Past

Once, a long time ago, I was content.

I remember those times when the days were long, so long. I would wake to the sun streaming in my window and at night I'd sleep deeply on clean pink sheets.

I remember yanking the green coats from ears of corn, tearing off its hair and feeding it to the backyard cows. My hair, too, was the color of corn silk and it blew long and free and tangled in the summer wind.

I never saw my Amish neighbors as different from me. They were, and still are, my people.
My first friend, Katie, was Amish and her and I would lay in bed and giggle-- her hair in a tight knot and a long black dress wrapped around her legs. I lay beside her in pigtails and cotton shorts, but we felt no different.

I read my first books in a green-curtained room of my Amish babysitter. They were all faded Dick and Jane volumes from the sixties and they smelled gloriously of old paper. If I think hard enough I can remember the distinct scent and it always, always makes me happy.

My babysitter would make me sandwiches: the most delicious sandwiches smothered in jam and thick cheese on fluffy bread. I'd sit in her barn for hours, sneaking the horse bits of feed or chasing down the feral cats that never took a liking to me.

My next-door neighbours had a trampoline. I'd begged my parents to get me one, but my mom was deathly afraid I'd break my neck. She disapproved when I snuck next door to jump, but I was obsessed. I'd bounce for hours, sometimes alone, but often with my sister. We'd start in the heat of the summer day and watch the sun go down beyond the corn fields at night. Even now, it's easy to remember what that hot black plastic felt like under my feet, and how free I felt to fly for a few seconds.

I realize now how alone I was. Other than my sister, I had but one friend nearby. I spent much of my time roaming the fields and meadows and backyards like a tiny nomad. I had no boundaries.

"I wished we lived in a neighborhood. You need friends Erin," my mother would say, over and over and yet I saw suburbia as a concrete hell. To separate myself from the rusty swings in the Amish schoolyard and the crow of the roosters would be unimaginable. Lethal.
I was alone but not lonely. My world was the strangely comforting stench of cow manure and the sharp, clean smell of grass from my fathers' lawnmower. My feet were dirty and my skin was tanned, kissed by the sun.
My childhood was perfect.