There were six of us children, and we knew from the time we were little that life required something of you. Mama kept a calendar on the wall, our names written across the days — oldest to youngest, each one assigned their turn. Before school and after, the animals had to be fed and watered and eggs had to be collected, too. Cows, pigs, chickens, a dog, a cat, and a Shetland pony named Star. If your name was on that calendar, that was your day, your responsibility, your gift of belonging to something larger than yourself. We complained, of course, but Mama just said it built character. It never did us much good — we had to go out there anyway.

But something else happened in all of that. If your name was on the calendar and you wanted to stay after school or visit a friend, you had to find a sibling willing to trade days. You had to ask. You had to negotiate. You had to show up for them when their turn came around. Mama hadn't just made a chore chart. She had built a system of teamwork without any of us realizing it. We learned to rely on each other, to empathize with each other, to lean on each other for even more than just daily chores — because we were what we had. And we were close in a way that not every family gets to be.

The cows were our favorites. We spent so much time among them that they forgot to be wild. They let us climb on their broad backs and walk beside them through the pasture like old friends. And in the early spring mornings, when a new calf needed tending, there was nothing sweeter. We would mix up their milk and bottle feed them. The warm milk foaming up all around their mouth, dark trusting eyes looking up at you like you were the whole world. They were so precious.

We named them, of course. And when butchering time came around, we pleaded at the supper table with everything we had. We protested. We bargained. We grieved and cried. But deep down, we knew. That was what fed our family through the winter. And so, in the end, we fed and cared for Clinger, and all the rest, and they fed us.

When the day's work was done, the land became our playground and it was boundless. We ran through the fields until our sides ached. We swung from a rope in the loft and dropped into the hay mounds below, shrieking with the kind of joy that only comes when your whole body is alive and free. We played in the woods, and in the apple orchard, in the last long light of summer evenings.

Once, in that very apple orchard, we came upon a pair of bear cubs. It was only when we saw mama bear coming toward us at full speed that the situation suddenly became perfectly clear. We turned and ran for the house as fast as our legs would carry us, tumbling through the door and locking it behind us — as if that would have saved us. As terrifying as that moment was, we laughed about it for years after.

We were not children who had everything. We had no interest in keeping up with the Joneses — and truthfully, we couldn't have even if we had wanted to. What we had was the land, the animals, each other, and parents who knew that chores and calendars and trading days would knit six children together in ways that nothing else could. We chased childhood dreams and fireflies, and our hearts were full.

Rich in ways the world does not often count — what a wonderful life we lived!