots of churn and change and uncertainty) and it's too nerve-wracking to publish. If someone at work finds it, it's possible it would have repurcussions for my career. Negative ones, I might add. And so I wrestle with my feelings and opinions in private because I cannot write about it 'in public' on my blog. What's unfolding at work has caused me sleepless nights and chewed up nails. I am happy and grateful I have a job, but what's been going on really bugs me and I want to scream through the written word, but instead I just save it. Edit. Save it again. And so what is happening to me in public at work has to remain private. Or my feelings about it need to stay private, saved in draft form to never see the light of publication. It's a shame because my opinions are strong ones on this topic and I cannot voice them. Unless I want to lose my job and then that would begin a fully new post that a future employer might not appreciate. I'll just keep my thoughts to myself but it leads me to wonder. Just how much can be stated without fear of repurcussion> and does that mean we really have lost our freedom of speech. Food for thought....