When I was a little girl we made our own fun...as a child of the 60's we really didn't watch much television and there certainly were no techno games to hold our attention. Our fun was classic kid's stuff, the kind of things that imagination dreams up and parents just smile at.
In the early years we were a military family. Living on base meant, among other things, that there was always an abundance of children to play with.
We would ride bikes, play with jacks, jump rope, play hopscotch, dodge ball, kick the can, make forts out of the sheets hanging on the clothes lines, play princess, play dolls and stay out in the streets until it was nearly too dark to see our way home. Upon arriving at home it would be time for supper, bath time, and bedtime. So went the ebb and flow of our days until 1965 when Dad retired from the Army and we entered civilian life.
Military life meant frequent duty station changes. With the exception of our tour in Germany which was three years, we moved every year of my early childhood. From California - to Maryland - to Germany - to Virginia - to California - and finally to retirement. Ahh, civilian life...live where you want...choose when you move.
We moved to be near my Grandmother in my mother's childhood town of Puyallup, Washington, and we never moved to another city again. My parents made one last move from the home at 1711 West Stewart to a home they had built on the back of the lot....but that story is for another time.
I can only now appreciate just what a chore our early life must have been for my parents. Five little children were hardly a moving company of helping hands. I can only guess at how often those games we played outside were at the nudging of a mother who was often on some point of what must have been an endless cycle of constant packing, unpacking, organizing, sorting and eliminating the excess.
When we settled into civilian life, the seasons of our year shifted. We no longer went with the "pack - move - settle in - adjust - pack - move - settle in -adjust...." cycle...we were now in the "school - summer - school - summer" - cycle.
We quickly learned not to say "I'm bored", "there's nothing to do", because mom was genius! She had two answers that there could be no arguing with..."Go weed", or "Go think pleasant thoughts".
...Weeding was a given around our house. Besides the flower beds around the house, we grew a fairly large garden just beyond the wagon wheel gate of our back yard. Oh, it wasn't the sort of garden that produced ample veggies that we could package up and sell at a local Farmer's Market, but certainly it produced ample veggies to keep a family of seven in fresh salads through the summer. Each of us kids had our own couple of rows (lo-o-ong rows!) where we could plant whatever we wanted to. It was our chore to tend to them. Plant, water, weed and harvest was the regular routine in tending to our little plot of land.
And then there were the family rows where we would share the tending chores. Those rows provided our early spending money...10 cents a row for weeding - and no stopping half way! (Did I mention they were lo-o-o-ng rows!) I would guess the majority of the potatoes, cucumbers and corn came from those family rows. My lack of a green thumb tells me that whatever it was I planted, I most likely tended to as a hobby. Surely had we been left to my produce production, we would have soon been in serious lack.
Weeding became pleasant for me. I could weed as I chose at my own speed...no time schedule and nothing much to do but pull out whatever wasn't a plant. I realized that any plant that was growing where I didn't want it was a "weed". If I left the errant plant to grow for a few more days it might became a brilliant blue bachelor button, then again, it could turn out to be a dandelion causing havoc. At that moment in time the plant I pondered was either a weed that I could pull, or a plant I could nurture to grow into what it was created to be. The choice was mine. When it came to weeding, I was able to let go of what "might be" and celebrate the "what is."
With life, the celebrating is a little more important. Concerns that are left to grow long after they should have been plucked, and dreams that are pulled too early so they don't get to mature into what they might be, are far more important than dandelions left to grow and bachelor buttons plucked too soon.
Thinking about what might be and daydreaming about futures, give our spirit something to hold on to...grasp hold of the pleasant thoughts and don't let the weeds of "what is" strangle the dream.
When mom sent us off to weed, we nurtured our soil. When she sent us off to think pleasant thoughts, we nurtured our soul...and gave our heart a reason to smile.
Weeding and thinking....I still enjoy both pastimes. But the older I get, the more I enjoy just thinking pleasant thoughts. Thanks mom!
