Family life is a test by campfire.
From Before We Were Young, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The Dunlaps camped in their own back yard last night, all four of them, which I took at first for a smaller thing than it was. The father spent forty minutes on the fire and got it going, and then the smoke swung around and found the girl wherever she sat, and she moved four times and cried the fifth. Nobody could leave. That is the whole of it: the house was thirty feet off and lit, and still nobody went in, because going in was a verdict on the evening. I used to think a family was tested by the large occasions, the funerals and the moving trucks; family life is a test by campfire, and what it tests is whether you can sit in the smoke next to somebody for one more hour. By eleven the boy was asleep against his mother and the father was still feeding it sticks, long past when anyone needed the warmth.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Peace at the hearth, peace on earth.
- Life’s a ball if you know how to bounce it.
- Oh, for a family like a flock of noisy birds nesting in a nearby wood!
- There are few heavy hearts that an hour building sand castles won't make lighter.
- Life is suffering, especially when you fall out of your chair laughing at it.
- Children should be seen and not herded.