Island kids

My parents were able to give us a lot of independence, the kind that is impossible today in the city and in these strangely uncertain times when trust isn't a given, when you can't just let your kids stay out till dark playing with their friends unsupervised. We lived on a small island, in a private community, and we knew nearly all our neighbors within a mile. Our house was in a little cul de sac, surrounded by forest. We lived on about an acre, like most of the houses on our block, and on our lot alone we had at least five secret forts. We also had a decent sized playhouse that my dad built, tucked far behind our house, a recessed sandbox in the raised deck that wrapped around the kitchen and living room, a tire swing fort, and an excellent driftwood birdhouse that my sister helped build.

We made good use of these areas. My sister and I would go through obsessive periods with our playhouse, setting it up with bunk beds and planning to sew our own quilts, bringing out all the unused pots and pans from the kitchen, arranging tables and chairs and washing the windows and skylights (thanks to my dad, it was a pretty spiffy house, all decked out with two skylights and several windows, and a door with a real brass doorknob, and I think it even had some kind of a doorbell, the kind that you pulled--at least I think it did, but maybe I'm just making that up). Inspired by Little House on the Prairie and Hansel and Gretel, my sister and I gathered a bunch of rocks at the beach and made a long, snaking pebbled pathway that lead to the door. I think we spent at least an entire weekend working on it. We painted the walls with watercolor and Tempra paint--one wall yellow, one red, one green, with a pink ceiling. We also had a big fire pit out back, and I remember scary ghost story nights with the neighborhood kids, singing songs and roasting marshmallows while big potatoes charred in aluminum foil. It was a large fire pit, not a little squirrelly thing, and produced roaring fires that you could be proud of, even though the thick layer of dry, deciduous leaves on the ground meant that we always ran the risk of burning down the entire establishment. At some point, we got into the whole idea of ivy-covered walls and trees, so we transplanted ivy plants to the ground below all the trees and the house. Even when my parents informed us that the ivy would kill the trees, we pushed back, feeling strongly that it was an important touch, something you just had to do for the right atmosphere. But invariably we would forget all about our playhouse and our plans until months later when we would be back out there, pulling down cobwebs and raking the leaves. Almost all our adventures were inspired by the books we were reading, so at some fairy tale point we got invested in the idea of a good security system and spent days digging a moat around our playhouse, and a huge hole in the backyard covered with a network of strategically placed branches and leaves, even dusting the surrounding area with similar ground cover to ensure that any errant bandits would end up with twisted ankles or broken necks. My sister actually sported a very nice swollen ankle a few months later when we dashed out there and forgot about our great work.

In the 70s and 80s, being home schooled was a very weird concept, especially in a small community like ours where the school system was comparatively pretty tops. It wasn't for religious reasons, it just stemmed from an idealistic, hippie, and controlling notion my mom had about raising kids to be free spirits, unfettered by rules and bells and tests and gossip. Our curriculum was about as unstructured as our approach to decorating our playhouse--there were days that began at 4 or 4:30 with work in our family-owned sprout business where we bagged sprouts while wearing kerchiefs or underpants on our head to keep our super long, braided hair from shedding everywhere. (Yes, sprouts...it started as a homeschooling project on photosynthesis and became the 2nd largest sprout business in the state--a topic for another post.) Dad would quiz us on the order of planets in the solar system and mom would keep up an ongoing spelling bee. Then we would adjourn in the dining room for some ultra healthy breakfast--miso soup, brown rice with gomasio (sesame seed salt), seaweed, sauteed vegetables, and maybe some fried mochi. We'd often munch on an entire bowl of newly-whacked steamed kale from our organic garden. Sometimes we'd get lucky and end up with a slightly more normal breakfast--homemade waffles that my mom made with freshly ground flour in her grinder, or huge bowls of oatmeal covered with dried fruit faces, or scrambled tofu and toast. Mom would spend the meal waxing on and on about yin and yang and the balanced elements of our food, the level of salt and sweet and whether it was cooked enough or too much, and if that day's batch of soup or rice was as good as yesterday's. Then we'd practice our multiplication tables or play with our flash cards, or go on a nature walk with our biology books. We read a lot, talked a lot, studied world religion and Buddhist philosophy, meditated and did yoga and wrote stories. We walked at least 5 miles a day, played outside every morning and afternoon and evening, wandered through the woods and collected leaf bouquets and snails and ladybugs and worms, centipedes and injured birds and pine cones and flowers and rocks. Mom or dad would call us home from all corners of the neighborhood with our signature family whistle, a long, sharp, curling call that we could hear from miles away and had to obey even if we were in the middle of a riveting game of flashlight tag with the neighbor kids.

My parents obviously had a dream--albeit quite unusual--for their family which they managed to pull off amazingly well for quite a number of years. I wish I could say that it lasted, that they were still over there together, mulching their compost pile or weeding their garden, playing guitar and cooking giant pots of soup or holding yoga conventions, even sunbathing naked on a perfect summer day. They would both make fabulous eccentric older island people, kind neighbors and community members.

Strangely, despite years of indifference and hostility about their neuroses, I find myself wanting to replicate many of my parent's ideals, knowing that even though I could open our door and let Cora play in our backyard until well past dark, her stomping ground would obviously be pretty truncated compared to mine; 6,000 square feet in a city neighborhood is hardly the darkly fantastic woods of my childhood. We certainly will never let her play with friends in a meadow at 7 p.m., while all the parents stand around somewhere else chatting about all the neighborhood goings-on. It's not likely she'll ever get to spend an entire afternoon losing her shoes in a giant field with grass so tall it's several feet higher than her, while she carves out an entire mansion with bedrooms and everything, simply by staring up at the sky and falling backward to make giant body imprints. And I'm guessing she might be too cool to dash around the house putting on clip-on pearl earrings for her first date with Peter, the boy across the street, so that they might be able to hold hands on their way to the creek to build a dam on a rainy day.