Pick a town, and dirt road, and stream, a creek and put it back in time like 100 years ago. Take your mind there, picture that road. Walk down it, kick the dust smell the brush and trees. Look off to the left at the garden in the midst of the trees and fields. See that little chicken house surrounded by roses? Does it bother you there are only a few chickens and they don’t go in the chicken house, but those 7 silly lanky kids do.
Look at those kids, look at the faces. Those faces, 2, 4, 7, 10 years old are serious and weathered, worked, tanned, smooth and so full of joy.
Imagine them standing, waiting, each with a hoe, at least the ones old enough to hold a hoe. They have to be ready. Water is not something that comes from a faucet here, it comes from the man up stream. When he releases the water you better be ready to pull as much as you can into your garden. They need that water. They need as much as they can get because it will feed them. As the water flows at-will toward them, they all move swiftly and divert it into the garden watching as it washes over the soil that covers the seeds that they planted with their own hands. Like the belly of the young child swooshing down the rollercoaster for the first time and feeling the fear that is drenched in the exhilaration followed by the gasp for air, they work hard. This is not a joke, there is no time for frivolity now.
There is no food. Crops are not ready. There is no refrigerator they can run in and open and, without giving one thought to the God that provides, pull out a gallon of milk and drink up. There is no fresh bread they can just grab and make a sandwich "Today is a scary day, a hungry day." They don’t have “too many of them, but they are real.” They all looked at the sun, blazing on them and punishing them and they smile at each other. Only a few hours of chores left.
Finally, they have done what must be done for a family to survive. They don’t, not even one of them, work for themselves and what they might gain, they work for 8 other people, each loving 7 others, 7 precious people to whom they have a connection that will never find an equal. Without a word, the sense, the invisible communication, the plan opens up wide in each of them and at once as if commanded by a superior officer they run and shed the skins of labor. They tear off the shell of concern and they cast them on the floor, and run to the creek. Yes, it is the creek that you all pictured, the creek with the rope and the bank and the mud. With adolescent callouses on their hands they grab at that rope and swing out into the water where so many other beautiful kids from the “neighborhood” are swimming. In this creek, they were rich and ready to live and no one would tell them any different. You see at the creek, there were no castes, no wealth, no possessions, no title and no rules. They were all "Chicken-house, Brown-house kids."
Only four of them are left to tell the stories they lived. My grandma told me and my boys so many stories. I could tell you each of them as if I was there. She could tell a story. She didn’t think so; she didn’t think much of herself at all, but she was a treasure chest. Pregnant with history and adventure and love.
In her life, long, full and filled with trials. She smiled and laughed and loved. She traveled the entire world over and saw sights that were big and wonderful and amazing. She loved a man that was by all accounts bigger than life itself. But somehow nothing compared to the 7 wonders of the world. The 7 wonders that lived in that really little town, way down that little dirt road, close to the little stream, that ran into that creek with that rope and that beautiful mud, that took us back in time like 100 years ago.
Today is a full day, with food and drink and the absolute absence of fear about tomorrow. I sat with her frail fingers wrapped around her glass of water, no ice, as she tells me that “growing old isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.” I sit with her in my little yard, outside my little house, watching my little boys swim in my little pool. And I cry in my heart, thankful, because God let me swing on that swing, and swim in that creek and redirect that water into that garden, that grew into vegetables, that fed 7 wonders of the world and us.
