I often dream about the house I grew up in. We lived in that house for 10 years. We moved to West Virginia when I was 2 and moved back to Texas when I was 12. I have moved around a lot in my life, but this is the place I revisit in my dreams several times a week.
We lived on the side of a mountain overlooking Elk River Valley. It was beautiful there. Lush forest surrounded our house. There were endless places to explore, animals to watch, and trails to hike or horseback ride on.
No other children lived in my neighborhood and my sister was 8 years older than me. It's not so much a difference now that we are both adults, but we were worlds apart then. So, I was pretty much on my own playing most of the time. I didn't know any different, so it didn't really bother me. I always related better to adults when I was a kid. The only time I was ever around other children was at school, and I felt really different from them. I was much more comfortable talking to my teachers. I didn't have many friends and many of the "popular" kids picked on me. This has followed me into adulthood and most of the time have a lot of social anxiety around people the same age as me.
I loved spending time outdoors. I spent hours playing in my mother's garden, it was so beautiful and I loved looking for the Impatience flower seed pods and pop them open. I always imagined fairies living there and kept an eye out for them.
The view outside my bedroom window was incredible. I loved seeing the changes from season to season. You could see pretty far in the winter when all the leaves had fallen off the trees.
I couldn't wait for the first snowfall every winter. I was young enough then that the cold didn't really bother me and I was too little to have many winter chores like shoveling the sidewalks. My sister and I would have snowball fights, sled down the hill in the front yard, and eat icicles.
When my parents told me that we were moving back to Texas where I was born, I had mixed feelings. I didn't want to leave my mountain, my house, my secret places, but I was excited about going to a new school where no one knew me. It would be a fresh start and maybe I would have more friends. We went back to Texas every summer to visit my grandparents, so I knew what it was like there. We moved there just after I started 7th grade and it totally changed my life. I did make a lot of friends. We moved to neighborhood that had other kids my age to play with. I have lived in Texas now for 17 years and my experiences here have shaped my life. I went to college, I met my husband, my children were born, but some small part of me is still that little girl who used to run wild in the mountains of West Virginia.
We lived on the side of a mountain overlooking Elk River Valley. It was beautiful there. Lush forest surrounded our house. There were endless places to explore, animals to watch, and trails to hike or horseback ride on.
No other children lived in my neighborhood and my sister was 8 years older than me. It's not so much a difference now that we are both adults, but we were worlds apart then. So, I was pretty much on my own playing most of the time. I didn't know any different, so it didn't really bother me. I always related better to adults when I was a kid. The only time I was ever around other children was at school, and I felt really different from them. I was much more comfortable talking to my teachers. I didn't have many friends and many of the "popular" kids picked on me. This has followed me into adulthood and most of the time have a lot of social anxiety around people the same age as me.I loved spending time outdoors. I spent hours playing in my mother's garden, it was so beautiful and I loved looking for the Impatience flower seed pods and pop them open. I always imagined fairies living there and kept an eye out for them.
The view outside my bedroom window was incredible. I loved seeing the changes from season to season. You could see pretty far in the winter when all the leaves had fallen off the trees.
I couldn't wait for the first snowfall every winter. I was young enough then that the cold didn't really bother me and I was too little to have many winter chores like shoveling the sidewalks. My sister and I would have snowball fights, sled down the hill in the front yard, and eat icicles.
When my parents told me that we were moving back to Texas where I was born, I had mixed feelings. I didn't want to leave my mountain, my house, my secret places, but I was excited about going to a new school where no one knew me. It would be a fresh start and maybe I would have more friends. We went back to Texas every summer to visit my grandparents, so I knew what it was like there. We moved there just after I started 7th grade and it totally changed my life. I did make a lot of friends. We moved to neighborhood that had other kids my age to play with. I have lived in Texas now for 17 years and my experiences here have shaped my life. I went to college, I met my husband, my children were born, but some small part of me is still that little girl who used to run wild in the mountains of West Virginia.
1 Comments:
Oh gosh, this post and these photos moved me. I,too, grew up in the lush, wooded acres in Missouri and had a very similiar experience to you...the wonder of nature, the calm and peace that comes from learning from our Mother Earth. I also visit in my dreams quite often. Lucky for me, my Dad still lives there so I get to visit a few times a year. It is so hard to leave to come back to the desert.
Your childhome home, and the area, is gorgeous!
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