Read Online Reinventing Mona by Jennifer Coburn - Free Book Online
Authors: Jennifer Coburn
Ads: Link
Adam?
Chapter 9
“When I told Greta I’d never had a boyfriend, I wasn’t being entirely truthful. It was so long ago, though, it hardly counts as practical experience.
If I’d grown up in an American suburb, Todd would have been the boy next door. A product of the same farmhouse commune that I called home, he was the boy who slept on the other side of the children’s dorm curtain.
My parents and their friends bought 110 acres in Montana just three weeks after Ronald Reagan was first elected president, and started building the house that spring. I was nine years old, and remember a lot of my friends’ parents saying they were leaving the country, moving to Canada, starting a revolution, or something equally drastic. My parents, and three couples they went to college with, actually followed through. They said they would build a tremendous house in the middle of nowhere, raise animals, grow organic vegetables, sew their own clothing, make their own food, and live off the land. Live from their labor rather than relying on the outside world. Everything from food to furniture would be made by our new, extended family.
The first night in Missoula, Jessica and I found each other and became partners in cynicism about this whole weird commune idea our parents dreamt up. We each bet on how long it would last, and how it would end. My ten dollars said the animals would all run away right after eating all the vegetables. One year tops. Jess thought the adults would all get on each other’s nerves within six months, and we’d go our separate ways by Christmas.
Our hope for failure had the polar opposite effect on the house. (So much for Freddy’s philosophy about thoughts manifesting reality.) Every night, there was more explosive laughter than the evening before. The adults constantly reminded each other what a brilliant choice they’d made. Asia recited her creation-of-paradise grace before every meal. Dinners were so plentiful they looked like knight’s feasts. Only now can I appreciate the purity of eating dinners that we planted and grew ourselves. From plates that Asia threw, painted, and glazed. On a table my father built. With burning vanilla candles hand-dipped by my mother. In a house that we built. In a life they created. With the people we chose to make our family.
I don’t remember exactly when it dawned on Jessica and me that Todd was gorgeous. There weren’t grades to mark the time like we had in our previous life. It was the same year as Jessica’s Red Party, though. I remember because she was embarrassed that he knew about her first period, so it must have been right around when we were both thirteen years old. We sat on the porch watching the men chop wood, pretending to read the assigned Canterbury Tales, but really peeking over the pages to watch Todd’s tanned and newly developed chest as it contracted with every swing of the ax.
Todd had just taken his SATs and we all knew he’d be off to an Ivy League school in the fall. Everyone always said Todd was brilliant, but Jessica and I thought that was just a bunch of hippie talk. We thought he was pretty smart and seriously beautiful with his shoulder-length wavy black hair and his Flathead Indian bone structure. But when Todd took his PSATs the year before and scored 234, with a perfect score in math, we conceded that perhaps he really was brilliant.
The adults weren’t thrilled about his desire to attend an Ivy League school, but they were also big proponents of letting us kids chart our own course. They felt Yale or Dartmouth, Todd’s first choices, were too “establishment” and feared his good values would unravel there. Francesca assured them that if they raised the boy right, he could attend the University of Hell and still come out the same good person. Maybe even better. “That boy has spent his entire lifetime book-learning about privilege and power,” Francesca explained at the dinner table as this issue was debated. “Let him
Chapter 9
“When I told Greta I’d never had a boyfriend, I wasn’t being entirely truthful. It was so long ago, though, it hardly counts as practical experience.
If I’d grown up in an American suburb, Todd would have been the boy next door. A product of the same farmhouse commune that I called home, he was the boy who slept on the other side of the children’s dorm curtain.
My parents and their friends bought 110 acres in Montana just three weeks after Ronald Reagan was first elected president, and started building the house that spring. I was nine years old, and remember a lot of my friends’ parents saying they were leaving the country, moving to Canada, starting a revolution, or something equally drastic. My parents, and three couples they went to college with, actually followed through. They said they would build a tremendous house in the middle of nowhere, raise animals, grow organic vegetables, sew their own clothing, make their own food, and live off the land. Live from their labor rather than relying on the outside world. Everything from food to furniture would be made by our new, extended family.
The first night in Missoula, Jessica and I found each other and became partners in cynicism about this whole weird commune idea our parents dreamt up. We each bet on how long it would last, and how it would end. My ten dollars said the animals would all run away right after eating all the vegetables. One year tops. Jess thought the adults would all get on each other’s nerves within six months, and we’d go our separate ways by Christmas.
Our hope for failure had the polar opposite effect on the house. (So much for Freddy’s philosophy about thoughts manifesting reality.) Every night, there was more explosive laughter than the evening before. The adults constantly reminded each other what a brilliant choice they’d made. Asia recited her creation-of-paradise grace before every meal. Dinners were so plentiful they looked like knight’s feasts. Only now can I appreciate the purity of eating dinners that we planted and grew ourselves. From plates that Asia threw, painted, and glazed. On a table my father built. With burning vanilla candles hand-dipped by my mother. In a house that we built. In a life they created. With the people we chose to make our family.
I don’t remember exactly when it dawned on Jessica and me that Todd was gorgeous. There weren’t grades to mark the time like we had in our previous life. It was the same year as Jessica’s Red Party, though. I remember because she was embarrassed that he knew about her first period, so it must have been right around when we were both thirteen years old. We sat on the porch watching the men chop wood, pretending to read the assigned Canterbury Tales, but really peeking over the pages to watch Todd’s tanned and newly developed chest as it contracted with every swing of the ax.
Todd had just taken his SATs and we all knew he’d be off to an Ivy League school in the fall. Everyone always said Todd was brilliant, but Jessica and I thought that was just a bunch of hippie talk. We thought he was pretty smart and seriously beautiful with his shoulder-length wavy black hair and his Flathead Indian bone structure. But when Todd took his PSATs the year before and scored 234, with a perfect score in math, we conceded that perhaps he really was brilliant.
The adults weren’t thrilled about his desire to attend an Ivy League school, but they were also big proponents of letting us kids chart our own course. They felt Yale or Dartmouth, Todd’s first choices, were too “establishment” and feared his good values would unravel there. Francesca assured them that if they raised the boy right, he could attend the University of Hell and still come out the same good person. Maybe even better. “That boy has spent his entire lifetime book-learning about privilege and power,” Francesca explained at the dinner table as this issue was debated. “Let him
Similar Books
