Forest Depths: Part 1

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Sitting on the deck, I sipped the hot chocolate while watching the water.  Hot chocolate in the autumn air smells like memories of a life I barely anymore.  The water had soft ripples across the top of it which led me back into the history of my life, my life before I was here - before I became what I am.

Forests have always been part of my life.  I was even raised on the edge of a forest.  We were miles from what one would consider a town nowadays.  Our house might have been considered large or a mansion, but in reality, with the number of of our household, we were crowded.  The house had three floors and an attic and basement.

The master bedroom suite was on the main or first floor.  Our parents were the only ones in the family with a room to themselves.  Though there was no outdoor access to their rooms, they were on the ground floor with the entrance to the house.  On the second floor, there were five bedrooms.  The third floor had four bedrooms.  One half of the attic was set up as a bedroom.  The other half was set up as a classroom for those children who were still taking lessons.  Each bedroom had three to six children in it, in some cases with two in a bed.

The older children slept on the lower floors with the youngest in the attic.  Now there were several sets of twins or other multiple births in our ranks.  My twin was actually on the third floor in the room below us.  There were two boys our age range in that room. There were only five of us in the attic ranging from four to eight, but we were all girls.  This was how all the bedrooms were, separated by gender.  I was the youngest in the attic so I was sleeping under the window on a floor mat.  Father had promised me a bed of my own, but he hadn’t had the time or wood to spare.

While we lived off the land, we didn’t abuse it.  Father wouldn’t cut more wood than he needed.  If there was spare from what he needed, he would make our furniture, or we would use it for a fire of either cooking or keeping the house warm.  Perhaps the land knew what was going to happen in the future and kept the wood from him.  While I will probably never know for sure, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Mother made all our clothing before we were taught how to sew our own.  Even the boys were taught to cook and sew.  If we needed extra clothing for one thing or another, we were given hand-me-downs if there were any.  However, in a family our size there were very few hand-me-downs as most clothing was worn through and patched repeatedly before we grew out of them.

As children, we all had lessons and chores.  None of us went to formal school.  We all had lessons from as soon as we could learn to say our numbers and letters and learn our colors and shapes.  My twin, Alden, was more precocious than I.  I was more curious than him in other ways.  I was writing out words while he was still learning to write his letters.  One could say we were still untrained in the ways of the education of men.  However, we were educated in other ways as well with the whole of nature as our teachers.

Hot chocolate was a favorite, especially of mine, as autumn started.  I couldn’t wait for the weather to turn cool enough for Mother to start making it.  Chocolate was a delicacy from the store.  We couldn’t grow the cocoa bean on our land.  Mother would have the older girls helping her in the kitchen from just after lunch to dinner.  This is when the younger children would be in lessons.  On days when we had no lessons, we were allowed to do chores or other things that needed to be done.

Smelling it in the autumn air always takes me back to that house when I was a child.

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Word Count = 705

#EWCChallenge16

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