Annabelle Hickson: A Day in the Country

ANNABELLE HICKSON IS GRATEFUL FOR THE FREEDOM OF A COUNTRY CHILDHOOD.

IT’S 8AM ON A HOT, hazy morning in the middle of the school holidays. The kids are already in the pool, the old evaporative aircon is cranked to full blast and it is almost too hot for me to want a coffee so it must be hot. I’m rinsing the abandoned Weet-bix bowls before the soggy bits set hard, looking out the window. Anytime now I will see the neighbour’s old ute — almost the same colour as the bleached out grass — bump up the driveway, leaving a billowing stream of dust behind it. Behind the wheel is sweet Maggie, 11, with her arms stretched out to the wheel and her long foal-like legs on the pedals. Next to her is her brother Hamish, 12, back home from boarding school and now resting his elbow on the wound-down window looking out at the scenery he knows so well. In between them, on the ripped leather bench seat, is little Sophie, nine, chewing gum while counting her Tic Tacs. During the holidays, they make their own lunches, they decide what they will play (Monopoly during the regular power outages). And when they feel like it, they drive over to our house. Just on private internal farm roads — nothing illegal — so to anyone who was feeling anxious, no need to worry. They’re never in a hurry. They just travel along at a steady pace in that old manual ute — seatbelts on, windows down — before they ease to a halt in our carpark space. And when I see them arrive I feel like weeping. Weeping because they so are so free and independent when so many children are not, and they are so utterly responsible with this freedom. I want to weep for all the rules, restrictions, systems and timetables we place on our children. For all the times we underestimate them, all the times we do things for them that they can well and truly do for themselves. All the day care centres we have to put them in, all those hideous crowded playpens in shopping malls. Here are these gorgeous children, driving a manual, which I struggle to drive, without a bunny hop or a stall. They jump out of the ute and straight in the pool and play Marco Polo and handstands. Then after morning tea, they head home. It seems these children, these fabulous wild horses upon whom we are tempted to place so many bridles if not shackles, are resourceful and rather domesticated when left to their own devices. It makes me feel nostalgic for my suburban childhood, playing with packs of children in stormwater drains with not an adult in sight. The concept of freedom and childhood is so linked in my head that I choke up just thinking about supervised, structured play. When we visit the city I catch myself reining in the children; holding them close with shrill cries of: “Tom, stop before the traffic lights!” and “Daisy, play where I can see you.” I am scared for them. Scared of the nearby cars, scared of the strangers, scared of the dirty ciggie butts they want to collect for some reason. My desire for them to play out of earshot is totally outweighed by my desire to impose on them a structure of safety. I want to know where they are; I want them to stay alive. The reality is they’d probably fare pretty well without all my rules. But I am too scared not to intervene. The risk of something happening to them feels too great. I do not feel this fear at home, out in the middle of nowhere. I am so glad that this rural life means they can be somewhere outside without me, where they have to work out how to get the prickle out of their foot themselves. Where they can’t call out “Mummy” when they realise they have forgotten their hat. And I’m especially glad they have neighbours like Maggie, Hamish and Sophie to show them how this responsible, wild horse way of living is done. Annabelle Hickson lives with her husband and three kids on a pecan farm in the Dumaresq Valley in northern NSW. She regularly blogs about country life at the-dailys.com. You can follow @annabellehickson on Instagram.