I’m not talking about her again for a while.
Ren.
I want to talk about Ren.
I better start by saying, he survived the chicken pox.
Obviously.
He healed faster than I did, bounced back to a boy full of health and was back on the tractor even before his skin was spot and scratch free.
Cassie returned to her popular world of friends and sometimes-boyfriends, and I was able to focus in school again, returning to the top of the class and hanging out with a girl called Celine who I swapped lunches with (she got chocolate while I got yoghurt…so naturally, I wanted what she had).
Life was good.
In fact, it was super good for the rest of the year.
During summer, I’d help Ren with his copious amount of chores around the farm, and in winter, we bunkered down just the two of us in our warm one bedroom.
I’m sure some days stood out where happiness was acute and misery was absent, but right now, I’m drawing a blank on anything super special to write about.
I don’t mean to sound as if life wasn’t amazing because it was.
Life on a farm was full of routine and new things every day.
Sunrise was our alarm clock, noon was our opportunity to stuff hungry bodies with delicious home-cooked meals, and evenings were spent with the Wilsons or ourselves.
The Wilsons gave me and Ren a safe place, and Ren gave his labour to ensure I lived a perfect childhood.
I couldn’t have been luckier.
And that’s why I’m going to start skipping forward to years I do remember clearly because, as much as this assignment is no longer for public reading, I don’t want to bore myself. Especially, when I have some juicy memories just begging to be written.
Let’s start with 2008.
The year started off awesome because it was just me and Ren camping in the hayloft in our old tent for New Years. It was smaller than I remembered and cramped, but we spent the evening eating candy, and Ren caved under pressure to tell me story after story.
He told me what he did during the days while I was at school. He painted pictures of himself saving a couple of sheep from a neighbour’s farm who had tangled themselves in the boundary fence. He regaled secrets of getting too hot hauling hay on his own and jumping naked into the same river where we all swam.
He made me laugh.
He made me fall asleep knowing 2008 was going to be the best year ever.
And in many ways it was, but it was also full of embarrassing moments as I started to grow up faster than before.
For the past year or so, I’d been acutely aware that older kids and even adults kissed, touched, and did things that I was curious about.
I’d wanted to ask Ren why watching him kiss Cassie made my tummy go queasy, but a curiosity welled to know more, too.
But I never dared.
I never asked the questions burning inside me, swallowing things like: ‘Why do you have different body parts than me? Why does Cassie rub against you like a moronic cat? Why does Liam have the same body as you but smaller? Do you rub against Cassie like a moronic cat, too?’
Silly things but things I desperately wanted to know.
Kids at school tried to educate each other thanks to overhearing parents talk, and so far, I’d gathered snippets about birds and bees and squirms infecting eggs and eggs being delivered by cranes which weren’t really eggs like chickens laid but babies, and sometimes babies were caused by other magic when daddies touched mummies where pee comes out and then she got fat.
It made no sense to my unenlightened child brain, and I was too embarrassed to ask Ren.
I was even too embarrassed to ask Cassie.
So who did I ask?
Probably the one person I shouldn’t as he was just as clueless as me.
I turned to Liam Wilson. Nine years old, boisterous but shy and still obsessed with lizards.
Including the lizard in his shorts.
And that was how Patricia Wilson found us one summer afternoon.
God, I’m blushing even now.
I can’t believe I’m about to write this down, but here I go…
Liam and I hung out but not all that often.
I liked him, but I found him so young and silly compared to the calm, collected reservation of Ren. Liam squealed and charged. Ren spoke with rough serenity and moved with assurance.
Ren was mature with his rough-stubble cheeks and strong muscles. Liam was juvenile with his baby face and twig arms.
But Ren was too perfect to sully with gross things like what I wanted to know, so I figured Liam would be the perfect teacher.
Basically, I asked him to show me his if I showed him mine.
Obviously, I know now why he was only too happy to oblige. It seems all boys are happy to get naked for the right incentive.