Life is Fine...
Today’s (totally optional) prompt: Roughing It
5 minutes go - I’ve instantly flashed back to a house we lived in for my middle school years. It was the first time we lived in a house (not an apartment), so for some reason I felt less poor. We had a yard.
The extreme heat of the summer and the cold of the winter were the worst of the roughing it season. We didn’t have central heat or air. We had window fans and kerosene heaters.
Our extreme summer I remember temps rising to 110 degrees. I had two windows in my room. My brother and I stayed in there all day. With a fan in each window, riding out the heat wave while my parents were at work.
On winter mornings, you could see your breath in the house. My mom would bring the kerosene heater to warm up my room before I had to get up. Then she and I would take a shower together to preserve the hot water. One winter we had record lows with an ice storm and we had to go stay with someone. They had a fireplace.
Times up. (Conclusion below)
This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post via Jana's Thinking Place. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…
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It was 1982. I was twelve and my brother was five. My mom had a talk with me and said how there wasn’t going to be much for Christmas and it was going to look like my brother was getting a lot of things but toys were cheaper. I understood.
One of those so I thought roughing it Christmases, I received three books. One was a book of poetry written by Langston Hughes. In addition to what my mom wrote in the books; inside each one was a $50 bill.
The title of this post, "Life is Fine" is from a Langston Hughes poem. For a roughing it season, the three years we lived in that house hold some of the best memories that I will always treasure.