Too Good for the Countryside
When Emily realized her finals would extend this time, she was overjoyed. She’d spent last summer in the countryside and didn’t enjoy it at all. While attending college, she lived with her aunt in a big city for several years. She had gotten used to city life and didn’t want to return to her hometown.
Studying at the university, she became accustomed to independence and the various perks of urban living, making a return to the village seem absurd and ridiculous to her.
The daily grind, farm animals, people, constant chores, and pointless busyness—all without a café serving oat milk lattes, nightclubs, or restaurants. Even the internet seemed to fail in this backwater. It was infuriating!
Forget about the subway and taxis for the summer; there was nowhere to go anyway. However, dogs barked everywhere as if they had nothing better to do, and roosters crowed obnoxiously early in the morning.
One quickly adapts to the good life. Emily had gotten used to city life in five years—three years of college followed by two at university.
Her mom’s sister, Aunt Sonia, had left the family home in her youth to move to the city, and Emily admired her for this. The idea of staying in the village wasn’t appealing, but she couldn’t say no to her mom.
Yes, she missed her mom, but the thought of hard work on the farm, the lack of entertainment, and basic conveniences she couldn’t imagine living without didn’t attract her.
“I mean, there’s not even air conditioning! How do people live like that?”
The villagers appeared dull and narrow-minded to her. Local girls were oblivious to highlighter, Tinder, and Netflix. When asked what they watched without such services, they vaguely responded with “television.”
“And how do you meet guys without Tinder?”
“Why bother meeting anyone? Everyone knows everyone here.”
Emily shuddered at the memory of last summer. She never managed to acclimate to her childhood home. All summer, she awaited its end, eager to return to her usual environment. Now, at the end of June, she was heading back again…
A train followed by a commuter rail. Through the fogged-up window, fields and forests zipped by. The train carried her further from civilization, and her spirit sank.
Her journey wasn’t over as the train stopped in a dreary town with gloomy buildings, where a bus—more like a rickety shed on wheels—led to the village. Things only got worse from there.
As she neared her destination, Emily cursed the world—the driver who hit every pothole, herself for agreeing to come home instead of crashing at a dorm or with her aunt, and her mother for having her in the countryside, and so on.
As soon as she stepped off the bus, she fell into her mother’s arms.
“Let me kiss you! I haven’t seen my baby in a year!” exclaimed Helen joyfully.
“Mum!” Emily grumbled, slightly softening. “Okay, let go.”
“What’s with the grumpy face?” her mother smiled, taking two-thirds of the bags. “Cheer up, you’re home and have a whole summer ahead!”
“That’s what scares me!” groaned Emily. “A summer in the village…”
“The air here is fresher and it’s more environmentally friendly,” Helen responded firmly. “And folks are kinder; everyone knows each other.”
“Everyone knows everything!” agreed Emily. “Dad always said, when someone lets one rip at one end of the village, the other end knows it instantly!”
“Your dad didn’t quite say it like that!” chuckled her mother. “But it does come with responsibility. Everyone knows each other, so people behave, or at least try to. There are fools everywhere, even in the city.”
“How can people who think sushi is just rice and fish be commendable?” Seeing the bewilderment on her daughter’s face, Helen laughed.
“You’re still young! You get snooty over trivial things. The only downside here is the dirt roads. That’s a fact.”
The conversation seemed to end there. In reality, mother and daughter returned to this theme constantly. Everything annoyed Emily, from the rural food to the howling dogs, but what infuriated her most were the people who knew no other life. She felt utterly alien among them.
“Don’t be so arrogant!” Helen implored her, often catching herself saying this for the fifth time a day. It was like talking to a wall.
Perhaps her child just liked feeling unique or superior? Although, how was she still a child? Helen herself had become a mother at her age. She couldn’t fathom why her daughter enjoyed feeling superior. Maybe it rankled that she herself was once a country girl and couldn’t reconcile with it?
Emily soon readjusted to the crowing roosters in the mornings, the garden work, even the lack of any semblance of entertainment apart from quiet evenings at the library and rare musical performances in the community center.
She could get used to anything except the people. Every village resident seemed pathetic and clueless. Emily couldn’t understand why none of them left like she and her aunt did, for a better life.
It’s like they were stuck in a world of ignorance and were perfectly content!
“They like it here!” her mom explained. “They don’t know any different.”
“If you don’t broaden someone’s horizons, they’ll never know life could be better!” Emily agreed. “But why doesn’t anyone try to live better in these conditions? Educate themselves? Get creative? Study science?”
“When?” Helen laughed. “There’s a garden to tend, wood to chop, a stove to heat, and a cow to milk…”
“I’m horrified by this mundane existence!” Emily exclaimed in disgust.
“Well, well, stop looking down on them like that. They just live differently from what you’re used to. I lived in the city, and lifestyles vary there too. Don’t you remember being little? You liked it here! I recall you sitting on the porch, picking your nose with Natalie, your friend. Gobbling carrots fresh from the basket before I could wash them. Chasing chicks and then fleeing from the mother hen! Forgotten, have you?”
“I have, and I don’t want to remember!” replied her daughter defiantly. “People in the city are different,” she thought, but kept quiet.
In the city, she quickly integrated into the student community. Her interests were understood and accepted both at college and university. Here, she didn’t have anyone to talk to. Emily suffered from loneliness.
“Just because I managed to save for your education in the city doesn’t make you different from everyone else on the planet!” her mother noted.
“I am different!” Emily countered, raising her chin.
“Do you enjoy that feeling?”
“What do you mean?”
“Feeling superior! Do you like thinking you’re smarter than everyone here? Do you think that makes you better?”
Emily paused to reflect. At first, she wanted to argue but then analyzed her feelings and nodded. Her mother sighed. Maybe this was just a symptom of low self-esteem. In other cases, there’s no desire to rise above by belittling others.
“Yes, I think I’m better!” the daughter declared. “Everyone here is dull.”
“Including me?”
“Not you, you’re fine. Aunt Sonia too. But the rest know nothing. I chatted with the literature teacher recently. I reckon teachers should be the most knowledgeable in places without research centers and universities. Yet, the English teacher doesn’t know that genre evolution follows a semiotic triad—from syntax to semantics and then to pragmatics! Forget that, she couldn’t even name the basic narrative structures!”
“Well, I don’t know what that gibberish is either!” her mom noted, smirking at her daughter. “Does that make me dumb too? Were you talking to Anne?”
“Yes, that’s right. In glasses, a rather awkward woman.”
“Anne teaches English to primary school kids. They’re learning phonics, not whatever jargons you’re using.”
“She should still know English herself!”
“Of course, she should. And she knows it ‘excellently’ just as much as is needed to teach kids from first to fourth grade as per the national curriculum!” her mother patiently explained.
“That’s exactly my point!” Emily nodded. “And no further development. I know this stuff even though it’s not my field.”
“I just don’t get why you’re so proud of it? Not everyone is a walking encyclopedia, everyone takes their own path!” said Helen, losing her temper. “You might know more than some people, but that doesn’t make you the smartest. Imagine being in a group where everyone is much smarter than you. They would see you as a clueless country girl. Would you like that?”
“That won’t happen to me!” Emily replied more sharply than she intended. “I can always keep up a conversation with an educated person.”
“Don’t be so sure of that, my dear. Did you feel this way in the city too?”
Emily thought about it.
“There are more people of my level in the city.”
“What level?”
“Higher than in the countryside!” Emily was annoyed because her mother was looking at her like she was a child on the verge of throwing a tantrum. “I don’t feel lonely there, though it wasn’t easy at first.”
“Oh, really? Was it tough?”
“Yeah, definitely. They say, you can take the person out of the village, but you can’t take the village out of the person. Of course, I carried that mark… All of this. I wasn’t particularly popular at first.”
“Did that bother you?”
“It did, of course! But I learned to live and behave differently. There’s nothing left in me for which I could be judged.”
“And now you judge others?”
“Do you really think it’s pride?”
“Yes. And self-esteem issues. You boast about what you know, forgetting about the countless things you don’t understand yet. You look down at people here like they’re a herd of sheep, not living souls. Sure, they don’t read history books, rarely discuss politics, don’t attend operas. But tell me, what level of knowledge do they need for the countryside lifestyle? Who has taught them? By the way, you still haven’t completely shed your rural habits!”
“I have completely!” Emily protested.
“I haven’t heard any city folks use the word ‘shibbo,’ but you’ve used it twice already!” her mom remarked slyly.
“But I…”
“What? Displeased? Don’t judge people and only speak for yourself. I sent you to university, and you studied. Think of them—all those you look down upon—they know how to work the land, when to plant different vegetables, how to heal with herbs without antibiotics. Do you know all that?”
Emily hesitated.
“I don’t know because I haven’t learned it!” she managed to defend herself.
“You could’ve picked up these skills living at home, before college, but they slipped away. And now you criticize others for being limited!” Helen laughed. “Think about it.”
Emily fell silent. It was unpleasant to be judged by her own mother. For what? For not having loved gardening or washing heaps of dishes, forever birthing cats or creepy stick insects in the tall grass?
She would say she wasn’t raised for this, but that’s debatable.
For a brief moment, she thought about finding work at a school, organizing extra classes to develop these country bumpkins or at least their children to become more educated. But she quickly dismissed the thought. They’d likely find garden weeding and potato planting on their schedule first. It wouldn’t help them anyway. Why waste time?
Emily stopped arguing with her mom about village life and its inhabitants. Her mother, it seemed, was not far from them. Years of village living had left its mark. She wouldn’t understand!
She just needed to endure this summer and, next time, get a city job—or better yet, marry—to avoid being taken back home again.
