I had a great time growing up with my kids.
We played ball. We climbed trees. We went berry picking and came home and made cakes oozing with fruit. We walked, checking out the neighbourhoods, the streets and fields around where we lived.
We learned to do cartwheels together on the front lawn, near the old Gravenstein apple tree.
We would sometimes all load up in the little Cortina and go to the beach or the park.
For a time, we lived in a park, a forty-six acre nature park while their dad was a park caretaker.
The kids had dogs and the park had two streams running through it and a swimming hole. There were swings and slides and a baseball diamond, creeks and bridges.
There were huge trees in the park, cedars and beeches and firs, and all kinds of exotics that the original owner had planted.
My children would run and play with their dogs, with their friends.
They went off to Navy Cadets every week. Even my son pressed his own uniform pants. He said I didn’t do it right! They polished their shoes and kept themselves well turned out for the event.
If there was a quarrel or a fight between them, I would make them face each other and with me in the middle, they would each get a turn to tell their version of what happened, no interruptions.
Then we would decide what had to happen from there: an apology (usually mutual) or sharing, or whatever the situation called for. There were consequences, mutually decided, sometimes grudgingly agreed to. But the children knew it was fair and right.
What I got from my childhood, my daughter once said to me, is a sense of justice.
My children still remember how beautiful the park was when all the fruit trees blossomed in the spring. And the wonderful harvests in the fall.
Yes, life was not always idyllic. In fact, far from it sometimes. But these memories are what we hold on to…
Margaret Jean 