thank you

I always knew that there was something special about my growing up years. They were good. Our family wasn’t perfect; whose is? But there was a lot of working hard and family time and making memories. I never had a word for my childhood but now I do.


From my earliest memories, i remember going to my aunt and uncle’s cabin in the Utah mountains. To get there we passed over the reservoir, signaling that we were getting so close, and sometimes we stopped to catch crawdads and play for a spell on the banks of the water. We would stay at their cabin further up the road where we turned off the pavement, opened one creaky gate, crossed the railroad, and opened another creaky gate. We would drive down the dirt road and in seconds the cabin stood, beckoning us with its exuding warmth and crystal memories of visits past. It was there that we would play outside all day long and ride horses and explore through the sage and quakie aspens, always on the lookout for badgers, and usually stumbling upon beavers who were busily adding on to their fortress in the creek. We were never lacking for company because cousins were any and everywhere we looked.


Before we came in for the night, we stopped in the mud room and moms and aunts and grandma checked us over to make sure we didn’t bring home any stray ticks. Sometimes in the evenings I would walk outside and look off to the distance and see deer; does and fawns, and an occasional buck, but always the hope of seeing one of nature’s surprises kept me peering into the aspens behind the cabin. At dark my uncle would head out to the generator shed and in minutes the cabin came alive with lights and the loud hum of the generator reminded us that before long we would need to head to bed. We’d bustle around gathering our things for night time or getting dinner on the table. Sometimes we would join the grownups that would sit in the family room and laugh after dinner and tell stories and we’d sing ‘I love the mountains’ or ‘you are my sunshine’. Everyone would harmonize and occasionally, grandpa would add a few words of wisdom before we scampered off to bed. And just as we settled in for the night, the screen door would open and my uncle would head back out to the shed and the heavy whirl of the generator would die down and the loud silence of nighttime in the mountains would take its place.


Haven, heaven, call it what you will, it was both to me.


Last weekend Ryan and I went out riding quads in Box Canyon. We spent the day reconnecting and having fun and laughing with friends and each other. It was so fun. It felt invigorating, and like withering plants sitting in the summer sun, needing water, the wind and rush brought us back to life.


As we rode, I looked off to the left and saw peeking through the thorny thicket of tangled trees and bushes, a flash of bright green. I motioned for Ryan to stop and I got off and walked over through the tangle to the barbed wire fence separating me from the most beautiful field of green. Off to the right, a small heard of cows and calves and horses and colts startled at my sudden appearance in their secluded desert oasis. They started to run away but awkward and not as scared as they first thought they should be, they slowed and instead turned to stare at me. Eventually they got back to grazing, sometimes stopping to meet my gaze and make sure I was still safely behind the barbed wire.


I closed my eyes and the soft sounds of the cattle and desert and the smells of animals and earth combined and my memory was flooded briefly with memories of the cabin Haven. The feelings swelled instantly in my chest and caught in my throat. As they did, the words of a song came to my mind and sang to my soul; ‘She grew up good, she grew up slow…’ A tear spilled down my cheek. That was the word I had been looking for all of these years to describe my childhood; slow.


I am ever grateful to my parents for affording me that privilege. Not every kid can say that they got to grow up slowly. But I can, and I hope that in this world of noise, and static, and the ever present hum of busy-ness and chaos, my kids will be able to say the same thing. We don’t have a cabin to go to to seek solace and find our grounding before we all head back out to the world of noise, but we have a home. It is sacred. It is safe. It is where we store up our love and recharge our souls each night before we head back out into the world of busy-ness. For now, it is our heaven. Our haven. I hope that someday my kids look back and feel the rhythms of our life and the sounds and the smells of a childhood done right, and close their eyes and say that they were happy. Really, really happy.

So, to my mom and dad, and the village of aunts and uncles and grandparents that surrounded them to bring us up, I say thank you. From the far reaching depths of my soul, for the slowness of it, thank you.