Homeschool Kids Write

Today, I am borrowing a post idea from my young friend Emily Rose. While I am not officially in school these days, I like to think that I am being homeschooled every day by my Heavenly Father. It is therefore fully appropriate for me to do one Homeschool Kids Write assignment!


Assignment six: The Time Machine, the first novel written by H.G. Wells and published in 1895, tells the science fiction story of a man who travels through time. You have found a time machine. You may go back to any one day in your life to live over. What day would that be and why did you chose that day? What would you do the same or different?

I would choose to go back to two days, not one. They were the very first that hinted at all of fall, and two girlfriends stayed the weekend with me.

On Friday, we drove out to a little farm nearby to purchase the produce for the weekend. Oh, what lovely things we found! Pears, peaches, tomatoes, green beans...it seemed they grew and sold everything a girl's heart could desire. (Well, everything her stomach could desire, I suppose.)

We cooked, we cleaned, we had everything ready for a special Friday evening supper. Breakfast the next morning was also exquisite--left over challah made into French toast with fruit toppings.

That Sabbath afternoon, we decided in favor of a walk. Two of us started out, not knowing when to expect our other companion back from her activities. We had meandered along for a couple of miles when our friend called to ask where we were, and if she might catch up with us.

As we happened to be just near a friend's driveway, we stopped in there to visit and wait for our friend to come and park her car. This is where I would change just one thing: if I could live the day again, I would ask for a large glass of water and drink it to the dregs before continuing on the rest of the walk. We thought to make calls on various friends along the way, with whom we expected pleasant company and conversation.

Shortly after setting forth again, we began to get thirsty. "No matter," said we, "for we are near our friends' house in this pleasant country, and they shall give us a drink." Those friends, however, were not at home, and thus could not give us a drink.

We continued on our way, around the bends and past the gardens, thinking to call on others along the way. When finally we arrived in a housing development, we began to count all the people we knew who lived there. Alas, there was not time to visit them all, so we settled for one parently couple who invited us in for a few minutes of rest, refreshment, and gazing at maps of Germany. Had they not made prior plans to be away for the evening, we would have stayed much longer.

Then came the journey back to the car at our first friends' house, which we just finished by sunset. Oh, how glad we were not to be out walking after dark! And, Oh, how surprised were our friends and their children when they learned that we had been out walking the entire day!

When later I clocked the distance we traveled, the sum total came to eight miles. The weather was perfect, the sunshine just soft and sweet, yet bright, and the air had such a festive flavor that I could have lived that day for a long, long time.