Of frogs & fairies

We have been at home in Bold Springs for several days taking care of business, playing tennis, playing some more tennis and taking care of more business.  I came across something Caroline wrote a few years ago and decided to post this today.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Bold Springs, Georgia.  Contrary to what the name suggests, this is a microscopic town about thirty minutes from nowhere.  The community is so petite that it does not even have a post office. While most people may overlook this insignificant blip on a map, to me, it is home.  Home is a place where fairies lived under mushrooms, frogs were cleverly named Ribbet and butterflies gave you kisses on your cheek.  It was magical. 

My father moved us to Bold Springs when I was two, my older sister was six, and my mother was nine months pregnant with my baby sister.  We were almost an hour away from the closest family member and half an hour from school and the nearest grocery store. The television received two channels, the plumbing leaked and the basement was not finished.  Looking back now, it is a miracle that my mother managed to survive raising three girls with a husband who worked sixty hours a week.  Because there was practically not television, we played outside. We created our own games and our adventures amongst our 60 acres of woods and fields. We jumped on the trampoline and staged wars, using the wild persimmons that fell from the trees as “ammo”.  In the summer, we lived outside. The hot months were perfect for picking blackberries and exploring.  My parents called me Ellie May because I managed to catch every animal from tadpoles to rabbits. My father taught us all about nature; how to tell when a rainstorm was coming merely by tasting the air, how to identify any tree native to Georgia, how to fish. On some nights he would wake us up at four in the morning to watch meteor showers or lunar eclipses. On rainy days, my mother would tell us stories about the good fairies that lived in the pretty orange, white or pink mushrooms and the evil fairies that lived in the black ones. 

We never stayed bored for long.  One year we transformed the old barn on our property into a school house where my older sister would teach us about mathematics and parts of the human heart. We always had dogs and cats roaming around as pets and we even started breeding peacocks.  In the winter when we were pent up in the house, I started reading and I never stopped. From a young age I read everything I could gets my hands on. When I rean out of books, I made up stories about princess warriors or astronauts. I was always a curious child. I studied every bug I came across.  While I am no longer an amateur entomologist, I am still just as curious. I often bother teachers asking things like, “Why did Jefferson have slaves if he thougth it was morally wrong?” My home was not perfect, but the things it lacked helped me grow into a more imaginative person. Though I am ready to move on from the place I’ve called home, I know part of me will always be in Bold Springs, Georgia, the elfin community of frogs and fairies, an half hour away from the nearest grocery store. 

Thanks to Caroline for writing this sweet essay about growing up!

Joy