Because I Care About Your Joy

I pray that you saw this little video. Enough to make the oldest heart young again.

Preservation And Defense

Not long ago, two old farmers - a brother and sister - moved out of their family farmhouse: the last two surviving members of the Welch family had stayed at home as long as they could. They were each nearly a century old when they died a few miles down the road, beneath the flourescent light buzzing over a nursing home deathbed. But before they left this life, they bequeathed their farmhouse, and all of the surrounding land, to a conservation group: the old siblings did not want their legacy to fall into enemy hands.

Adjacent to the Welch's homestead, just east of the old rooming house, stood a clutch of barns. Inside one barn could be found the initials, carved into pine or painted in stove black, of every farmhand that passed through the farm dating back to 1865. It was clear that not a few workers took jobs at the farm several years in a row; others would be off to fight in some great war, never to return. There were chains and old scythes hanging in rusted silence; there were old tins on the wall; a set of old oars stood in a corner, crossed. It was a hall for the silent past, but a past that was not so silent if one but listened.

After the old couple died, I would walk the forsaken farm, taking pictures here and there. The photo above was taken along the northern wall of the old house, just off the ell. I could not help but take the photograph -- with the old lamp and bulb, the paper-wasps' nest tucked beneath the shade, the flecked paint, a lonely window and the ghostly imprint of old shutters -- all calling me to remember. But what seems silent is not at all; and what seems old is still rather new: the tap of hands on a window flung open, the smell of fresh paint on a horsehair brush, the piquant air of harvest. I hear children nearby, the shouts of farmhands heading to town with a wagon-load of milk; or the muted thud of boots beneath a dim lamp during heavy snows.

The conservation group which inherited the land, in response to fears and anxieties and sundry other modern maladies, decided that the best thing for the preservation of the old regime was for the new to vanguish the past. So the fire department was called. The volunteer fire corps practiced in the light of burning barns. They rescued smoke and soot. They aimed their hoses only after all memories had disappeared in the heat of a spark fanned bright by legal arson. Later, a bulldozer would level the old farmhouse. Soil was pushed here and there beneath the row of singed catalpa trees; a little monument was erected to remind stray visitors of the monuments that were burned and buried.

Occasionally I return to the old Welch farm. Nothing much remains, of course, but a few flecks of paint, a shard of glass, an ember pressed into soot. And the wasps nearby.

Peace.

Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

In Whom Do We Trust?

Some of us are afraid to leave the barn. We fear we may be led astray, or that some fox will rend us to pieces. Beware, of course, of the wolf dressed in shepherd's clothing. Beware, of course, of the fox and coyote just outside the fence, sniffing for a way in. There is indeed a warm barn; but don't forget that you have a warm coat. And there is a fence, a sheepdog keeping watch, and a real shepherd but one prayer away.

You may be a sheep, but you are never a sheep alone.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Waking Up During The Fall

It was but a glimpse, and even then it was but a glimpse of a silhouette. It was a shimmer, a sylph; a vapor of joy and mirth in the night. It came and went like a scene between buildings spotted from the window of a speeding train. It was there, and then it wasn't. And yet it remains. Indelibly.

As I traveled into town the other night, a little after 8:00, I zipped down Concord Street with little in particular on my mind. It was a typical fall night, the edge of frost scraping at the windows, at the mums in planters, at the pumpkins on lighted front steps. Leaves piled in a light breeze along the curbs; woodsmoke curled around hedges and jumped over eaves.

Suddenly, as I approached the town funeral home, its lights on inside and out, a little girl, not more than 7 years old and wearing a little dress and overcoat, leapt off the funeral parlor's front steps and skipped toward a car at the curb, its rear passenger door swung wide open to receive her. There was glee, there was merriment; there was a pure and innocent joy in her step, the angle of her arms, the bounce of her hair. It was clear she felt free, happy, even relieved: nothing could encumber her.

But then I noticed, as I moved closer and past, that coming out of the funeral home, trailing behind the little girl, was a middle-aged woman carrying a huge funeral bouquet in a vase. She was saying goodbye to somebody, she was moving slowly; there seemed to be someone else in the foyer, another woman, more flowers, a man in a suit. There was no one else, no crowd, no line; no long queue of grief flowing down the street, like I had so often seen when some prominent person had died, or some shocking tragedy struck Peterborough. And as I readied to turn round the old library, I knew I had seen the closing moments of a wake, of calling hours: there would be a funeral or graveside service tomorrow, I knew; the flowers would be brought from one place to the next.

Who had died? Was it the little girl's grandmother, her great-grandmother? Was it her papa? Or was it someone she was supposed to know, someone in a long line of family that she knew by blood but not by face or name? Perhaps it was her little brother, or her little cousin, who had died at childbirth or because of a miscarriage. I could not know.

But it was the leap and the skip, the movement alone -- that sign of life -- that I know, and shall never forget. I do not know the little girl's name, nor do I have any idea what she looks like, blacked out as she was by the porch lights behind her and the lights shining on a funeral home's sign. There was light in that darkness, no doubt. But it did not come from any bulb or any flame. It came from a little girl, leaving death behind, leaping toward the unknown, free to be, to laugh. To swing her arms.

To make my heart skip a beat or two as I turned a corner, moving on.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.