Girlhood

I was an organized as a girl kept my room and desk neat, artistic abilities were there when I was young, I had a collection of stamps, shells, and stories to tell; a tomboy sleuth wanna-be who loved to read Nancy Drew mysteries ride my bike, swim and dive at the local pool. Huck Finn & Hardy Boys books.

I was and am friendly out-going I could run a ‘tiller in the garden, split wood from the bee tree and helped build a house from the early age of five I learned to pound nails with a hammer. I possessed a natural suntanned golden glow in the summers from playing outside and swimming. I’ve always enjoyed crafts and making things with my scissors and glue and still do. I liked to do the fun stuff at VBS with other children’s playful encounters group games were fun and purposeful for me.

I had a soaring imagination and had grandeous dreams of adventurous fun, some of my longings aspired to far-reached my natural abilities. My boundless ambitions of being a rancher, log cabin builder inspired by authors like Louis Lamoure, Caddie Woodlawn, and Laura Ingles Wilder.

Reading library books as fast as I could mom and gram worked at the small library in our town and I read my way through the children’s books and moved on to the grown up sections and we got books from the book-mobile that came to town every week or two our school did not have a library. (None of the schools in the area did.)

In some of my authentic moments in my girlhood I spent skating, sledding on snow, hiking and fishing on scouts rock were. Essential to me was solitude I climbed trees watched the sunset and wrote poetry about them and other beautiful things in life. I took art classes and embraced my creative spirit.

One summer we went digging for gems Idaho garnets. Putting mud through a screen we actually found some garnets. I had an encounter with some nettles that was not fun!

I remember at I was not popular in grade school I had a few friends. In third grade I had a teacher that was a great example of how not to teach and made me hate school the next two years were hell for me because of it. I could not wait to grow up and be done with school grades, and tests!

Later in my as a preteen some how I know my diverse talents would make it hard to chose and have balance in my life. I thought you had to pick one thing and stick with it your while life. The wisdom of my youth still amazes me today as I think back.

When I was twelve our family out grew our house and we moved three miles away from being next door to the grandparents. The house had three acres, a one hundred year old seven gable house, and rock terraces the story goes that the banker had embezzled money to pay for this, and he had an oriental gardener.

The house when we first saw it had grass tall enough to bale for hay looked like the money pit, in the back yard a small fish pond and fountains that no longer worked. We put on a new roof, did some foundation work, and mowed acre of lawn to keep us out of trouble in the summers, plus an acre of garden to tend, a chicken coup, tool shed garage and root cellar if that was not enough needed attention and cleaning. Flowering trees were growing too in the lawn, gram wanted some so I dug her some seedlings for her garden. I got a piano and barely had time to practice. The next door neighbor was the president of the local saw mill raised Arabian show horses not very kid friendly. We rode with their grand daughter on a more mild mannered horse from time to time.