Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Sacrifices

So I have been thinking about this child raising business a lot lately and basically I feel awful because I am afraid my kid is going to miss out on the lifestyle I grew up with. So this past weekend I was talking to my supervisor at work and she was telling me about the things she wished she had when she was a kid, like horses for example. I've been thinking about this for awhile but that moment really kind of drove it home for me. I realize now that I took my childhood for granted and it makes me sad that my kids will not grow up with the wide open spaces that I grew up with. Are my kids going to know what it's like having their Dad teach them to drive in an old 64' Chevy passed down from their great granddad on a ranch road? Or what it's like to lay awake all night listening to coyotes howl on the ridge behind the house? Or remember things like bouncing around in a feed wagon all morning helping Dad count cows and look for new fresh baldy face babies? It is really disheartening when you began to realize that way of life is basically unattainable now unless you want to be a broke cowboy working for a rich man that sees all of that as a hobby. I have this urge lately to go home to the mountains and get into my old  black pickup and just go for a cruise in the mountains the way we did when we were kids with Mom and Dad. (Tommy Dad) I know that my kids will have hunting, fishing, and camping trips, obviously, but it's sad that they won't know that you can do things like that everyday. We use to get up on Sunday mornings and Dad would tell us we were going to go for a cruise and then we would spend all day exploring the Capitan's or goofing around in Bonito. Then it came  time for me to drive and there was a whole summer that I spent in and around the Capitan Gap every single day with my best friend. Ugh!, it's just very frustrating to me that you can't have a career and live in the country all at the same time, you have to have one or the other and I don't want to sacrifice my kid's childhood.