City Girl, Country Family...

We're undeniably city people, at the very least, small city, or very large town people, despite growing up in the smallest of towns, and despite myself growing up surrounded by corn and pasture, with only a dirt road to get to and from home.  Yet my entire family lived on farms, a good chunk of our collective history is rural, and how do you keep a kid away from a chicken coop?  You don't.  Visit's to Aunt Cheryl's farm are always a bit of a hit.



Zed rides Cato, Cheryl's kind and patient old paint...she collects eggs...and sorts through vegetables, and always leaves with her own little selection of produce.  She enjoys elbowing around with the goats, and tromping through the mud and, let's be honest, poop.  There's some farm girl in there and I don't know if that'll ever slip away...at least not as long as we've got family making a living on a farm.



Make no mistake, Zo's a city girl.  She talks endlessly about New York, and remembers each and every time in the city.  She talks about her friend Elle and her family, and she rambles on about running down the street with her friend Julia...she talks about the subway more than we care to, and she remembers walking up Court Street in Brooklyn every day all summer and being greeted by every shop owner, handed free gelato and generally being the most popular little thing in three boroughs.  She'd gladly pick up her life here and move it to Manhattan, but there's no denying that her roots are rural.  Her Grandma grew up on a farm.  Her Dad had chores to do, and stalls to clean, and her second cousins and great Uncles and Aunts all know how quick a pitchfork can build callouses on your hands.  Her Uncle B used to shoe horses for God's sake.  That's not your average Manhattan story, but then I suppose that there is no such thing as your average Manhattan story.



Since there's almost no chance, whatsoever, that we'll ever be living in New York on a full time basis...and since we've chosen to make our home here on the edge of America and the bottom of Lake Huron...since although we live in a small city, in a big country, with countless acres of corn and beans and tomatoes surrounding the outskirts of this city where we live, and since a good many of Zoey's family know their way around a halter and a harvester, odds are there will be more trips to the chicken coop, and more old farm yarns from Grandma, and more goats...I think there will always be goats. Of course, there will always be the F train too, and that one might have a more powerful hold.