What's Your Kitchen Sink?

This was mine for about 16 years.  When I tell the boys stories from my childhood, this is the place I draw from.  They have no concept of a house without cable, computers, a giant swing set and more toys than any young boys have business owning.

Growing up in sunny FL, the boys could never imagine sitting in the living room in the middle of January with the wind howling across the frozen lake and feeling a breeze even though the doors and windows are all closed.  Insulation was not really a feature that  was included in this one of a kind house.  Privacy was another issue.  We had no actual bedrooms or bedroom walls anyway.  With three other siblings it was kind of a pain  having a bathroom with no ceiling open to the loft above and a bathroom door with a large hole in it.  Our house was a constant project patch worked together with no consistency or cosmetic appeal. 

This may not sound like fun, but I have nothing but the fondest memories from my humble childhood.  We never went hungry although there were days when we ate most of our meals out of the garden.  We always had new shoes and were allowed to participate in as many extra curricular activities as we desired.  We would however, be required to be picked up in the family cruiser after said extra curricular activities.  This could be a little embarrassing depending on the latest cheap used car we were driving. 

Christmases were small although I never realized this until I was old enough to compare with friends and by that time, I understood.  I recently had a conversation with my mom.  She reminded me of one Christmas when all I wanted was a crystal lamp for my makeshift nightstand.  She bought me one and I kept my tiny faux crystal lamp all the way through high school.  There were years when we had to be the "mitten tree" family.  My older brother Pete received his all time favorite Christmas gift this way.  He loved to take apart and fix things so on his mitten my mom requested small broken household appliances.  The church ladies emptied their cabinets and wrapped up a giant box filled with assorted mixers, toasters, radios and the like.  I'd like to see Gavin or Tommy unwrap a gift like that this Christmas.  Probably wouldn't go over real well. 

Some of the best parts of living in such an informal household stemmed from the lack of rules.  You were allowed to "build" a bedroom wherever you wanted.  This entailed taking the staple gun and a bed sheet and making a wall.  The sheet was stapled to the bare studs and Viola, instant bedroom.  We tied ropes from the loft rafters and would swing out into the living room.  You were allowed to paint anything you wanted, doors, window frames etc...  Unfortunately for most of my childhood we only ever had one bucket of paint so most everything I touched was transformed into sickening turquoise color that I now despise. My little brother volunteered to bring home the baby chicks the kindergarten classroom hatched so my dad built a coop.  While the coop was being built, the chickens lived in the bathtub, try having to unload 12 chickens from your bathtub just to take a shower.  Our "playroom" where my sister and I kept our dolls was an abandoned car across the road that was slowly sinking into a swamp.  My brothers built a bomb in the basement and even detonated it.  That was an exciting day. I had a cockateil that lived in a nest in the rafters, not a cage, a nest.  She was allowed to fly anywhere she desired she was like a watch bird.  She would fly toward and land on the heads of unsuspecting strangers who dared to enter our house.  I think this happened to a police officer once.  What fun!!  We were given the room to be creative and the freedom to do whatever we wanted with what little we had within some very generous guidelines. 

I spent some time here on our last trip up north.  It's for sale now and will most likely be ripped down when it's purchased.  For many years I had no desire to step foot on this property, however, walking through the doors a few months ago I couldn't help but imagine spending the summers up here on the lake here with the boys.  It's such an innocent place.  The northwoods is filled with wholesome, kind hardworking people and the country lake setting is so appealing now that we're living in the middle of the high speed rat race. 

The boys were very excited to see where I grew up.  They charged through the front door, took a few steps in and stopped.  I think it took a minute to take everything in.  The filthy unfinished plank wood floor, the lack of interior walls and the interesting construction were all a little shocking.  After a second or so they were off again, climbing the ladder (yes ladder, who needs steps?) and peeking their heads up into the loft, Gavin commented, "This is dangerous... and I like it."  A sense of adventure is just what these boys need.  They live in such a plush environment now sheltered from anything even slightly uncomfortable.  It's hard to let them be boys when even an innocent bike ride by themselves surely would result in being attacked by a sexual predator.  This is the reality we live in now.  Nothing is innocent my guard is always up and it's hard to have much of a sense of adventure when your mom is hovering over your every move.

I realize that many of the parenting quirks I have come directly from childhood experiences.  I insist on matching bedding for the boys.  Most of my life we had handmade blankets and thin worn non matching sheets.  I would look through the JC Penney catalog entire afternoons trying to picture each one of the matching comforter sets on my hand me down bed.  I always want to have a house that the boys can feel proud to bring their friends home to.  Growing up I shuttered at the thought of inviting the girls in my class for a sleep over.  I would have been humiliated.  I didn't even have plan on  letting Scott see the inside of my house and then one day in high school we got into a snowmobile accident near our house and he had to come in.  I was tempted to make him wait in the driveway while his mom picked him up to bring him to the ER, but he had a dislocated shoulder so it just kind of happened.  I'm sure he was a little surprised but he never brought it up.  This was probably a pretty good sign of his character and a pretty good indicator even at 17 that he was going to be the right person for me marry and build a family with. 

I feel like my boys might be missing out on some of the character building experiences I had growing up.  I learned a lot of great skills growing up the way I did.  Things like how to make a meal with nothing but ingredients from our garden and how to build a fire in a wood stove and how to get ready for school in ten minutes with zero privacy (to this day, Scott takes longer than I do to get ready) and how to sew curtains and scrunchies (yeah we really did this) and how to raise guinea pigs for profit.  Priceless life skills I tell you...Priceless.  Maybe it's not the actual skills that are so important, but the problem solving techniques that were developed when we had to make something out of nothing.  These creative problem solving skills are hard to develop if one never has a problem and if everything is handed to them.  If we wanted money for extra things, we had to earn it.  I spent many Saturdays cleaning the church (and turning the microphone on singing to my imaginary audience at the pulpit and playing the church organ) or helping my Dad and brothers put a dock in for the rich cottage owners, and raising guinea pigs to sell to the pet store (in hindsight, not as profitable as one might imagine, at one point the guinea pigs lived in a dresser, 13 of them).  My boys have no idea what the concept of money is and how one might earn it (other than asking grandpa) or any concept of struggle or embarrassment. 

Here's a pair of curtains I sewed for my mom for Christmas one year.

I created a photo journal of my last visit to my homestead.  It felt important to document the things that were slowly becoming fuzzy in my memory, the magazine pictures hodgepodged to my bedroom wall, the outhouse, and the carpet covered dock.  I hope to preserve some of my experiences by passing them on the my boys, the stories, the skills and the importance of knowing your roots and bettering yourself.  Time to brainstorm.  Turn off I Carly, we're playing board games tonight.

I challenge you today to reminisce about your kitchen sink and cherish some part of your childhood.  We are the people we are today because of our childhood experiences and quite frankly, I kinda like the person I've become.  How about you?