Growing Children

“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…

Ronduin and his father walked all around the courtyard, back and forth and up and down until they became practiced at walking on the mud with the boards strapped to their feet.  They practiced for so long that the Queen and Cook Agnes came looking for them when they did not arrive for the mid-day meal. “Look!” called out Ronduin.…

The overwhelming smell of fresh bread and the brightness of many candles met  Mirabel as she stepped into the kitchen so early in the morning that it was still dark. The linen sleeping sack draped over her shoulders looked like a long shawl. “Ah, there you are,” said Rowan. “Good morning, Sister and Caretaker of of Barn Hill, and thank…

Ronduin emptied the bucket of kitchen scraps into the chickens’ food bowl. “Sunrise and Sunset, you will like what I brought you today,” he said to the chickens in a tone that sounded like he expected them to understand.  “Yesterday I noticed some turnips that had started to sprout and I asked Cook Agnes for green tops. She said she…

The dawn wind stirred the grass on the foothills. And, when a blade of dew-damp grass brushed across his cheek, Roland wakened from his light sleep. Sitting up and stretching, he surveyed the cows and sheep who were already up and grazing. He had woken may times through the light to check on them by the light of the moon.…

Thinking the tickle was a spider crawling across his face, Ronduin startled and leaped out of bed. Now he hastily tugged off his nightshirt in case the spider had darted inside.  In truth, the tickle was only a bit of straw poking through a hole in Ronduin’s mattress, but he had no way to know in the darkness that it…