Too Good for the Countryside
When Sarah realized that her exam period would extend this time, she was thrilled. The previous summer she’d spent in the countryside, and she absolutely loathed it. While studying at college, she lived with her aunt in a big city for several years. She had become so used to it that returning to her rural hometown was the last thing she wanted.
During her university years, she had grown accustomed to independence and the many charms of city life; she didn’t want to return to the countryside. Though she had grown up there, everything about her hometown seemed absurd and ridiculous now.
Living in a city had spoiled her, and the thought of sweeping yards filled with chickens, the endless chores, and the trivial hustles was unappealing. There were no oat milk lattes to be found at quaint cafes, no clubs or fancy restaurants. Even the wifi struggled to operate properly in this backwater. It was infuriating.
There was no need for metros or taxis here, since there was nowhere to go. Instead, everywhere she went, dogs barked seemingly just to annoy her, and the roosters began their dawn chorus far too early for her liking.
Getting used to a good life is easy. Sarah had adapted to urban living quickly over five years—three at college and two at university.
Her mother’s sister, Aunt Sophie, had left their hometown in her youth and moved to the city. Sarah admired her greatly for it. The idea of spending the summer in the countryside didn’t appeal to the young student, but she couldn’t refuse her mother.
Sure, she missed her mom, but she dreaded the thought of hard work in the garden and house, the lack of usual entertainment, and the basic comforts she couldn’t imagine living without.
“God, there’s not even air conditioning in the house! How do you live there?”
The villagers seemed simple-minded and narrow to her. The local girls didn’t know about highlighters, Tinder, or Netflix. When asked what they watched without Netflix, they vaguely answered, “The TV.”
“How do you meet guys without Tinder?”
“Why meet? Everyone knows everyone.”
Sarah shuddered remembering last summer. She never managed to fit into her family home. She spent the entire three months longing for the end of summer, desperately wanting to return to her normal environment. And now, at the end of June, she had to go back again…
A train, then a local coach. Through the fogged-up window, fields and forests flashed by. The coach took her further from civilization, leaving her heart heavy.
This wasn’t the end of the journey—the coach stopped at a rundown town with drab buildings where a bus headed to the village awaited. Calling it a bus was generous. It was more like a moving shed. It only got worse from there.
On the final leg of the journey, Sarah cursed everyone— the driver who seemed to hit every pothole, herself for agreeing to come home instead of staying in a dorm or with her aunt, and her mother for raising her in the countryside.
Barely stepping off the bus, she fell into her mother’s arms.
“Give me a hug! Haven’t seen my baby in a year!” her mom, Helen, exclaimed joyfully.
“Mom!” Sarah grumbled, softening a bit. “Alright, let go.”
“What’s with the glum face?” her mother smiled, taking two-thirds of Sarah’s bags. “Cheer up, you’re home for the whole summer!”
“That’s what frightens me!” Sarah groaned. “Summer in the countryside…”
“The air is fresher here, the environment is healthier,” Helen retorted firmly. “That’s a fact! People are kinder too, everyone knows each other.”
“Everyone knows everything!” Sarah echoed. “Like Dad always joked, ‘If someone sneezes at one end of the village, the other end already knows!’”
“Dad didn’t quite say it like that!” her mother chuckled. “But it’s not all bad. It means people behave decently—everyone’s accountable. You find idiots everywhere, even in cities.”
“How can people who think sushi is just rice and fish be considered decent?” Sarah saw a puzzled look on her mother’s face and burst into laughter.
“You’re still little, darling! You’re being snobby over nothing. The only thing worse here is the bumpy road. I can’t argue with that.”
This seemed to end the debate. Yet, they revisited the topic frequently. Everything irritated Sarah, from the country food to the howling dogs, but the people who knew no other life bothered her the most. Among them, she felt like an outsider.
Her mother often admonished, “Don’t be so conceited!” Sometimes, Helen caught herself reminding Sarah up to five times a day, and it felt like talking to a wall.
Perhaps the child enjoys feeling different, better than everyone else? Though Sarah was hardly a child anymore. Helen herself had become a mother at her daughter’s age. She couldn’t grasp why Sarah enjoyed this sense of superiority. Was it because Helen, a former countrywoman herself, couldn’t accept her own origins?
Sarah eventually grew accustomed to the morning rooster calls, the garden work, and even the lack of any leisure besides library evenings and occasional local concerts.
She could adjust to everything except the people. Every villager seemed pitiful and clueless. Sarah didn’t understand why none of them escaped, like she or her aunt, from such a life.
They appeared trapped in a world of intellectual stagnation. And they were content!
“They like it here!” her mother explained. “They don’t know any other life.”
“If you don’t broaden someone’s horizons, they’ll never know there’s better beyond!” Sarah agreed. “But why not try to live better even here? Why not seek education, creativity, science?”
“When?” Helen laughed. “They have gardens to plow, wood to chop, fires to light, cows to milk…”
“This peasant lifestyle disgusts me!” Sarah retorted in indignation.
“Well, stop viewing everyone as peasants. They just have a life you’re unaccustomed to. I’ve lived in the city, and it has its own standards. Have you forgotten your own childhood here? You loved it! I recall you and your friend Lucy sitting on the porch, munching on carrots straight out of the bucket before I could wash them. Remember chasing chicks and running from mother hens? Forgotten, eh?”
“Forgotten—and I don’t want to remember!” Sarah retorted. “People in the city are different,” she thought but remained silent.
Back in the city, she integrated effortlessly into her student circle. Her interests were understood and appreciated both in college and university. Here she had no one to talk to, suffering from loneliness.
“The fact that I saved enough for your city education doesn’t mean you’re superior to everyone else!” her mother noted.
“I am!” Sarah protested, holding her head high.
“Do you enjoy feeling that way?”
“What do you mean?”
“Feeling superior! Do you like thinking you’re smarter than everyone here? Do you believe you’re better because of it?”
Sarah reflected. At first, she wanted to argue, but then she considered her feelings and nodded. Her mother sighed, possibly realizing her daughter’s behavior stemmed from low self-esteem. Typically, without it, one doesn’t want to elevate themselves by belittling others.
“Yes, I think I’m better!” Sarah declared. “Everyone here is dumb.”
“And me?”
“Not you, you’re normal. Aunt Sophie too. But the rest, they know nothing. I talked with the local English teacher this week. Teachers should be the most educated in places without research centers or universities. This teacher didn’t even know about semiosis advancing from syntax to semantics to pragmatics! Forget that, she couldn’t even spontaneously name any rhetorical devices!”
“Well, I have no clue what that gibberish is either!” Helen noted, huffing at Sarah. “So I’m dumb too? You were speaking to Anne, right?”
“Yes, that’s her. Glasses, looks a bit awkward.”
“Anne teaches English to primary school kids. They learn ABCs, not your rhetorical devices or whatever you called them.”
“But she should know English herself!”
“Of course she should. And she knows ‘A’ right up to what’s required from the first to the fourth grade by the national curriculum!” her mother patiently explained.
“That’s what I’m saying!” Sarah nodded. “And no further development. I know these things, and it’s not even my field.”
“I just don’t understand why you’re so smug about it? Listen, not everyone’s an encyclopedia; people have different paths!” Helen was losing patience. “Sure, you know more than some, but it doesn’t make you the smartest. Imagine if you landed among people way more knowledgeable than you. They’d see you as a simple country girl. Would you like that?”
“That won’t happen!” Sarah declared, more sharply than she wished. “I can always keep up with an educated conversation.”
“Don’t be so sure, my dear! Did you feel this pride in the city too?”
Sarah thought about it.
“There are more people at my level in the city.”
“What level?”
“A higher one than in the countryside!” Sarah was frustrated that her mom looked at her like a child about to stomp her foot and burst into tears. “There, I don’t feel lonely, though it was tough initially.”
“Really? It was tough?”
“Yes, of course. They say you can take someone out of the village, but not the village out of them. Of course, I carried some marks… of all this. I wasn’t popular at first.”
“Did that bother you?”
“Of course, it did! But I learned to adapt and behave differently. I left nothing for them to judge.”
“So now you do the judging?”
“You really think it’s pride?”
“Yes. And self-esteem issues. You flaunt your knowledge, forgetting the endless things you don’t understand. You look down on locals, as if they’re sheep, not people. I get it, they don’t read history books, they’re not into politics, they don’t attend the opera. But tell me, what knowledge level should they have in a village? Who taught them? Also, you haven’t fully shed your country habits!”
“I have!” Sarah protested.
“Never heard ‘proper’ folks saying ‘shibby,’ but you’ve used it twice!” her mom noted cleverly.
“But I…”
“What? Feel uncomfortable? Don’t judge others and look at yourself. You were sent to university, you learned. But think about them. All those you look down on. You spent two years at university, three at college, living with your aunt. You’ve gained knowledge in language, literature, history, great, keep going! But they know how to till the soil. When to grow each vegetable. Which herbs heal without antibiotics. Do you know all this?”
Sarah hesitated.
“No, because I didn’t learn it!” she wormed out.
“You could’ve, while living here. Before college, these skills eluded you. Now you criticize others for being narrow-minded!” Helen laughed. “Think on that.”
Sarah fell silent. It’s unpleasant when your mother criticizes you. Especially for not loving a garden or washing endless dishes, for the wayward cats always breeding or the horrifying insects in tall grass.
She could say she wasn’t raised for this, but there lies an argument.
A brief thought of working at a school crossed her mind. Perhaps starting extracurricular activities for these locals or their children to become educated. But soon, she dismissed that idea. They wouldn’t spare time between weeding cucumbers and planting potatoes. It wouldn’t help them. Why waste time?
Sarah eventually stopped arguing about country life and people with her mother. It seemed even her own mother was close-minded like them. Years of rural living had shaped her thinking. She couldn’t understand!
She just had to weather this summer, and next time, find a city job or, better yet, get married, ensuring she wouldn’t have to return home.
