On a basis more regular than I care to admit, we get a letter in the mail from our Homeowner’s Association telling us that our boys are not allowed to ride their bikes on the road in front of our town home. I believe it has something to do with the street being private and I’m sure it’s a liability given the fact that everything these days feels like a liability. When the pleads are relentless, we close off the end of the road (which forms a cup-de-sac of sorts) with cones and let the boys have it and hope that no one of the I’ll-rat-you-out-variety takes notice. Nevertheless, I know we’ll want to leave – for reasons like this alone – in due time and the urge to own at least a little chunk of land we can call our own has been in the back of our minds much more as of late.
Our friend Chris, and his daughter Lilli, did just that and bought a couple of acres of land in Homeland. We went out to visit the other weekend on a day where the clouds granted us a bit of reprieve from the otherwise relentless summer rays. Jimmie was panting in minutes flat and both boys, with rosy red cheeks, seemed to give away the fact we live close to the water, where we’re spoiled with the kind of climate that brings hoards of tourists to our sleepy beach town in these summer months.
Their land is a beautiful contrast to what makes up our current reality; acres of land with a makeshift fence, piles of this and that that may – or may not – prove their worth in time, the freedom to shoot guns, a beautiful area dedicated to growing their own fruits and vegetables, a trampoline, and the BBQ which gets used most every night. I couldn’t help but think about the petition going around our neighborhood to have on of the homeowners replace his windows because he accidentally had white windows put in rather than the required off-white cream color like everyone else.
The kids ran the kind of wild that put them to sleep before we even made it on the highway; pushing motorized cars that lost their battery power years ago, swimming in the above-ground pool, jumping on the trampoline, hunting for bugs and snakes, fights involving dirt as weapons, and watching Lilli maneuver the four wheeler all by herself, like a pro, with the kind of deep rooted adoration that comes with watching someone just a bit older than you do something you long to try yourself.
When I place those cones at the end of our street and I watch my boys, who really don’t have as much practice time as they’d like, maneuver their bikes on their training wheels with their helmets on, I’m reminded that there is another way. There is more freedom out there, you just need to seek it out. And when you find it, you may come across a little girl driving her dad’s four-wheeler, like a boss.
