“Every Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with the First Step”

One of our families homesteads with the second log house still stands, having been recently restored. It has been the gathering place for family friends and people who would soon be friends since 1917. Built from the trees fell to clear the land that would become the farm.

It is a place I feel connected, I belong, I am safe and all of the weight is lifted.  I think without noise.  It’s not as though the space is charmed.  There is no magic there, I don’t think.  It is just a peaceful place where all the puzzle pieces seem to fit together.  Where the past, present, and future seem to come together all at the same time.

This was where I was able to begin to start to unpack all this hurt –

Walking Backwards: The First Step

In the morning light; sitting upon this memorial I am part of yet detached from.  The struggles, the pain, the anger and hurt were not allowed to come down the hill.  They would be waiting but for now they are waiting for me to leave this sacred place. There is no silence here. Locusts crackle as the feed upon all they can find, the birds sing their stories to all who will listen.  The breeze gently asks the trees to use their strength to carry away the clouds that threaten the calm.

The locusts move on, the birds quiet, the leaves are silent. The flat fills with generations. There upon the river a tired riverboat pulls up to the island. A sawmill buzzes as logs are one by one rolled over the bank.   I close my eyes,  remember the sound of a wooden stove heating a kettle boiling, as the smell  of fresh bread wafts out the window.  The wonder of tasting spring water on a hot day drawn from a large ceramic crock in a tin dipper. 

Just beyond the small cabin there a boy is tilling the field the team halts, the boy wipes his face, I see it’s my father as a boy – His older self stops planting the garden to just stand with him.  They don’t speak. They silently watch as their father drives by with the buck board heading to town for an unneeded load of lumber and a much needed bottle of vanilla. His older brother follows behind. Off to train for a profession and begin a life of his own. I can see the younger’s knees buckle as he realizes this is the day he will become a man. Responsible for seeing his family will thrive. His older self puts a hand on his shoulder and whispers to him “You have got this son”. His older self smiles as he knows this was the day he was liberated from his tyranny. 

They turn as a gaggle of girls burst out the cabin door.  His 3 sisters and his favourite sister’s best friend. The stand out however is the middle sister who’s  red hair in a family whose hair is as black as coal marks her as the one who will be the memory keeper, the story teller the legacy holder. The youngest will be the one gifted with the ability to create.The oldest and her friend will carry all the tragedy, the hurt and the misery one family can bear, Full of promise, talent and hope none of which will ever be realized as she pays the penance of those they love’s the most.

Behind the ice house their father reclined sipping on brew and yelling obscenities. A tiny but feisty woman round the corner, corn broom in one hand a pail of cold and grey dishwater in the other.  She rests the broom against the ice house and with all her might douses the bilgerant sous.  Her handsome, and sometimes charming, but rarely too hard working husband frequently philandering, too often truant. It was his steel blue eyes, his jet black hair and his way with animals that forever stole her heart. The cowboy that bewitched and beguiled her. Picking up the broom she poked him to standing and herded the man she both loved, and despised in equal measure in for a stern talking to a coffee, a meal and a nap. She looked back at the crew of neighbours threshing a field beside the trail to the cabin, knowing her drunkard should be out there helping.  The boy, her, beautiful, beautiful boy.  Tilling the freshly threshed field on the other side of the trail. Earnest and hard working, sullen, and tragically left handed, it will be his strong back, his ability to read your heart and know your soul; even before you do. That will, she prayed, carry him far.  He had borne the burden of the farm when his father wandered off to do whatever men do when they leave their families for 7 years.  He came back with neither lumber or vanilla.  Threw his hat in the door and waited.  When it didn’t return he went in and was greeted with “Do you want tea or coffee?  I would offer you cake but I have no vanilla”.

Her husband saw him too and a tirade of bile and loathing was directed at this child.  He knew those green eyes and that inscrutable face saw his weakness, his flaws and his sins.  He would not be judged by his son.  That was not his place.  It is witchcraft he believed and he wanted to beat it out of that child. As he attempted to stagger over he felt the pain of that tiny black boot as it hit his modestly padded ass, and the broom handle landed on his balding crown.  Into the house he stumbled he would have words with that boy.

As I looked around I saw children I did not recognize.  They were climbing up and down the hills. Splashing one another in the snye where the under toad once lived.  I had never seen them before but I knew they would be the children of the children I knew now. This is a place where if you are still yesterday, today and tomorrow can all be felt.

A truck rumbled down the trail and down to the river I assume to check on the pump house for the town above pumps its water from here now.  Safely hidden on the secret trail.  A trail built for his sister and her friend, the tiny white bridge long since gone.  Just the memories of being told a secret story, by the hard working man who knew every inch and built so many memories. A man I called dad. 

These tales, these secrets I continue to cherish. 

I decide it is time to wrap up my tale. I emerge from the hedge where a trestle once stood. I open the cabin door for one last look; never locked and always stocked with coffee and tea. I walk into a gathering of all kinds of kin. I see a young me wandering from bevy to bevy, each time she approached each group would close ranks. She was too little, or too big, too girly, or tomboy, too city, too country; there was just no place for me.

Tears fill my eyes, my heart cracking loud, I am tied but not fastened to these kin that don’t want me.  An old man in the corner contemplating where he had gone wrong. His spirit and spunk were long past gone.  The bridges he had burned left him no way to move on.  He heard a small crack and saw a small girl. With tears on her face and hurt in her heart.  Abandon, forsaken forgotten by all.  He reached out his hand and asked her to see if he had parted his hair correctly,  His balding pate shiny and white was indeed parted just right, straight down the middle and six inches wide.

I crawled on his lap, wiggled in for a hug.  A hug so tight it will hold me for all time. He kissed my small head and said.  “You are here to bring love and pick up the pieces, others have lost. You will tie up the thread others won’t carry. This will be your cornerstone; they will be your millstone. Be strong and be brave. You are fearless and wise; you know what we need.  He stroked my small head and we both drifted off.  

As I watched them both sleep, holding tight to each other they had found one another, a beginning; an ending, redemption and purpose.  Tears filled my eyes. I felt lost, I felt all alone. Unseen and unheard. 

I left the small cabin and crawled into my car. My father, my brother and a few dear friends long gone but still with me were there to greet me.  They told me I had been courageous and strong. I had carried the burdens of others far too long.  My work had been done. It was time to move on. Put down others’ yoke. My path, and my future, have been waiting far too long.  My heart has the map, it’s time to let go.  I had paid my dues and shone my light bright but no room at the table; was to ever be mine. I must blaze my own path and stand in my light, build my own table. Nurture what’s mine  As I turn my back the gates are now locked my troubles and woes herded in. It’s time to let go,this place no longer holds me. 

Untether I settle into my peace. I’m building my own table and following my dream.

Chasing Crazy

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