My mother sent me an email this afternoon reminding me about something I asked her to remind me about, informing me that she had hit a deer (!) and also a brief mention of a visit paid to the vacant farm of my long-departed great grandmother, Esther Allen.
This place has plenty of family mythology attached to it. It is full of icons: an ancient swaying red barn, deserted bird coops, a once treasured rock garden. The farmhouse stands in good condition I think but someone took the front porch off, and without it, the house lacks a certain depth of character it once had. She said she cried a little when she went there, and took some rocks from the rock garden to put in her own garden.
I remember that place in a most visceral way from my own childhood. Even then it seemed empty to me--Grandma Allen was living there, but she was ancient and I had no connection to her. The barn stood empty and weathered, inhabited only by the ghost of some grandfather I never heard one story about. I would be there and imagine a farm around the big red barn with clucking chickens and beautiful ponies and the steady drone of crickets in the grass all day long in the summer heat. Esther Allen's rock garden would be filled with rubies and diamonds instead of quartz and agate. This farm of my imagination had no musty places or spidery corners.
I feel a melancholy when I read what my mother wrote about going there, and know that she felt whatever it was she felt that made her cry. Maybe it was the weight of all the old women in the world, or the ramshackle barn, or Esther Allen's rocks. It is one thing to have the strength to pull up roots and get the hell out of a place where you come from. And it is something else to stay there with those roots, look them over once in awhile, and feel how deep they go.
4 comments:
That is a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing.
You know, you have all the hallmarks of a great writer! I know there's a book in there somewhere!
You rock, and you know it!
How very sweetly melancholy. Thank you.
Ditto all the above comments! All of them. However, in defense of my horse, Rebel, (not Bullet) it was only men and large boys he didn't like. I think he figured they could handle themselves and so he challenged them. He threw my Uncle Bob once which resulted in a concussion. But when Bob woke up, there was Rebel waiting patiently for him. He was gentle as a lamb with my little bro, Tom, or my mother on his back. He was a great! horse.
I wish I could write like you about my beloved farm. I could play in the dirt of the driveway for hours with my small plastic horses and cowboys. Or lay on the bed out on the screen porch and read and re-read all the same old comic books (they were kept in a box under the bed and when we got a new one....how great was that?) as there was no TV or computers or video games. We painted warpaint(part of the tiger lilies from Gramma's garden) on our faces and played cowboys and indians - and then found out it didn't wash off all that good. I loved my Grandpa. He died when I was 16 so my memories of him are mostly from a child's eyes. He was kind of round with big ears, a big mouth and a deep deep dimple in his chin. He chewed snuff, milked cows, shoveled cow shit, hid Easter eggs all over the barnyard in April, loved dogs and Grandma and his grandkids. Once, he was sick and sent us out to round up the milk cows from the pasture - they usually came home at milking time, but once in awhile they forgot and had to be brought in. Grandpa told us to holler at them so they would think it was him - we could yell, "come boss, come boss, you son-of-a-bitch!" We thought that was pretty cool - permission to swear!!! I could tell you a hundred stories if you wanted to hear them. That farm was my childhood. When I went there the other day, I remembered all those stories and good times. I missed my Grandma and Grandpa - and all the little kids that used to play - and even work - there.
Thank you, Stacey, for writing so beautifully about it.
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