It's a Good Life

Today is overcast and cloudy.  Snow is in the forecast ... again.  I live in Maine.  Snow SHOULD be in the forecast during the winter, and that we're going to get snow, in February, shouldn't be a surprise or an emergency.  

I have a friend who lives in Texas, and the news stations down there are warning of the coming snow-pocalypse - according to her Facebook feed.  It's different here than there.  She says the store shelves are bare from people panic buying in advance of the storm.  One of her friends asked if Texan homes even had heat.  It's funny ... but not funny.  Being cold is no fun.

We spend a lot of time preparing for winter, here in our Maine suburban home.  During the summer, we spend many weekends working wood for our winter heat.  Some of our wood supply comes from purchased wood we get from a local firewood purveyor.  

Sometimes we are gifted wood.  One year we received a couple of small trailer loads of coppiced wood that a local tree firm had cut.  They just happened to be driving by our house and saw our stacks of firewood.  They stopped, on a whim, to ask if we wanted what they had in their trailer.  They'd been cutting trees locally, but didn't have anywhere, close, to dump their truck load.  They gave it to us.  The limbs were varying lengths and widths, and our task was to cut it to length and then split and stack it.  I got to try out my new chainsaw, which was cool.

My youngest daughter has really been enjoying our firewood prepping chores over the last few years.  A few summers ago, when were were out at my father-in-law's property cutting wood, she learned to use the gas powered splitter.  We don't have a gas powered splitter here.  Buying one is expensive, especially considering we can borrow the in-law's splitter, but also, we just don't have a place to store it. 

We do have a manual splitter and a maul.  She's learning to use both.

I looked over at her the summer before last, splitting wood barefooted and thought. "What a suburban-kid thing to do!", and immediately ran inside to grab my phone to get a picture - which is a quintessentially suburban mom thing to do, I think. 

Sometimes, I think it's funny that my kids have learned all of the skills that they've learned.  Knowing how to heat a house with wood is just one of the many skills we've forced them to know, because, for us, these skills teach them to do things for themselves.  They can stay warm.  They can eat.  They can survive - in the best of times and in the worst of times.

The reality of our lives is that we live in the suburbs.  Our daughters have lived this balance between going to the mall to hang out with their friends and having to do things, like keeping the woodstove going during the winter and collecting the eggs from the backyard chickens.

They've been given the opportunity to enjoy the best of being an urban kid (trips to see Broadway shows, eating at boutique restaurants, enjoying a latte from a real coffee shop, shopping for books in dusty, antique bookstores) and the best of being a farm kid (fluffy baby animals in the backyard, a healthy garden, county fairs, meaningful work).

Some writers speak of the suburbs as a failed experiment and as the "worst allocation of resources in history."  I don't agree.  I agree that the car-dependence of some suburbs and the unwillingness of some suburbanites to use their land to cultivate food is short-sighted and wasteful, but I also think, with some reimaging, and maybe retooling, the suburbs can be what save us in a powered down future.

For now, though, and for my family, I think it's the best of both worlds.  My daughters have been given this amazing opportunity to work hard doing work that has meaning (stacking wood is not easy, but it's absolutely necessary if we hope to stay warm in the winter), but they've also had the chance to live like a normal, suburban teenager.

That day, we were working wood, and as Precious split a log, she looked at Little Fire Faery, who was stacking the wood in neat rows against the fence, and asked, "Hey, do you want to go the mall later?"

And that's our life.  Stack wood in the morning.  Go to the mall in the afternoon.  Eat a home-cooked meal (slow-cooked roast from locally sourced beef, mashed potatoes from our garden, sweet corn from a local farmer, and baked caramel apples) in the evening.

Good work.  Good fun.  Good food.

It's a good life here in the suburbs.