Reflections of the Land of My Heart...

"Where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."

~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Homesick in Heaven~

In a series of strange events I have found myself the keeper of my grandmothers cottage in the country. I have resisted the responsibility for as long as I could until last week when Handy Hubby made me pay up on my promise that as soon as the holidays were over and the new year begun I really truly would go up and do the necessary things that were needed to ensure that it did not fall into ruin.I had yet to make a visit back there that it did not overwhelm me with sadness but two years is long enough to leave things unattended and I knew in my heart it was time. The day was beautiful with brilliant blue skies and saffron sunshine warming the wind a bit. I determined I would have a good attitude and prayed to be filled with happy memories in lieu of sadness.As we twisted and turned from one red dirt road to the next and crested the ridge where you can look across the valley and see my grandmothers house, I looked hopefully, fully expecting to see the brilliant flash of her signature red bib style apron as she stood hands held behind her back rocking back and forth from heel to toe listening to the rumble from the upper road knowing we would be arriving in a few minutes as she had so often done. I did see a flash of red but it was from a plump Cardinal who flew alongside us and somehow just seeing the color was comforting.Upon arrival with a deep breath and a big sigh I slid from the truck seat and my feet connected with the land of my heart. I was home. I have never lived there but it is more home than any other place on earth for me. I drank in my fill of sweeping hay fields, distant mountains, and deeply wooded hollows where a singing creek runs.We bypassed the house and garden shed... heading straight for the old iron gate... leading into the back hay field wanting to first see what would be needed to stabilize and repair the old barn. This is the only structure from the original homestead site still standing. It was built by hand by my great grandfather. Timber from the property was cut to form the notched log walls with milled oak siding covering the logs. A side shed or lean to was added at a later date.I walked out to the pond... remembering the summer my cousins and I were so small and the hay so tall we could walk through it without being seen. We proceeded to make tunnels in the hay by smashing it down until our Uncle Charlie caught us. Lets just say our tunnel making days abruptly ended.

I stood on the edge of the pond as the wind whipped my coat open and the ends of my scarf fluttered around me like the wings of a great and colorful bird. I closed my eyes and listened to wind run rustling through the dried grasses, its raspy song swishing sweetly around my feet, a lullaby to my listening ears.I looked at my shadow extended out in front of me laying on top of the grass... and laughed out loud as my coat and scarf spread once more ballooning and billowing out leaving what appeared to be a tiny pin head resting on top. How many times, I though, had I walked these same fields with her shadow cast beside mine? So many sweet memories, as numerous as the strands of golden grass covering just this one filed in which I stood. Each dancing blade representing a happy thought.With one last look at the distant mountains... and still avoiding the house, I skirted the field and suggested we walk over to The Old House site. I knew that time and weather had changed the landscape and that what I saw in my mind and heart would not be there, at least not as they were. As we passed the native stone fences... bordering much of the property, also placed there by great grandfather, I thought of all the hard labor it must have been to haul the stone from the creek bed and fields to dry stack the fence. A necessary labor to keep the cattle in, just as the task before me was a necessary labor to keep the family home preserved. Hard indeed but necessary.

We passed the tractor shed and hay barn... to come to the top of the hill that now looks like a gentle slope rather than the rutted dirt road of my memory. I noted that two of the towering trees that bordered the gate have returned to the earth from which they sprung leaving an odd barren feeling much like the one in the wake of my grandmother returning to her maker.

The giant old Oak that stood sheltering the house had also succumbed to nature but the big Sweet Gum was still offering its stately shelter... As I came to the last curve before entering what would have been the yard I stood seeing not what lay before me but what had been in the past.A big rustic barn stood in the now empty field where dust motes danced, sweet smelling hay was lofted, and the ping of fresh from the cow milk was hitting the insides of a tin bucket. There were pigs in a pen and an old mule braying in the barnyard. Smoke drifted gently from the smoke house where slabs of fresh meat hung. Hens fluttered as a rooster strutted across the bare dirt pen in front of the chicken house.

Turning I did not see the heap of broken rotten wood and tumbled stone but a tiny little house, silvered with age where so many happy memories were made. The giant trees that anchored the corner of the fence around the yard were not toppled... but standing straight and tall guarding the old wooden table that made up my playhouse area.

Granny's old wood burning stove did not lay all akimbo on the lawn but was warming water in the reservoir and baking bread. The old tin cupboards were not empty and sagging but filled with common dishes that are considered collectible today. The beds were not bare rusty springs but bouncy and feathery soft, covered in handmade quilts. The side window in which you would always peer through to see what company was coming down off the hill still held its wavy glass. I did not see a heap of rubble before me... for it was veiled with the sweet stirrings of sights and sounds and seasons of days gone by. All was as it should be with the past and the present intermingling, weaving themselves into the future.

Slowly climbing back up the hill... to face the last task of stepping across the threshold of the home that housed one of the most beloved blessings of my life no longer seemed so daunting. I had faced the changes of the distant past and knew I could do so with the not so distant present with the same vision of not what was before me but of what had been.

With a deep breath and a big sigh I stepped from the red dirt road onto the first of the stepping stones that lead up the front door. My feet once again connected with the land of my heart, my prayer was answered, and I was once again home.

Blessings,
Miss Sandy