When I was growing up, one of my family’s relatives owned a farm about a day’s drive from our home in Nashville. We visited from time to time in summer when I was out of school. Sometimes I was allowed to stay a few days with cousins while my family returned to Nashville.

Those days were bliss: building dams across the creek in front of the house, hikes in the hills around the farm, a huge picnic under the big tree by the creek, trips to the spring for drinking water (the house had running water, but my aunt preferred spring water), swinging from grapevines in the woods, playing in the hayloft.

I remember the books. Stacked on shelves in the living room were the literary leftovers of generations of readers. My cousin and I would pick out a book and take it upstairs to read before bedtime, falling asleep with the books by our sides. In the morning when the cock’s crow woke us, we would breathe in the rural fresh air through opened, unscreened windows and continue reading.

Looking back, I realize imperfections. We had to watch out for copperhead snakes. The hills that I so liked to climb were gouged and riddled by the phosphate companies, to which my aunt had sold the mineral rights. Trees had covered the mining atrocities by the time I came along, but the scars still intruded. The pond that my cousins swam in had scum. I had to help with dishes after huge meals. The unscreened windows let in lots of flies.

Yet the freedom of those days is a blessing all children should experience before they pass so quickly into adulthood.