My In-Between Life

Grammy Writes, ,

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I grew up an “in-between-er”. Not because of family order – there were only two of us: my sister and me,  but because of where we lived. Our house was in the country, but not on a farm and was just over half an hour from the nearest city.

I did not identify with city girls who strutted either uptown or downtown and seemed to know the difference. They tottered the sidewalk in shoes I could never have owned, my father would have made me feel less of a person for wanting them, and I’m sure I would have been forced to return them had I ever come home with a pair.

I wasn’t comfortable with farm girls either. I had no daily chores that required me to wake at dawn and find a bucket for feed or a basket for eggs. I never had to butcher an animal that had become my best friend. My summers didn’t include a harvest except to witness it. When the fields I passed to and from school every day began to sprout green, I couldn’t tell the difference between alfalfa and soy beans, but what did it matter? I was allergic to it all, anyway!

I must have spoken to my grandmother at some point about my “in-between-ness”. She was my favorite person to spend time with when I was young. I remember her telling me that in-between was simply the best place in the world to be. It was, after all, the place between yesterday and tomorrow, the place between hello and goodbye, and the place she most wanted me to be: between her arms.

My response to today’s one-word prompt: Strut

29 Comments

  3. Indeed sounds like the ideal placement on many levels. Healthier for feet! My 8th grade year I went to live with my aunt who had no children and had just lost her husband to unexpected heart attack. She was on a farm/ranch 30 minutes by car from town (45 minutes by school bus). I had no chores, but the country lanes were mine for walking once the bus dropped me every afternoon – that year’s abundance of solitude was a blessing, and instrumental to surviving my coming-of-age. There were no strutting shoes!

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  13. What a fantastic post. I was always an inbetweener as a child too, having moved about so much as a child I didn’t feel like I fitted anywhere. I wish I had a grandmother around who could have told me that was the best place to be. I needed that back then and I think it would have helped a lot. Thanks for sharing 🙂

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