My higher voice blends
with the rough one on the recording, as my left foot taps along to the melody.
I'm keeping my eyes on the road as it curves with the hills, and at the
final bend, Millsite Lake is visible beyond the trees. They bow down,
more in awe of the expanse of blue than most of the drivers who race over the
flattened frogs and through the splatter of bugs, cruising their way down
Cottage Hill Road.
I have taken this ride
as a passenger in our family’s brown
Chevy Tahoe, sitting next to my sister Nicole, while my parents talked about
the drug bust in the mid-seventies- piles of freshly grown marijuana plants
burning, creating a skunk-like smell in the air, and staining the road in front
of the house darker than the rest. The cops were getting a contact
high just standing around, and were the friendliest we ever saw them, Steve
had said when we asked. Don’t worry- your parents were in Maryland at
the time, missed the whole damn thing. I've done it as a girlfriend, and later as a wife, explaining the
first time I went cliff jumping for the umpteenth time, and how some local kid
jumped from the top of a tree- a 45 foot drop, easily. And I've done it
with my own children in the back seat, after
Steve passed the property on to our generation, babbling away that we'll
be at "Auntie Coley's farm" in a few minutes, as they happily chomp
on goldfish crackers and sip apple juice out of metallic pouches.
For the first time in my life, I am alone making this trek, gearing up
for a weekend of music and art at Better Farm’s Summer Festival. My husband is playing a gig an hour south in Syracuse, on
his way to the farm to perform with his band, and our daughters are home now,
in the care of their grandparents for the weekend. My photographs are wrapped
in towels and linens for safety, part of an exhibit I'm putting up in the
barn-turned-gallery. This solo show is a return to a passion I’ve had on
hold since college, in favor of the traditional job, wife, mother role I’ve
embraced wholeheartedly.
It’s been a rough year, though. My husband had shoulder replacement
surgery after five failed prior procedures, and is in constant pain. Life
revolves around making him ice packs, and tiptoeing around his injury and anger
at his situation. Our youngest broke her leg three days after his last
surgery, after I slipped down the stairs carrying her (most likely the result
of only four hours of sleep the night before), and was in a body cast for a
month. In addition to doing all the household chores and running both our
companies, taking over Jeff’s job while trying to stay afloat in mine, I am
working as a teacher, muddling through all the new Common Core standards and
evaluation methods being thrown down from the bureaucratic higher ups in charge
of public education. I’ve been running myself ragged trying to take
care of the world at large, and my family knew I needed a break. Hence
this weekend away.
Looking out over the tops of the
pine trees at the water, I let out a breath I didn't know I'd
been holding in. It's the end of a long journey north, away from the
go-go-go of schedules, the constant tugging, and the barrage of sensory
onslaught by machines. Sometimes,
it’s important to step away from the normal, remember what you can be when
given the chance, and Steve’s words- every day is an opportunity for better-better
for you, better for the world around you- play through my head like a
mantra I need to savor.
* * *
In
another life, Steve had owned Better Farm.
It was the compensational result of a car accident that saw the loss of
his girlfriend from this world, and his mobility from his chest down. He only talked about it once in the almost
thirty years I knew him, almost in passing.
I woke up to find a young woman staring at me, pale and
sweating, saying ‘Are you alright mister?’
I remember she smelled faintly of motor oil, like she'd been out on the
road too long. I looked down and saw my legs were twisted under me in a manner
that could only be described as arachnid- the way a Daddy long legs’ twist when
wet. Then I passed out.
We never asked him for details. It
didn’t seem unusual to have an uncle whose hands formed claws, who drank
water through a plastic straw sticking out of an old glass coffee pot, and wore
his wispy white hair in a ponytail, and a patchwork quilt over his legs. I thought people naturally lived in large
groups in houses in the middle of nowhere, that Wagner regularly flowed from
other people’s record players, and that sloped floors were architecturally
common.
I told them to build the ramp at the edge of the back door,
but to be sure there was enough room so I didn’t go flying off into the
swamp. They were blasting Ride of the
Valkyries, carrying around pic axes and shovels, throwing wet dirt that dried
in grayish pile. They dug that hole next
to it for bathing, before the plumbing was done, and before realizing how mucky
it was. It was abandoned after something
slithered around somebody’s foot.
The hole at the edge
of the property stands to this day, a pungent portal to another world, filled
with the discarded carcasses of animals- porcupines, birds, coyotes- skulls and
thigh bones which occasionally float to the top and are brought back by my
sister’s proud dogs, who wag their tails and dismiss the irony of their
hunt. There are reeds and giant grasses
thrusting out of the brown water, waving in the wind, and creating a barrier to
the wild lands beyond the mowed lawn.
My octogenarian
grandmother would play Scrabble in the kitchen with Steve, the two of them
going head to head in epic battles of wit.
Granny was in charge of the bag of squares, and would hold them out so Steve
could reach his curved hand in, drawing out the letters one at a time.
If you look carefully, each Scrabble square has a different
wood grain, unique to the piece- kind of like a fingerprint. After one game where Mother particularly
trounced me, I decided I would memorize the backs of the pieces. So I did.
When she figured it out, I turned white as a sheet as my confession. Without a word, she got up, removed the board-
and all the pieces on it- and tossed the whole thing in the trash. From that day, she kept all the pieces in an
opaque container when we choose ours.
Nicole and I slept in
the loft at the top of the stairs, on a mattress that had been up there for
several decades, and held contaminates we chose not to think about. It got stuffy, snoozing twelve inches from
the wooden plank ceiling, no insulation and a hammer’s length away from the
roof. The stairs leading up to the bed
were more of a slanted ladder, slats that were painted blue after the wall was
torn away to create the sleeping space at the top. There was a small window,
always cloudy and never clean, looking out over the field, which allowed
reddish orange light to stream in from the setting sun.
It was worth the
sleeping arrangements, though, as Steve was full of tales about our family. He told us about how my parents had spent the
summer they got married, at age 20, working on the multicolored farmhouse in
the middle of nowhere. They spent the next thirty years completing the roughly
six-hour drive from New Jersey to visit, offering stories of the suburbs,
friends growing older and procreating, bringing Nicole and me, and our cousins
and friends, along for the ride, while Steve existed in the timelessness that
is rural Redwood.
In 1995, we had a reunion of the people
who built the farm, and set up a slide show in the library. It had 14 foot high ceilings, walls lined
alphabetically with books -we found no fewer than twelve mouse nests behind
when we cleaned it- and a series of sheets, held aloft by my cousins Danny and
Mike in a rare moment of sibling cooperation, that my Dad affixed to a wire
over the sliding glass doors with clothespins.
There were men with long hair and bandannas,
smiling with joints protruding from their mouths, posing with firearms and a
half built fireplace in Technicolor. I
marveled at the way time stood still in the photographs- women, hair down to
their waists, tanned, sinewy limbs bent as they carried rocks and wood, beaming
and squinting in the sunlight. There was a lot of laughter as the machine
whirred and sparked, the light bringing the images to life as I gazed around
the room at the housewives with perms, the men with thinning hair and bald
heads. I snapped photos of my own, capturing the same smiles, slightly
yellowed, and limbs, somewhat plumper, of the refugees of youth who had
taken shelter in suburbs across the northeast after doing their time in the
North Country.
It was the last major
group gathering at the farm. Dad died on
a Tuesday night a few years later, at a basketball game for an over 50 league,
two weeks shy of his own half century mark. I spent the next several days
aging, making decisions about funeral music, readings, and delivering the eulogy
to the packed church. The sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows,
full of multicolored roses and crucifixions, highlighting the teenage soccer
team in matching uniforms that he managed, their heads down, their hair hanging
in their eyes. The smell of too much
perfume and incense made my eyes itch and my nose run. Steve was transported south in a car for the
first time in years, and sat atop a pickup truck in his wheelchair on the way
to the cemetery, bundled in blankets, hat, and scarves, a strange float in the
middle of a January funeral procession.
I
didn’t crack until weeks later, during a fifteen minute break from my
photography class that turned into seven hours of lying on my bed, pouring over
pictures, my hands shaking while my dorm mate rubbed my back and handed me
bottles of water. “You have to hydrate,” she’d said
* * *
The
memory stays with me as I slug water from a plastic container. After we lost Dad,
Nicole and I took to making the trip ourselves when it was too painful a
reminder for Mom what she had lost, and a beacon for me and my sister of what
we had to gain. Steve allowed us a posthumous
look at the man I wish I’d known as an adult. I think back to the
last conversation I had in person with Steve, in his kitchen with the linoleum
peeling up in the corners, and the fly paper, with little insect carcasses,
hanging precariously over the sink.
Nicole
was in the other room, cataloguing the books, and removing duplicates for Steve
to sell on eBay. Jeff and I were
angling for Steve to stay with us for the winters, as the long drive to Tucson
for its dry, warm air was getting harder and harder the older he became. The converted Ken Kesey bus for those cross
country drives lay tangled in the weeds next to the old barn, immobile like
him, waiting for a motor that cost more than he could justify spending. I had completed my teaching degree, was
looking for a steady job in the heart of suburbia where Steve had grown
up. It was a comfortable normal, the
kind none of us necessarily saw as our future when we were younger, but had
turned to for the sake of survival and prosperity.
We
were going to expand the doorways in our Cape Cod house, to make them passable
for his wheelchair, and install ramps out to the back yard. I stood at the stove, sautéing garlic and
onions for the night’s meal, puffs of buttery steam rising through my hair as I
handled the ancient cast iron skillet with expert precision. We spoke of turning the farm into an artists’
retreat, doing what he’d thought about for almost 40 years. Nicole was old enough now, they could sit on
the deck with their laptops. It was a
solid plan, one with potential. He was
excited at the notion, and we made a pact that this would be his last winter
traveling south of Jersey for the bitter months.
Steve
called from Arizona a few months later, his voice gravelly and low over the
phone. He had a bronchial infection, and
was fighting it. He laughed hoarsely, as
he did, saying Don’t forget- better. Every day
is the opportunity for better. This is a
hiccup. “Don’t die on me, or I’ll
kill you,” I’d said. I’m too old to die, he’d said. He had flat lined twice in his life, as a
child learning the harsh reality of allergies, and as an adult experimenting
with drugs, and lived- lived through the accident, lived through the deaths of
his two brothers and sister, lived in rural backwoods America for forty years while
the rest of the world kept on turning.
* * *
The
house looms on the right, large and weather beaten. There are people milling about, and a
cacophony of chickens clucking as I turn into the driveway. Opening the door to stretch my tanned legs, I’m
happy that even years removed from playing, and after two children, the shape
is still there from the endless cycle of high school and college soccer. At the same time, I'm quick to recognize that
my body is angry at this sudden movement after hours of stagnating.
"You're
here!"
My sister sashays out of the house, cutoff
shorts betraying the massive number of insect bites on her legs. Gangly arms embrace, laughter begins. It is the start of a madcap of bonding
exercises. She regales me with tales of
hatching chickens, and boats being towed by swimming interns, while we walk
through throngs of poultry, before setting me free to wander the grounds. Her
tattoo in memory of our Dad, a purple Grateful Dead bear dancing across her
lower back, peeks out from under her yellow tee shirt as she heads for the main
house. It reminds me that the only body
alteration I have is a five inch scar from my two c-sections- the first an
emergency, the second planned.
The
camera strap hangs loosely around my neck, my birthday present to myself
earlier in the year when I realized I had spent most of the last several years
losing much of who I was in favor of who my family needed me to be. The shutter clicks in my hands, capturing
images of strutting roosters and hand painted signs in pixels and JPEGs. I mentally check off how many matted frames are
in my car, calculate how many old windows can be salvaged from the pile in the
shed as found frames, and how many more photos can be printed for the art
projects to be displayed in the gallery later.
Lyrics
run from my lips under my breath, my mind wandering to younger years, when I
was on my own on a more regular basis. I
squint in the waning light, making my way across Cottage Hill Road to the
recently renovated art barn, as flashes of childhood unfold. Summers of sneaking across the divide with
Nicole, peeking in on the pigs through the deteriorating planks of wood play in
my head like a grainy movie. They were
gone the next year, we turned vegetarian, and took to chopping celery into
salad, the firm stalks, sliced into half moons, distracting from the lack of
crunchy bacon. In the years
since, I tried on a number of occasions to adopt this ingredient at home, but
it never quite worked right - it always seemed somehow alien, out of place, and
the celery would end up isolated on the plate, away from the drips of dressing
and stray tomato seeds.
The
former pigsty has been rebuilt for storage, the barn now houses a white walled
gallery downstairs, music studio upstairs, and boasts a deck with a natural
amphitheater around it, which was discovered during a massive hacking back of
the overgrown brush the year Nicole took over. Salads are concocted in the
kitchen from our own freshly picked produce, and are adorned with hard boiled
eggs left by the grateful spent hens that were rescued from becoming pot pies
and nuggets. Humming a melody, I place
my camera on a folding table, pick up a paintbrush, and dip it into creamy
black tempera. A drop of paint is pulled
down the pane of glass, as I think about the little instances in our lives,
those moments that seem so inconsequential, yet alter the course of our history,
and that of the world around us.
She shouldn’t have been driving- she
was too tired. I fell asleep against the
back door, lying down. Seatbelts weren’t
required in cars then. It was 1967, I’d
just graduated Columbia the month before.
I thought I was invincible.
I
glance out the window, at the arms of the setting sun as they reach out to the
trees and round bales of hay, lighting them on fire before turning them black
in her wake. Placing the paintbrush
down, I reach for my iPod, tapping the icon to make the music louder.
* * *
Steve
made the decision to take himself off the ventilator. He scrawled the note on the wipe board, I’m too tired, love to you all, and
Nicole, Danny, and Mike stood around his bed, holding hands for the first time
since they had lost their parents. Steve’s
other witnesses shifted their weight and held their breaths, waiting for one
final miracle from the man who shouldn’t have survived several times over. I sat in a classroom in Ridgewood, watching
the clock and my cell phone, too new in my job to be able to make the journey
south, while my students read about Scout and Atticus, discussing the mystery
of Boo Radley in hushed voices.
Weeks later, I stood over
Steve’s grave, reading my words and borrowing names from his beloved operas. “There was a time once when he was the stuff
of legend, surrounded by his Rhine-maidens, sitting atop his throne at his
Delphi, a haven for the masses of uber-intelligent, anti-establishment
miscreants, from the bowels of the suburbs, from the dusty roads leading to the
rock eating dogs and the Acropolis on the hill.
He was Woton, raised with Erda, Donner, and Froh,
those too great to continue on its terra, as the mortal realm was, simply, too
small to hold them.”
* * *
Steve’s
journey, my sister’s to owning the farm, my own to this moment of isolation and
freedom, all intertwine in the midst of the tangle of country. I pick up a hammer, and pound the nails into
the walls for my artwork, each stroke splitting the wood as I try to strike the
thoughts running rampant through my head as my brain chants a line from a story
I read once: remember... remember... reMEMber...
and my voice belts with enough resonance to shake the beams over my head,
jerking me between the present and the past, the real and the imaginary as the last
of the sunlight disappears, and the moonlight streams in.
I wrote a short blog called January in August last year. At the time, I just wanted to get the words down, try to remember the emotion, and was more focused on the song than the actual memories it was triggering. For one of my Master's Degree courses, I reworked it to be more of a reflection on my Uncle Steve, my connection to Better Farm (which is now run by my little sister), and on where I was at that particular moment in my life. The words in italics are my Uncle Steve's- I'm paraphrasing due to the fickleness of memory, but the gist is here. The rest is all true. Here it goes.
