Growing Up in the Sticks

Sometimes, my husband likes to tease me about growing up in the sticks. He mentions things like stale bread and suggests that maybe the reason I said "yes" to him was simply because there were no other options for a husband. We laugh because we know it wasn't true. At least the husband part. The bread part is still up for debate. I suppose that if all you ever have is stale bread, you don't actually know that it's stale.

(my sister and I in the creek behind my grandparent's house)

In first grade, my teacher put up a little train around the room with sight words on each car. We practiced them every day. I can still remember how shocked I was to learn that the word "pretty" was not pronounced "purdy." My little world was completely rocked. 

When I was fourteen, I sat in a pancake house and ordered a tall glass of milk as my beverage, the only acceptable choice to accompany a giant stack of cappuccino pancakes. The man who was buying my breakfast laughed a kind laugh and said, "She's from the country and she likes it that way." I didn't know then that he was referencing a country song, but I do now. He also took me to Starbucks for the very first time. We were living in the city then and the bread was very fresh.

Today, I tell my girls how lucky they are to live five minutes from the library. Where I lived, the closest library was forty-five minutes away but the Bookmobile came every Friday. I would open up that bus door in the middle of a heat wave and be met with the glorious scent of pages and air conditioning. The books lining those slanted shelves were my gateway into a larger world. This past summer, the Bookmobile was visiting our local library. When I stepped inside with my girls, I wondered if time travel might actually be real. 

So yes, I grew up in the sticks but it wasn't a bad way to live. And now I'm sitting on the couch beside a man who says, "purdy." Maybe there is a bit of the sticks in all of us.