Day 10: 5 Blessings in My Life

1. Growing up in a whole family. I didn’t even realize until I was out of high school how common broken families are. Or families where the parents are still together, but constantly fighting. I also didn’t realize until I was older that it is uncommon for parents to show affection to each other around their kids. My parents didn’t show affection in inappropriate ways around us, but they would hold hands and kiss around us. I never got why my friends were so surprised by that. But they always said it was amazing to see parents who acted like that.

2. Travel from a young age. And not traveling to resorts and suchlike. We camped, we slept in the car, we went to work camps where we cut down trees and poured cement as our “bonding activities”. And we seldom traveled on our own. There were a few times my siblings and I would spend a week at camp without the rest of our family, but almost all of our actual traveling was as a family. And even when I went to summer camp, it was a mile away from home, and my Dad would look to see if I was in sight when he drove by on the way home and would honk his horn and wave at me.

3. Living on a hobby farm. None of our animals really had any sort of use whatsoever. Oh, we tried a couple of times to raise chickens and turkeys that we were gonna butcher, but we wound up not being able to eat them. And my Mom sold mini horses for a while, but she sold them more so that we had room to have new babies the next year. She definitely was not making money on that venture. Mostly though, we get animals because we want them, not for any real reason. Though, I suppose wanting them is as good a reason as any. And my Mom has always been pretty ok with super random animals in the house. Like the reptiles we’ve had…She wasn’t happy with the mice I brought home when I worked at a barn though…Especially when they got loose.

4. My first pony didn’t know she was a pony. This may not sound so much like a blessing, but after I had some experience with a pony who acted like a stereotypical pony, I started to see how great it was to have a pony that acted intelligent like a horse rather than belligerent like a pony. I was also fortunate to be able to keep her even when I was technically too tall for her. It helped that I didn’t have showing and such in mind, so I didn’t have to “upgrade”.  And my parents weren’t the type to sell my pony out from under me, even when I was out of the state, or even out of the country. I spent hours upon hours with that pony, and I know that even though I was gone when she died, she died with people who loved her there. I don’t have to wonder what happened to her after I outgrew her.

5. Learning to read as well as I did. I don’t really even remember learning to read. I sort of just learned. And I started out reading proper books rather than the little books kids usually learn to read with. It’s really good to actually be able to read well.