Growing Children

Mirabel and Rowan left Roland and ran along the path toward Disappearing Brook. The long cloth bag filled with loaves of bread hung around Rowan’s shoulders and bounced against him as they ran. “Stop for a minute,” said Mirabel. “I have a better idea for how to carry the bread. I’ll hold one end over my shoulder and you run…

Mirabel rubbed her eyes and remembered dreaming about skiing across the mud to the castle. In her dream she approached the huge main door which swung open to reveal Ronduin with the King and Queen. She rubbed her eyes again. “I keep dreaming that Ronduin is in the castle and that Ronduin is the Prince, a healthy Prince.” She rubbed…

Watch this video to see skiing on mud https://youtu.be/SFk8uBznRT4 Ronduin walked into the kitchen to find Cook Agnes in her usual position, bent over the fire, stirring a pot. “Prince Ronduin, I missed you at the midday meal,” she said. “The King said you would eat later, but you never arrived.”  “I was the field practicing with my mud skis,”…

Just after sunrise and long before breakfast, Mirabel pushed opened the heavy barn door and let Giselle and her calf out onto the hillside. It was a beautiful day on barn hill under a brightening sky decorated with fluffy pink clouds.  This was the first time Mirabel had allowed Giselle to roam freely without being led on a rope, and…

Ronduin scraped the flat ended shovel across the stone floor, peeling up dry mud. He dumped the dry mud in a bucket and then continued his work. Sweat beaded up on his forehead as he pushed hard on the shovel. When the bucket was full, he walked to the far end of the old kitchen and dumped it into the…

Roland had fallen asleep in the field while watching over the sheep and cows. When rain woke him in the dark of early morning, he smiled and retreated through the wet grass to the lean-to he had built at the edge of the field. It was a low, three sided structure made of long sticks he had found in the…

“I’m ready to go!” announced Ronduin as he entered the kitchen. His parents, who had been sitting at the table with Cook Agnes, looked at him wide eyed. Cook Agnes hid her smile.  Ronduin had stayed awake into the deepest night sewing a bag for carrying his possessions across the muddy fields. He had filled this bag with stockings, a knife, a…

“This is so, so, so good,” said Rowan, between great bites of quiche. He and Mirabel sat at the candle-lit table in the barn kitchen. “I barely ate after I reached the stable because I was running and walking most of the time I was there.”  “Why were you running?” asked Mirabel, lighting a second candle.  “It’s a long story,”…

I’m sending good wishes to all the readers of Growing Children as we wrap up 2020, a year that will be remembered for a global pandemic and for our responses to this challenge. May you find you own way to honor this season as we pause to honor and celebrate that within us which shines light into darkness. For readers…