Where I Grew Up

I spent my early years on a farm, in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, running through the endless meadows, arms outstretched, feeling the warmth of the constant sunshine. I even adored school, such as it was. There were just a handful of us, sitting in a wooden hall, on simple wooden chairs using slates to write on, when we had to write. Most of the day we were outside. I learnt about every flower, plant and animal indigenous to Minnesota. I learnt about the land and what would grow well there. I loved the wild flowers that filled the meadow between the school and my little house on the Prairie, I can still feel the scratchiness of the stems, smell the subtle scents as I ran happily through them.

At home, Ma always cooked a huge dinner and Pa would sit at the head of the table, where he said Grace. At sundown my sisters and I went to bed with a lamp. We’d put on our mop caps and nighties, give each other kisses and, then, Pa would lift me up to the loft, where I slept. I loved it when he did this because the ladder used to shake when I climbed up, causing me a bit of a lurch in my tummy. As I curled up under my patchwork quilt, lovingly made for me by my Grandma, I would dream of adventures. I was always with friends and always happy.

As I grew up, I had to move on. I could feel myself growing away from the farm and it’s inhabitants. It was time to find a bit of grit. A bit of real life with all it’s grey areas as well as it’s light. So, at just 17, I sailed to England. I took a job as a servant in a small town in Cornwall. My new employer was a wealthy tin mine owner and the job came with a room in his home. It was nothing like the farm I’d left back in Minnesota. It felt cold, damp and there were pockets of gloom in every room, until Mr Poldark walked in. My teenage hormones turned virtual somersaults and although I had been warned about falling in love with an employer, I couldn’t resist him, nor him, me. If you’d been able to see us then you’d have known we were perfect together, for a while, anyway.

This is, sort of, where I grew up. I was a child, an adolescent and an adult who lived in her head. I would say, and I do believe, that we all do. But in weaving this tale, I have come to realise, that the truth is as strange, if not as romantic as the world in my head, for I grew up here, Calne, town of the pork pie.

I was pushed along in my pushchair to the squeals of pigs being slaughtered and the river Marden running red. 
I learnt to walk in the shadow of the monstrous red-bricked abattoir that cast a shadow, no matter what time of day, along the ancient, and beautiful, Church Street. 
I met my husband in the uninviting, unattractive and unfriendly Trotters pub. 
Then, finally, I moved to King Bladud’s city of Bath. 
You know, the guy with the pigs.

©Lisa Lee 2012, sleeping in Elvegren Life