Memories from a Once Wild Child

I'm currently reading How to Raise a Wild Child by Scott Sampson (of Dinosaur Train fame, if you've watched the show). I'm hoping to review it on here when I'm done, so I won't say much, but I wanted to write something now, because reading this book has prompted me to think about some things. At the moment, I'm in a chapter discussing middle childhood (from about 6 to 11) and how important nature experiences are at this particular set of ages. It makes sense - most of my profound childhood nature experiences happened during this time of my life, usually with groups of roving neighborhood kids when I lived in Massachusetts.

I wanted to put down some of these memories. They're all, for the most part, quite strong, but I love thinking about them and putting them down. I'm very much the kind of person who likes to go over old, happy memories like someone might a photo album (love those, too), or look fondly over a collection of things.

My grandparents' "yard":
I spent all of my early childhood and most of my middle childhood in a town called Groveland, Massachusetts. I don't know what it's like to be a child growing up there now, but my memories are fairly close to idyllic. It was reasonably rural, at least by suburban Massachusetts standards, what with farms and open land and a fair amount of woods (much of this is developed now). My dad's parents lived probably three or so miles from my house, so we spent a lot of time there. Both of my grandparents grew up on farms and keeping one was just natural to them.

Years and years before, my grandfather had run a chicken farm at the end of their road, providing eggs for the local grocery stores. By the time I came along he had given up chicken farming and kept beef cattle. Big, beautiful brown and white cows idled away in his fields, wandering down to the cow pond where I would one day (unsuccessfully) attempt ice skating. Their huge brown eyes and docile ways had me in love about as soon as I knew them.

My grandmother had little to do with the upkeep of the animals; that was all on my grandfather, and me, his helper, of course (I loved giving the cows "dessert" - oats in big rubber bowls). She, instead, tended massive, meticulous, and beautiful flower gardens. She could grow anything and took great pleasure in it. I could spend hours wandering from section to section of their massive yard, taking in the wide variety of color and shape. In the way, way back of their yard, up beyond a line of shady pine trees, there was a large veggie garden where I would freely harvest snacks during the summer.

I often think of my grandparents' yard (well, small farm, really) as my first connection to nature. Even though they moved from that house and all that land in 2000, I can picture that place in my mind almost more clearly than my own home's yard. Time with my grandparents, when I was small, meant time outside, getting dirty and also with the expectation that I would entertain myself, and there was no shortage of entertainment.

When my grandfather became wheelchair bound in the late nineties and the cows were sold off, the land and house soon to follow, I started taking time to wander up into the cow pasture, a place I had never been previously allowed to go. I was in awe of just how much land there was. I felt a huge pain in my heart that this place wouldn't be my family's any more and that it would likely be developed by whomever purchased it, paved over and built up as so much of the land in that area is now. I remember taking the time, even at only 11 or so, to relish the silence and the feeling of the land around me. 

The Broderick's Yard: 

The Broderick's were the family next door, and are honestly the best family. The three kids in that family were some of my favorite playmates growing up, particularly Kate, who's adventurous and competitive spirit pulled me out of my naturally stagnant shell. If I hadn't had the Broderick kids (and later, the Beatons, another group of adorable and active kids) as neighbors, I probably would have spent a majority of my childhood reading books and playing Sonic.

My strongest outdoor memories from my Massachusetts neighborhood occur in the Broderick's yard. They had a huge yard with all the typical childhood amenities, along with a killer sledding hill in the winter, and a mom who would make tuna melts accompanied by Cape Cod potato chips and juice mixed with seltzer water (of course I remember the food!).

There really weren't any limits to where we could go, and as we got older, we would wander farther and farther afield. I remember one particularly warm winter day when a group of us found ourselves in the woods. Rather than snow, there was ice, because that area tended to get really wet, so I suppose there must have been some melting earlier in the season, then things got cold again and froze over. But with the warmth of that particular day, we found ourselves hoping from sheet of thick ice to sheet of thick ice, hanging on to trees and their little patches of dry ground, playing some sort of game, the exact parameters of which I'm not sure of, having the times of our lives. I don't think those particular circumstances cropped up again, at least not while I lived there, and it was, for me, a once in a lifetime event that now seems so simple, but felt amazing at the time.

Maudslay State Park

My last memories from Massachusetts come from an unlikely place, at least in terms of the great outdoors. Newburyport is a large-ish town on the North Shore, sort of akin to the Old Port in Portland (for my Maine friends - Massachusetts friends are free to decry this comparison). In Newburyport there is Maudslay State Park. I haven't been there in years, like, probably close to twenty years, at this point, so my memories of the park itself are extremely foggy, but I include in these rememberances for a reason - it still gives me such a strong feeling when I think about it. I only have fleeting images in my mind of this place, but the sense of loveliness and stillness and mystery sit solidly over me. It's an interesting to me, that a place where I don't have a real distinct memory of could still leave me with such a strong impression. I love how natural places can do that to you.


I know a lot of folks like to think of Millenials as the first generation shut up in the house, transfixed to their computers and TVs, but I would argue that my friends growing up, both in Massachusetts and in Maine, spent a majority of our time playing outside. We were frequently kicked out by our parents and would run from yard to yard, following some kind of adventure or figuring out which place would be best suited for whatever sport we were going to play. Even as a teenager, here in Maine, I can think of many times I spent with friends outside rather than in, never with our noses buried in something else.

This is the kind of childhood I hope for my kids, one where their best childhood memories take place outside, with a friend or group of friends, lost in their play.

The Day I Kicked My Daughter Out

There's a story I remember hearing a lot as a kid. It usually came up during one of those, "You don't know how easy you've got it," themed talks with my dad or my grandparents.

When my dad was a kid his mom was sick of him running around like a maniac in the house and she told him to go outside. Being a compliant little guy, he did without any fuss, but when he wanted to come back inside, the front door was locked. So was the back door. He knocked, rang the door bell, stood outside the windows and screamed, but inside he was not admitted. If I remained unimpressed by this regaling of childhood trauma character building, then the story ended with my dad crying on the steps...in the rain.

Now, some of you may read this and not quite believe that any mother would do this to her child, particularly with today's parenting sensibilities. But if you ever had the pleasure of knowing my grandmother, then you likely aren't surprised. Some aspects of the story might be exaggerated, but this is also the same woman who used to put my dad on a dog runner when he was a toddler so he could run around outside freely without drowning himself in the cow pound, so the locked door story doesn't seem quite out of character.

I can also sympathize a bit with my grandmother. Wild kid running around with a trail of chaos just behind them? What parent doesn't want boot the little hellion out the door and deadbolt it behind them? And while the circumstances that eventually led me to essentially kick E. out of the house one morning were a bit different than those previously mentioned, my sentiments, when you really get down to it, were right on par with my grandma's.

A little bit of outdoor time does a kid good.

I am not a terribly outdoorsy person. I think a lot of this has to do with being one of those wired people who has a difficult time "just being" (something to work on, right?) and so being outside becomes "boring" to me. But I wasn't always like this. Sure, I wasn't a huge outside person as a kid (I'd like to believe that some people are more inclined towards the outdoors than others), but I didn't have a hard time keeping busy once I was out there. There gardens to dig in, creeks to jump into, things to hunt for (though I was never really sure on what the "things" were), forts to build, and during the winter lots of sledding, snow balling, and snowman and snow fort building. I also had the benefit of living in an extremely kid-friendly neighborhood, and while my parents weren't ones to enforce outdoor time very strictly, I had friends whose parents did, so if I wanted to play with someone, I was going to be outside.

But let's fast forward to our little house here in Maine with my sweet little E. She also isn't naturally inclined to go outside. It's almost always my suggestion, and because I rarely want to go outside myself, I don't usually suggest it. But it's always in the back of my mind that she should be outside. And without the benefit of a gang of neighborhood kids to come drag her out, it's up to me to make sure she goes.

In the past, I've sent her out and gone out, too. In theory, this is a great thing. I certainly need more time outdoors as well. But then I'll get bored, or I'll have to attend to something else, or the baby will begin to fuss, and I'll have to go in. Though E. might be playing happily outside, as soon as I decide I need to be indoors, so does she. So, for a long time, our outdoor time had come in small fits and bursts.

Then something occurred to me. E. plays much better on her own. She's a fantastic independent player and can go on for hours, given the chance. I thought about all the outdoor play I had as a child, and while I remember much of it being with friends, virtually none of it was with my parents (who both mastered the skill of being such boring playmates I learned early on to not even ask). Why should things be so different for E.?

So here we were one morning and I looked outside. It was sunny, sort of, and it was reasonably warm (meaning, there wasn't a major risk of frostbite should you choose to venture out). I thought to myself, "Why isn't E. outside playing?" Instead, she was curled up on the couch for a post-breakfast T.V. show, still in her jammies. As soon as the show was done I asked her to go get some socks on, she was going outside.

Without divulging too much information that could later make myself or my daughter look pretty bad, let's just say there was a bit of a fuss, but eventually, E. was standing out of the porch, bundled in her snow things mumbling something about having a mean mama followed by plans to build an igloo. While very tempted to lock the door behind her, I didn't and I went back to whatever it was I had planned to do that morning. E. popped in a couple of times complaining of cold hands or a cold head (which were quickly remedied with the discovery - finally! - of the warmer fleece mittens and a warm scarf wrapped around the head), but all told she played outside that morning, by herself, for far longer than she usually did.

And so it begins. My goal is to have E. outside for at least a half hour every day. For those who are already outside kind of families, this might seem like a pretty paltry goal, but for our fairly housebound crew, it's a pretty big step in the right direction. All it's taken so far is a lot of patience on my part, "good" weather, and the faith that even though we're fairly short on outside play things, E. has the creativity and grit to figure out what do.

And then maybe she can tell me.