Too Good for the Countryside
When Lucy realized that her term would extend this time, she was quite pleased. She had spent last summer in the countryside and hadn’t enjoyed it at all. While she was studying in college, she lived with her aunt in a big city for several years. She had settled in so well that she had no desire to return to her native village.
As a university student, she enjoyed her independence and the various pleasures of city life, leaving her with no interest in going back to the countryside. Though she had grown up there, her hometown now seemed bizarre and awkward.
Life in the village was filled with household chores, farm animals, and constant worries and fuss. No lattes with alternative milk at the café, no clubs or restaurants. Even the internet worked poorly out there. It was infuriating!
Forget about the tube and taxis for the entire summer, though there was nowhere to go anyway. Dogs barked everywhere as if they had nothing better to do, and each morning, the roosters crowed as if determined to wake up all and sundry.
Getting used to the good life happens quickly. Lucy had adapted to city living in five years—three years of college and two years in university.
Her mother’s sister, Aunt Sonia, had left the family home in her youth to live in the city, and Lucy greatly admired her for it. The idea of spending time in the village didn’t appeal to the young student, but she couldn’t refuse her mother.
Yes, she missed her mom, but she had no desire to tackle the hard work in the garden and around the house or endure the absence of the simple pleasures and conveniences she now took for granted.
I mean, there’s not even air conditioning in the house! How is one meant to live like that?
The villagers seemed narrow-minded and ignorant to her. The local girls did not know about highlighter, Tinder, or Netflix. When asked what they watched without Netflix, they vaguely replied, “TV.”
– How do you meet guys without Tinder?
– Why meet? Everyone knows everyone.
Lucy shivered at the memory of last summer. She never got used to her family’s home again. She spent all three months waiting for the summer to end and dreaming of returning to her familiar surroundings. And now, at the end of June, she was set to go back…
A train, then a bus. Fields turned into forests outside the misty window as they zipped past. The bus took her further away from civilization, and her spirit sank.
And that wasn’t the end of the journey. The bus stopped in a dreary town of drab buildings, where an actual, in-name-only bus (more of a shack on wheels) ran to the village. It could only get worse from there.
Lucy, nearing the end of her journey, cursed everyone. The driver, who seemed to hit every bump on purpose, herself for agreeing to go home rather than stay in her dorm or with her aunt, and her mother, for having raised her in the village—or something like that.
As soon as she got off the bus, she fell into her mother’s arms.
– Let me kiss you! I’ve not seen my darling in a year! – exclaimed Helen joyfully.
– Mum! – Lucy muttered, softening slightly. – That’s enough, let go.
– Why the sulky face? – her mother asked with a smile, taking two-thirds of the bags. – Cheer up, you’re home, and there’s a whole summer ahead!
– That’s what scares me! – groaned Lucy. – Summer in the countryside…
– The air is cleaner, and the environment better, – Helen insisted firmly. – That’s a fact! Plus, people here are kinder, and everyone knows everyone.
– Everyone knows everything! – Lucy responded. – As Dad always said, someone on one side of the village breaks wind, and the other already knows!
– Dad didn’t quite put it that way! – her mother laughed. – And it’s not such a bad thing. It brings accountability. Everyone knows everyone, which keeps people in check! Or at least they try. Dummies are everywhere. Cities included.
– Like folks who think sushi is just rice with fish, how can they possibly be decent? – Lucy saw the bafflement on her mother’s face and laughed.
– My child, you’re just young yet! You get snooty about little things. The scenery is about the only thing worse in the countryside—it’s just that dirt track road you can’t argue with.
Arguably, the debate ended there. In reality, mother and daughter revisited it regularly. Lucy was irritated with everything, from the rural food to the howling dogs, but mostly it was the people with no other life experience that grated on her. She felt like an outsider among them.
– Don’t be so snobbish! – Helen often found herself saying this to Lucy for the fifth time in a day. Like talking to a brick wall.
Maybe the child just liked feeling different, feeling better? But given her own experience of having become a mother early, Helen couldn’t understand why her daughter liked feeling superior. Maybe it hurt her that she herself was once a simple village girl and hadn’t entirely come to terms with it.
Lucy soon readjusted to the roosters crowing each morning, the garden work, even the lack of social opportunities beyond library evenings and rare amateur performances at the community center.
She could get used to anything but the people. To her, each villager seemed pitiful and clueless. Lucy couldn’t understand why none had left, like she or her aunt, to a better life.
They seemed to be stuck in this world of backwardness and ignorance. And they were fine with it!
– They like it! – her mother explained. – They don’t know anything else.
– When you don’t expand a person’s horizons, they never understand that there’s something better beyond them! – Lucy agreed. – But why doesn’t anyone try to live better under these circumstances? Self-educate? Get involved in the arts? Explore science?
– When? – laughed Helen. – There’s the garden to till, firewood to chop, a stove to heat, a cow to milk…
– The rustic existence unnerves me! – Lucy said with disgust.
– Well, enough of looking down on them as simpletons. It’s just an unfamiliar way for you. I lived in the city, and there, too, the quality of life varied. Have you forgotten how it was when you were small? You liked it here! I recall you sitting on the porch munching carrots straight from the bucket before I could even wash them. Remember how you used to chase chicks and then run from the mother hen? Forgotten?
– Forgotten, and I don’t want to remember! – the daughter replied sharply. – “People in the city are different,” she thought but kept silent.
In the city, she quickly blended into the student crowd. Her interests were understood and accepted in both college and university. Here, there wasn’t even anyone to talk to. Lucy was restless from loneliness.
– Just because I managed to save up for your education in the city doesn’t mean you’re vastly different from everyone else on the planet! – noted her mother.
– I am different! – Lucy retorted, her nose in the air.
– You like that feeling?
– What do you mean?
– Of being superior! You enjoy knowing you’re smarter than everyone here, don’t you?
Lucy paused. She initially wanted to argue but then considered her feelings and nodded. Her mother sighed. Perhaps her daughter’s behavior was indeed just a result of low self-esteem. Usually, one doesn’t get a superiority complex without putting others down.
– Yes, I do think I’m better! – her daughter continued. – Everyone here is clueless.
– Even me?
– You’re not; you’re okay. Aunt Sonia too. The rest don’t know anything. The other day I spoke with an English and Literature teacher. Teachers are supposed to be the most educated in places without academic centers. But this teacher had never heard of linguistic development moving from syntactic to semantic to pragmatic study! And let’s not mention even basic archetypal triads!
– Well, I haven’t a clue what any of that is! – her mother remarked, smirking at Lucy. – So, does that make me clueless too? Did you speak with Mary?
– Yeah, that’s her. The one with glasses, quite nondescript.
– Mary teaches English to young ones. They cover basics, not your complex linguistics or whatever you call them.
– But she should know English herself!
– Of course, she knows. “Excellently,” enough to teach year one to four from the national curriculum! – her mother patiently explained.
– That’s exactly my point! – Lucy nodded. – And they don’t develop further from there. I know this myself, and it’s not my field.
– I’m only puzzled why you take such pride in it? Listen, not everyone needs to be an encyclopedia, paths are different! – Helen M. frowned, losing patience. – You might know more than others, but that doesn’t make you the smartest out there. Imagine finding yourself in a group where all are way smarter than you. They might think of you as a backward village girl. Would you like that?
– That won’t happen to me! – her daughter snapped a bit sharper than intended. – I’ll always hold a conversation with an educated person.
– Don’t be so certain. My dear, did you feel a sense of superiority in the city too?
Lucy thought for a moment.
– There are more people of my level in the city.
– What level?
– Higher than the countryside! – Lucy was annoyed because her mother looked at her like a child about to throw a tantrum and cry. – I don’t feel lonely there, though starting out was tough.
– Really? It was tough?
– Sure, you know the saying, you can take the girl out of the country, but not the country out of the girl. I carried traces of this place initially. I wasn’t exactly in demand.
– That upset you?
– Obviously, it did! But I learned to live and act differently. I carry nothing now they could judge me for.
– So now you judge others?
– You really think it’s arrogance?
– Yes. And low self-esteem issues. You flaunt what you know, forgetting the countless things you still need to grasp. You look down on locals as if they’re sheep, not people. I get it, they don’t read history books, or delve into politics, don’t go to the opera. But what level of knowledge should they have in a village? Who’s taught them? Also, you haven’t entirely shed your countryside habits!
– I have!
– I haven’t heard those from the city saying “not a jiffy,” and you’ve said it twice! – her mother slyly noted.
– But I…
– What? Upsetting? Don’t judge others without looking at yourself. I’ve sent you to university; you’ve studied and learned. Think of them. Those you look down upon. You went to college and university while living with your aunt. You know things about language, literature, history, good for you! Keep it up! They know farming, the best time to grow this or that vegetable. Which herbs to use as remedies without antibiotics. Do you know any of that?
Lucy hesitated.
– I don’t know because I wasn’t taught it! – she danced around the issue.
– Meanwhile, you could have learned those things living here. Before college, but those skills eluded you. And now you judge others for being limited! – her mother laughed. – Reflect on that.
Lucy fell silent. It was unsetting being chastised by her own mother. And for what? For not getting fond of gardens, or dishes piling up, or endless kittens and creepy grasshoppers in the long grass?
She could say she wasn’t raised just for that purpose, but there could be a counter-argument.
She considered, for a second, maybe becoming a teacher. Or setting up additional classes to broaden these villagers’ knowledge or at least for their children to become more educated. But soon enough, she dismissed the idea. When would they have time amid the cucumber weeding and potato planting? It wouldn’t make any difference. Why waste the effort?
Lucy gave up arguing with her mum about countryside ways and its residents. Seems her mother too hadn’t strayed far from them. The village life etched into her mind. She really wouldn’t understand!
She just needed to get through this summer, and next year, perhaps find a job in the city or better yet, get married, so she couldn’t be brought back home again.
