I can close my eyes and in a moment be transported back there.
I am seven years old.
The kitchen smells of boiled potatoes, fried pork, dogs and barn boots. But it’s not a bad smell. It’s comforting, welcoming.
The air is hot and moist from the cooking and simmering that’s gone on all day.
A green kettle sits on the gas stove ready to heat water for tea.
There is a worn old table surrounded by mismatched chairs. A cookie jar that looks like a hen sitting on her nest rests a top the table.
Behind the refrigerator, the kind with the freezer on the bottom, is a yard stick, often threatened, but never actually used, on a gaggle of rowdy grandchildren.
There’s an old metal stool at one end of the table covered in peeling green paint. The seat spins. Sometimes it’s a merry-go-round for a bored kid.
But now Grandma sits there peeling those potatoes, served at almost every meal, usually mashed.
Oh, how I loved that week every summer when we stayed at Grandma’s house. For an only child, lots of nearby cousins meant instant comrades.
For a child who lived in town, the farm meant new experiences and adventures.
I fed calves with a bottle, watched chickens meet their fate at the end of an ax, climbed the hay elevator up to the loft, collected eggs from the hen house, helped slop the pigs.
There was an old pony, a pack of friendly dogs and a gang of ferocious barn cats to provide hours of entertainment.
And Grandma was the queen of all of this. The royal matriarch of this magical, rural realm.
When you’re seven your Grandma is a Fairy Godmother.
I think of this today as news comes that the farm has at last been sold.
I can’t go back there anymore.
I’m no longer seven.
The house isn’t the same.
Grandma doesn’t live there anymore.
Grandma, who time is now catching up with, isn’t the same.
Our family, changed by time and scattered by distance, isn’t the same.
But I have all these memories, and can recall so many details about the house and the farm. I can see every room of that house just as it was 25 years ago. I remember the dusty lane and how the field looked full of growing corn. I see the cows eating at a trough in the barnyard. I hear the loud ruckus as aunts and uncles and grandchildren fill up that big old farm house.
That house is just a place in my heart now. A part of dreamy childhood reminiscences where innocence and naivety still exist. Where there isn’t a care in the world.
But to soar on the tire swing hanging from the hundred year old tree in the side yard once more!
To laugh with cousins around the kid’s table once more!
To bound up the steps on the back porch one last time into the kitchen where Grandma is busy cooking something and the tea kettle is whistling happily away!
These are sweet, sweet memories.
Do you have fond childhood memories of a special place? Talk to me.
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