It’s been some time since I’ve written and I’m sorry about that. I don’t like to write just to have something to post. I also don’t always want to talk just to talk. Sometimes … I just need quiet.
My job is so busy right now – and while I am not complaining, it takes effort to carve time out for me. Work is all encompassing – meetings bleed into evenings, projects spill into weekends, and boundaries shrink as more is piled on and more is expected. Still – I accept invitations to get out the door and off to someplace new. I don’t mind travel through poor cell coverage areas (yay quiet!) and I relish hours in the car by myself.
The world seems so loud these days ~ we still have a land line and callers tend to be Telemarketers, Automated surveys, Charities I’ve never heard of .. and older relatives.
I realized the other day that sadly I no longer have the excitement about the phone that I enjoyed as a girl.
See, at our farm, we had a party line hanging in the kitchen and when that phone rang we kids raced to answer it. Maybe it was Grandma calling to invite us all for cake & coffee on Sunday afternoon. It could have been Mrs. Prentice calling for an upcoming 4-H meeting I was to attend. Often, it was my cousin giving me a quick call as she saddled up her pony J. Jay and headed my way – “meet you in the middle!” we’d yell. Our farms sat about 2 1/2 miles apart – with fields and hills and trees in between. We’d race up, sweaty and breathless, and ride together back to one farm or the other (or Grandma’s). Sometimes we’d turn our faces and braids to the north and head to the river valley, talking and dreaming and laughing all the while. Other times we’d turn south and follow the canal trails down to the lake, jumping our ponies over puddles and logs like the Equestriennes we thought we were.
the best view is from the back of a horse!
Sometimes a phone call was an older sister’s new beau –against our giggles she’d take the phone as far as the cord would go – and away from prying ears of snoopy siblings.
That harvest yellow farm phone was our lifeline: Phones brought wonderful, happy news – “back to bed, the bus won’t start,” “your cousins are coming for two weeks after your birthday!”, “You’ve been accepted to summer camp!” “So and so’s birthday party is at the rink this year and then a sleepover for all you kids!”
Phones also brought somber news – a car accident, a diagnosis, a funeral to attend or cook for or both – and sometimes calls were on behalf yet another dumb teenager stuck at the beach and a request for Dad to come and help.
I can still recite my parents’ number and, even with Mom gone, I’ve called it since. Her harvest yellow phone is now gone, too.
In the quiet ~ it’s the memories that remain.
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Does the world seem noisier to you these days? How do you manage the noise in your life? Do you still have a land line? Who calls you?
