What is something you wish you appreciated more, before it was too late? (Prompt courtesy: https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/en-ca/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts)
I think most kids are in a hurry to grow up and be independent, especially in the teenage years but I wish I had soaked in the carefree existence I had back then, just a little bit longer. My sisters and I did a lot of grown up chores and shouldered adult responsibilities on the farm but it still felt easy and carefree.
I moved out when I was seventeen and was beyond thrilled to move to the city, four hours south of where we grew up, with my big sis. (She’s one year older). I had been bugging and begging her for several months and finally she relented. I wanted so badly to live as a ‘city girl’ and shed my ‘farm girl’ skin.
But immediately, reality slapped us in the face. The savings we had built up was quickly depleted it seemed. Laundry had to be carried to a laundromat. The neighbourhood was a bit unsafe. And, in the mid-90’s, jobs were extremely hard to come by.
After just a couple of months my sister broke the news to me that she was moving back home, she was not loving the “city life”. I wanted to stay so badly and make it work but she would not agree to stay. My parents were not happy that I wanted to stay there on my own and after 300 fights about it, they won and I moved back too.
My sister and I got an apartment in the town near where we grew up. The town where my Mom worked at the hospital, the town where we went to high school. An ugly 1970’s decorated basement suite. At least it was independence though.
I quickly found 2 part-time jobs and adult life began. Adult life has never ended. Every now and then I’d like to go back for just a day or two and relive driving a tractor, or packing up and delivering to my Dad ‘supper in the field’, or chasing cows, or swimming in the dirty little river.
bloom.planted.north 
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