Farmhouse lessons

On a day when I actually have time and opportunity to get some writing done ---- and I'm so close to being finished with the current novel ---- I find myself whiling away the time on facebook, playing with the dog, staring out the window.  It's hard to organize my thoughts. This has been a week of high emotion and loud drama. For whatever it's worth, I've thrust myself into depths where I don't really want to go.

When I was a kid and we lived for awhile in Livermore, Iowa, we were in an old, two-story farmhouse with a cellar. The barn still stood nearby, though we were forbidden to go in.  Around the barn was a junkyard of rusting machines, piles of wood planks, a couple of sheds and a threatening ground well. The house well was out back, with a working pump handle, and we played in that water frequently. But the barn well was mysterious and foreboding, the place that would swallow unsuspecting children who didn't watch where they were going. Down the cellar, a dirt-floored shivery hole, the coal furnace glowed orange and hot like a monster with many arms and one glittering eye.

We had several acres of life at that place, and I was 8-10 years old, quite impressionable, quite adventurous. I did all the things I was told not to do because they were dangerous --- going into the barn and jumping from the hayloft, climbing on the old machinery and up to the roof of the shed, crawling through the culvert at the end of our lane in order to get to the postage-stamp sized park on the other side of the road. My best friend Chrissy and I built and furnished a hut out of the junkyard near the barn, and camped out there. We ran through the cornfield behind the house, all the way to the railroad tracks to feel the vibration of an oncoming train and jump back, huddled together and screeching, as the engine blew by, followed by deafening, clacking cars that made the tracks move back and forth as they passed.

I learned that going to the scary places could be all right, as long as Mom was in the house fixing dinner. I learned that I could get away with pushing my boundaries and not get caught, but I also learned that when I got caught, I got sent up to my room to stew about the unfairness of it all.

I'm grateful that I had the freedom to test myself, to call on courage, to use my judgment, to experience fear, but not terror. I always had a safe place to land.

This week, I've jumped off the shed and crawled through the culvert, psychically at least. I've spoken my truth, even when I knew it was not being heard or understood. I've rebelled, I've shouted, I've looked my own fears about my mother and myself, directly in the face. It's been exhausting and I felt quite precarious, but once again, I find I have a safe place to land.

No matter how tangled up we get, how much we holler across a divide that seems unbridgeable, Jill and I keep finding our way back, giving each other the succor and shelter we need. Living life, getting older, facing decline and loss, take courage. But hand in hand, we can also jump out of the hayloft laughing, and be awed by the locomotive roaring by.