Primitive living
Last week I was talking to my daughter on the phone. She and her family were going to come visit, but the kids were sick and they were still feeling a little puny, so she decided it was best to postpone the trip for a few weeks.
When she called, I was sitting upstairs in the living room and as soon as I said hello, she started laughing and said, “Mom, you sound like a robot!”
I knew immediately what the problem was—small-town Wi-Fi—so I jumped up and ran downstairs to the finished basement where my office is. During the transition, my high-powered super-expensive can-do-anything iPhone dropped the call, so I called her back.
She answered and I asked, “Is this better?” to which she replied, “Oh, much better!”
I had to explain to her that our Wi-Fi router is upstairs in Ben’s office. Normally it would reach all over a not-enormous 1600-square-foot house, but if you’re in the basement, it’s not quiiiite enough. You can search the Internet mostly, but phone calls are iffy.
So a while back we bought a Wi-Fi extender and plugged it in downstairs. While it is technically the same Wi-Fi signal, it comes up on our phones as “Sargent” (upstairs) and “Sargent-ext” (downstairs) and for whatever reason, the phone doesn’t automatically switch to whichever one you are closer to. Apparently my phone knows when I’m shopping for slippers and where I will be vacationing in February but it doesn’t know where I am in my house. I guess that should be a comfort. But it means when I’m upstairs, I have to manually switch to the upstairs Wi-Fi signal. Then when I come downstairs, I have to manually switch to the downstairs one. It’s super annoying and I always forget.
So I gave my daughter the long explanation of why I had to come downstairs to talk to her, and she started laughing and said, “Well, at least you have Internet. That’s a great start. We have no Internet.” (They live in the boonies.) Then she added, “We’ve taken to reading paper books at night,” shocked at how primitive her life is.
I asked her if she was going to pull up a rocking chair and take up knitting in front of the old cookstove and she exclaimed, “Mom, I’ve been hand sewing! And David started playing the ukulele to have something to do!” This is the couple with five children and one on the way and they have nothing to do. They should tell the world all their parenting secrets.
But here is the difference between ages 36 and 61: I prefer paper books to reading on my phone, I look forward to having a wood-burning stove to pull up in front of, and I have actual plans to get back to hand sewing. Truly, there is no new thing under the sun—except Wi-Fi extenders.
Of course, this is the same daughter who has a large flock of chickens because her family eats 18 eggs for breakfast every day and I am not exaggerating. When they come to visit, I buy two or three boxes of 60 eggs. It’s shocking. The three-year-old girl eats as much as the teenage boy.
Her family is in the process of a major renovation of the house they currently live in while simultaneously preparing 30 acres for a house and homesteading. My daughter cures almost all of their ailments (including whooping cough) with high doses of vitamin C and raw garlic. They do a lot of things the old-fashioned way but they also want fast Internet.
This whole conversation got me thinking this: progress is only good if it’s something you actually want.
Have you noticed the trend nowadays to want a slower-paced life but with all the modern amenities? Slow-growing gardens but quicker access to canning supplies? You could spend two days canning peaches or just buy them at the supermarket, but where’s the fun in that? It depends on your definition of fun.
We could raise our own cows for 18 months to fill the freezer with beef, but then we want same-day delivery of the freezer. Am I right?
Humanity is a living paradox. We want less and more all at the same time. We want the novelty of feeling like pioneers with all the advantages of an industrialized society. We want to “live off the land” until the land can’t produce our grande-Americano-one-shot-oat-milk-no-whip or braided poly-wire for electric fencing. I’ve wondered how the pioneers kept their cows inside the pasture without solar chargers and I don’t think I want to find out.
But you know what’s so great about this? We have choices our forefathers did not have. We can choose to live where there is fast Internet or we can read paper books and hand-sew in front of the old cookstove of an evening. We can run to urgent care when the kids get sick or we can get out the herbs and garlic and learn how our great-grandmothers used them to get the family healthy. Each one has its pros and cons. Do we want to restore the old cast iron pan we found outside with a thick rust coating? Or do we want to just buy a new one?
Do we want to bake a giant cookie in it or use the aluminum cookie sheets we now know are toxic?
Please know I am not setting myself up as the great example of perfection here. I restored the old cast iron pan as an experiment and then baked a cookie in it. That does not make me a paragon of ethical virtue. It’s just what I thought would be fun. It sparked the most joy, to bring a little Marie Kondo in. I would never have chosen to grow my own beef, but now that we’re doing it, I mostly like it. There are times when I hate it (cold and raining), but times I love it (sunshine and 70°). You have to be honest with yourself about what you want out of life and what kinds of changes you’re willing to make.
We can decide how much food we want to grow and preserve or if we’d rather just do grocery pickup at Kroger once a week. We can run a high-tensile, 6,000-volt perimeter fence or we can chase our cows all over three counties. We have choices, and isn’t that just the best? You get to choose what’s best for you, and I get to choose what’s best for me.
I’m learning to make choices that are good for Ben and me and good for our health without feeling pressure from anyone else, including the people I love the most. What works for them may not work for me, and vice-versa. I happen to like my International Delight french vanilla coffee creamer that is poisoned with carrageenan. My daughters would never drink it. But I refuse to give it up even though we’ll never get it from a cow. I like my Internet but will never use wireless earbuds. I bake with aluminum pans but cover them with parchment paper first. I have central heat and air as well as a wood burning stove. You can pioneer with modern conveniences.
It’s all about choices. You get to make the life you want. You get to control what goes in and on your body. You get to choose who you associate with.
Know what you want. Learn all you can. Be open to trying new things.
As my daughter Abbey always says, what a time to be alive!