Wandering Mind

I had the advantage of a rather unstructured childhood.  Oh, I had dance classes, music classes, Blue Birds (because I was too young to get into Brownies) and Girl Scouts, and the occasional play date arranged by my mother because she felt bad that I was an only child.  (What she didn't realize was that I liked being an "only.")  Even with all these activities, I had plenty of time to do nothing, to lie on my belly in the grass and watch ants or on my back watching clouds.  I could play games of my own devise and act all the parts in stories I made up.  In other words, I could let my mind wander (and wonder) at will.  My train of thought travels far and wide and takes me to wild and wonderful places.

This morning, perhaps because of our recent holiday, I boarded the train with stops on things for which I am thankful, beginning with toilet paper (don't ask).  That led to indoor plumbing (which my parents grew up without) and then to automatic washing machines.  When the first three of my Kids were babies, their diapers were long strips of flannel that had to be washed.  All I had was a wringer washing machine that had to be filled and emptied by hand.  Mother had told me that good mothers rinsed diapers five times, put through the wringer each time before hanging on the line, and so that was what I did for years.  Can you imagine the time that took on a daily basis?  I remember my joy when Larry was born; by then commercial sewn-cloth diapers were available and my dad bought me an automatic washing machine.  Ta da!  I didn't have a dryer until the fourth Kid, and when it was raining, all those diapers festooned inside the house.  Add dryers to the list.

I'm thankful for garbage disposals, even though now if my disposal had to live on what I feed it, it would starve to death because of being on a septic tank and because most scraps go to the (then) chickens and now turkeys.  It was my job as a kid to take the day's garbage out to the can at the road after dinner.  I'll admit I was afraid of the dark.  We lived in a semi-rural area and the house wasn't close to the road.  My wandering mind imagined all sorts of lurking dangers as I walked as slowly as possible out to the garbage can and ran back to the house as fast as I could, thankful for the safety of the front porch.

The train veered from the past into the present day.  Having grown up in a world without such things, I appreciate television, wireless telephones and cellphones, computers.  In addition to many, many material items, I'm thankful to live in such lovely surroundings with time to just enjoy the sights and to have my animals, indoors and out.

This was sunrise yesterday morning.  How could one not be thankful for such a glorious sight.  Even though it's not yet raining, the wind is howling in the dark this morning and I doubt there will be such a vision today.  I'm calculating how many days' worth of firewood there is on the porch.

There are worse things to have than a wandering mind, especially when it takes you to all the good things in life..