Letters from the past

I found a letter today…well, ok, not today…the pile of mail had been sitting where I dumped it on the side table almost a week ago. In any case, this envelope looked out of place with its grayish-yellow paper and what looked to be smudged pencil lettering on it. But it was addressed to me, Anita Spenser, and the return address almost completely ineligible due to the water stains, though the name of Bob Su-- and the US—below it were clear enough to see. Well, this was a puzzle to be sure….Da’s name was not Bob or Robert either, nor was it his father’s name, so…who was Bob ??

It seems I must give you a little history for this to make sense. I moved back to my childhood home after my divorce and re-took my maiden name of Spenser. Ma was in and out of hospitals with an illness that Da would never name (I suspect it may have been a type of cancer), so I mostly helped Da around the house and farm. When Ma passed on, it soon became evident that Da was floundering without her companionship, and his mental capacities faded more and more each day. When he finally passed as well, with a smile on his face no less, saying simply “I’m coming Midge, just wait up for me”, I knew he was going to a happier place. So, my parents house was now mine. I remember as a child coming here and playing in the fields near the barn…this was Gran’s house. I was always her favorite, you see, and she let me get away with many an escapade that none of my friends could lay a claim to…One year for my birthday, she gave me a small key, telling me it was something very precious to her, and that someday I would need that key so I should hold it very dear to me as well. That seemed out of character for Gran to say something like that, but as a child I didn’t think much further than the words themselves and the fact that she gave me something she so obviously prized….in hindsight it did seem that there were days when Gran seemed almost sad and introspective about something she was thinking on or remembering, but the child saw only the bright sunny day and the breeze making the hay wave across the fields and just had to go out and play…..

Anyway, the faded letter brought all the childhood memories back….what would I find inside the envelope, I wondered…something mundane or exciting? Was this a long-lost relative who went to war, or something more simplistic like Grampy couldn’t write and so a friend of his wrote for him? I steeled myself for what I would find, and slowly slid the envelope open.

A single sheet of folded paper lay within, with only a few lines looking like they had been written in a hurry. “Dearest Ani” it began, “How do I tell you how excited and pleased I am with your news? To know that our love has created something amazing…my joy knows no bounds! I cant’t wait to get home and put my ring on your hand…”

What ? ! Gran was pregnant? And not married! Wow!...that was never anything Da said a word about, nor Gran ever mention either.

So, what to do? I sat there, lost in thought for some time, wondering about this babe …was it possible that Gran had another child before Da, one who’s existence or any information about, may be stashed somewhere in this house? After all, she grew up in this house, there had to be some of her things that were never gotten rid of, couldn’t there? …Perhaps in the basement? No, those were Da’s boxes that I had moved to the cellar after he passed, and I did not remember seeing anything about Gran in them…..

Perhaps the attic then?...I hadn’t gotten very far in exploring that area yet, and memories of Gran telling me that was NOT a playground and I needed to stay out of it….could she have been hiding something there, something she did not want anyone to see? Did I want to resurrect old ghosts and secrets?

With this in mind, and no small amount of trepidation, I headed for the attic pull-stairs. After bodily shoving the door flap upward (and sending it flying into a pocket of dust that almost had me falling off my perch when I started sneezing and coughing), I shined the flashlight around and above the opening. Jackpot! There was a cord hanging there that when pulled, dimly illuminated various shrouded forms and piles of boxes, an old rocking horse with the broken leg that I remembered playing with as a child, Ma’s polished mirror that used to grace her room until she lost all her hair the last time she was so sick, and faintly at the far end some light was coming in from an attic window….Well, that single light bulb and this flashlight were not going to be enough.

Back down I headed to find an additional light source. Once I had this, I returned to the attic once more to begin my exploration. It was going to be a long process, as each ‘form’ had to be uncovered to be examined. What wonderful treasures and surprises there were …an old coat tree intricately carved with delicate vines and what I believed to be a tail of something that began at the floor and wound their way up to the top where an impressive dragon head with mirrored eyes appeared. An old steamer trunk with Da’s initials carved into it, which when opened revealed packets of letters carefully tied together, which upon inspection revealed themselves to be love letters between he and Ma when they were courting – I’ll have to come back to those at a later date. Several pieces of furniture: straight backed chairs from Gran’s parlor, a trundle bed I remembered using as a child, and oddly enough, a church pew. Boxes with assorted dishes and glassware, knick knacks that hadn’t seen the light of day in my lifetime, newspapers about the Depression and the War….. Obviously some of it would need to be disposed of, such as the very much moth-eaten and mouse-homed stuffed chair and blankets, but much that was not. Slowly I worked my way along one wall to the window. It was at this point that I realized that there were several boxes shoved far back under the eaves almost hiding behind other things – perhaps Gran hadn’t wanted those to be found and so had tucked them away behind everything else.

I went after the bottommost and furthest back…..stood to reason if Gran didn’t want anyone finding it by accident, it would be covered up/buried under something. The old box appeared to be what may have once been a hat box, octagonal in shape, with a faded cabbage rose print now gone to tan. It opened easily enough, with a slightly cracked paper sound. Oh my, sitting on the very top were hair ribbons and a military dog-tag, along with a picture of a young smiling couple who appeared to be very much in love. The girl’s face was my own when I looked in the mirror so obviously had to be Gran; the boy’s was unknown, certainly looked nothing at all like Da….I examined the tags….Sutt, Robert I is what it said. So there it was, the name of Gran’s beau. Below that, an old military formal-type envelope addressed to Gran, one that appeared to have gotten wet and/or crinkled up at some point in its life…I started to read the single-page form letter it contained…”..regret to inform you of the death of Sgt. Sutt…..”

So there it was…the reason this all hidden away, he no longer walked among the living and she wanted no reminders.…I looked further into her box and found her diary – tightly packed pages with folded papers pressed within its pages, but it was locked. Below that, an envelope from what appeared to be a Home for unwed mothers with nothing inside it….

I had found her secret, but short of destroying the diary, I would never know what it contained……I realized now that the key she had given me all those years ago HAD been to her heart, the heart she left at the home when they buried her Sergeant….the key that I had dropped down the well shaft years before… .


{the names and events noted in the above are in no way an actual re-telling of anyone’s history, merely coincidence ….}

..Oh to be .....

Have you ever heard the expression “..oh to be a fly on the wall..” and wondered, what if you actually were? What kinds of things would you see, or hear, or do if you actually were? Would your perception of life as you know it change because you were no longer bigger than everything around you, but instead just a tiny speck? Would you be scared of “giants” or exhilarated at the freedom of getting into tiny crevices that opened into whole new worlds? Would you be a solitary creature, or part of a group? Would you live a long satisfying life, or would you live-and-die in the space of a day?

Come with me, if you dare, and see…..


….m-u-s-t…. come …out… of.. this thing
..so dry and hot in here….and I am hungry..oh so hungry

….gotta get out, gotta go eat….oh, smell something, gotta go see, need to eat, gotta go to it, gotta go eat…zztt..there, I’m out of here

…gotta go, need to eat

…oooh, so many colors out here and they are all around me., gotta go, gotta eat, pretty white slug…..zztt…gotta eat…sspptt – slurp- yumm

gotta go, gotta see…zztt…smells like….zztt ymm

….sounds exploding, gentle vibrations of air as beasts move below me and near me….smell the heat and hot bodies, feel the moist air as the beast breathes…so hot, smells good, gotta eat….zztt…whistles in the distance with sharp yips, voices calling, tramp of feet, heat rising to me…gotta go..gotta eat…gotta see …..zzztt…brown mountain smells yumm, gotta eat…zztt

….oooh…another like me…mmm…gotta see, gotta go there…zzzt over and ..

..hey! …

s
w
i
s
h…

s-p-P-L-A-A-T !


“Mommie…look! I squashed a bug! “

this 'n that, or, is it Spring yet ?

..well, busy couple of weeks, still writing (in my head), just never seem to be able to "immortalize" it ....such is life.

Actually made some bread this past week...how utterly satisfying to hear the soft pop of gas bubbles popping as you knead the dough, feeling the slight elastic resistance as you turn, push and pull it towards you....and how absolutely delightful to smell the wonderful aroma of fresh baked bread(s), to hear the hollow thwump on the crust telling you it is done...the fragrant air that fills the house....yumm

The past few days have been rather nice...sunny skies, warmish temps, grass turning green, yellow-gold-green buds on tree branches, "peepers" calling in the pond across the way, and birdsong filling the air...yes, an early spring for us....as much as I love the chilly temps and crunch of snow underfoot, I can do without the muddy mess that needs to be put up with before the world around me truly "goes green" ......

the Shaman's Journey

The boy trod softly along the lonely path, not with any real sense of where he was going but only that he had been told he needed to walk until it was time to walk no more. The Shaman had been very explicit in this – his vision quest could not begin until he was where he was supposed to be, and so therefore he must walk until he heard his Spirit Guide calling to him to stop….and so, he walked...

His journey had begun many moons before when he first became aware of his surroundings…he understood the path of life that surrounded him and how it related to the People. He had few friends as a child, no one wanted to be near the boy with eyes that saw forever….he believed he frightened his parents as well for his father would never look him straight in the eye….Then the day came when the Shaman came to his home and told him to come with him and take only what he needed – he picked up his bedding, made sure he had his knife and called his horse to him – he left the tent of his father without a backward glance…the journey to apprentice to the shaman had taken another step. He spent the next several years serving the Shaman, observing all he did and how, whether it was speaking to the Chief or the child looking so forlorn when his warrior father left him behind. He attended to their daily needs, and assisted those who had none to help them. He helped the Shaman prepare for rituals he still had no understanding of, but somehow always managed to set the stage for without being told how…..

The day came then when the old man roused him well before the dawn sun had cleared the far horizon….”You must go,” he was told….”I can give you nothing more until you return.” And so the boy-now-almost-a-man, left the Shaman’s tent and began his journey anew….

And so he walked, placing his feet softly upon the ground so that unless you physically saw him walk by you would find no trace of his passage upon that ground. How swiftly the miles passed beneath his feet, yet still he walked…the horizon still lay far before him, and surely what he sought had to be found there….No unusual sounds pierced his reverie as he trod ever onward, nothing that called his name or made him pause…he stopped only to rest or drink from a passing stream. … he lost track of how many suns and halos of stars lay between him and from whence he had come, he only knew his journey was not done …..

On a day filled with blue skies and still air, he beheld a tree standing beside the path…a tree with bare branches that moved ever so slightly in the still air. He stopped to look up at the branches…they appeared as a net against the sky and he could almost feel them wrapping themselves around him -- but this could not be, the branches were above his head and he could not touch them…was this then how his Spirit Guide was finally reaching out to him? It seemed to the boy that all else around him faded from his consciousness so he knew that he had found the place he sought, and so he sat himself near the base of the tree – not touching or leaning into it, but in front of it … He sat for he knew not how long before the images spilled into him as the Tree Spirit breathed the story to the man…….

Whose life is this, anyway?

..ever have one of those days where it seems like the only person you talked to was yourself, whether in your head or on paper? So many times lately it seems that the email I thought I wrote, never actually left my head because the other person hasn't a clue to what I am referring to...and you know trying to re-create it now just would not be the same as the glorious words you used the 'first time' they were said or written.....sheesh....

Well...I guess I am going to have to get more techie and start using the voice memo App on my phone (once I figure out how, of course)...that might be the ticket to NOT having writer's block, though may pose a problem if the wonderful story ideas and emails and etc did not always take place in the shower when electronics are not a good idea....

So many ideas, not enough time, not enough of Me.....maybe I need a clone...

When is a house a home ?

As a child, I often wandered thru the nearby woods “exploring” and spending time observing the ongoing saga of minute wildlife and listening in on their “conversations”….It was on one such trek that I discovered a hole in the ground, a depression really, fairly near a deer run. I had often wondered about this small depression in the woods, sitting as it was so close to an old stone wall…what it might have been, what had stood there, what it had been used for…Digging in the dirt within the confines of that depression yielded innumerable treasures, some of which were a puzzle to a child’s mind. The dirt yielded bits of glass, rusted metals and nails, and shards of pottery. The walls of the depression revealed themselves to be just that, walls of stone much like the kind used in old foundations. These walls revealed their age in the number of rooted saplings growing from them, further tearing them down….

And so I imagined…building up this place in my mind and making my own history to go with it. What must these walls have seen in their day? What joys and sadness, what comings and goings, how many seasons had they held it all within? Come with me, if you will, as we go up to the main house from the basement (which is what my imaginations decided this must have been). History says that many old farmhouses that were built on hillsides used the lower story, the ground floor as it were, as the barn area for their animals – protection for their animals from the ‘beasts of prey’ that roamed beyond its walls at night. And without knowing or understanding the science behind it, they used the body heat of their animals so that as the heat rose, the house above could benefit from it. And on this level, the main floor of the house, I stand in the middle of the floor and turn slowly in a circle to examine each corner and direction…I see the entryway to the stairwell, lined with dour-faced portraits of ancestors with their respective children looking equally as dour and stiff, as though upset at losing precious daylight hours of chore time in order to be ‘gussied up for pictures”, and of course all are wearing period clothing of their day….I see the big black corner of the kitchen range (wood-fired of course) peaking through another doorway…. This was the heart of the home in days past. Everyone congregated around the kitchen table to discuss the day’s events and happenings, to break bread together after a long day’s work in the fields, to visit with a neighbor and perhaps share a cup of tea…this was where you would find the matriarch of the clan holding court – this was her domain, and woe to the poor male who dared trod across its clean floor with barn-muddied boots! Here too, was the where the wonderful smells emanated from and permeated every inch of the house with their essence…the scent of warm bread baking and almost ready to eat, vying with the scent of fermenting yeast in a new batch of bread dough that had been set to rise…(yumm…now I want a slice of that heaven!). Turning again to leave the kitchen, I see the fireplace against the far wall in the living room. There is a spinning wheel nearby with cleaned wool waiting to be spun in a basket in front of it. Maman’s chair sits fairly close to the wheel, though I am not sure when she would have had the time to sit…there is another basket by the chair, this one containing an almost completed pair of socks on knitting needles, with almost no yarn left, perhaps waiting for her to spin a bit more in order to finish the sock. Papa’s chair is directly in front of the fireplace… a man’s home is his castle, and of course the king should have the best place to sit… a big comfy chair, one that he can sink into after the hard labors of a typical farm day. A small wooden bench sits nearby, perhaps where the children sat…. a woven or braided rug lies on the floor. Now head upstairs to the sleeping quarters…rather tiny in comparison to the living area downstairs, but functional with a bed, a bureau, a chair, and perhaps a chest for clothing. At the foot of each bed lies a folded quilt, perhaps one the mistress of the house had stitched, made with whatever bits of fabric were available, including those from outgrown or torn clothing… a history if you will….Now I head back down the stairs, again going past the dour countenances lining the wall who almost seem to want to say ‘who are you that you can just walk through my house?’…past the fireplace and spinning wheel that not-so-strangely calls my name…and out the front door before turning back once more to see where I have been…..

Sadly, it is once again a depression in the ground, with moss-covered rocks lining the edge, and stillness in the wood around me…watching, waiting, listening, hoping that someday new life will be breathed into the walls that once stood there….I turn once again and head down the path that will take me out of the woods, promising myself that someday I will come back to this place, some day I will build a house and make a home where once another family called their’s…..what was once old is new again, they say….perhaps here too…..

..and on the fiber front....

Saturday was a bit of a long day, on the road to meet up with my sister for our annual fiber overload day at SPA Spin & Knit VIII -- lots to see, to touch, to discuss, and as my sister put it, it is not only expected but almost required that you stop someone going by you wearing that ___(fill in the blank)....and yes, we have been so stopped..lol. I had on the Magic-shawl I had gotten verbal directions on some years previously: garter stitch, CO 50 sts on large needles (?17 or 19), work until run out of yarn. Do NOT block hard at all....pull it along the length and have a supersoft squishy scarf to wrap around your neck; shake it out by holding the long side and it expands to a very open, airy dressy shawl perfect for nighttime event (I had used a mohair yarn, ~800 yard skein, one skein was all it needed). Had a lot of fun, one lady was so intrigued with my scarf/shawl that she kept sending other friends over to check it out. I probably spent way too much $ at this event, including some new fibers to spin (one of which had sparklies in it and will become another Magic)...for some reason, I was attracted to purples this year, not sure why they called my name but there you go, when a fiber speaks, you listen.

Drove back home after stopping in at a local bakery, When Pigs Fly....yumm! Headed home in a bit of a messy/slushy snowstorm, visibility a little iffy and people driving 10-15 mph LESS than the posted limit (?not from around here or used to driving in this). After a short time at home to re-pack my bag, we headed out to a college hockey game -- hubby drove this time. He works at this college in IT; the men's team won their last home game the week previous, gaining them a spot in the Playoffs, home field advantage for Quarterfinals (the previous 4 weekends we had also attended games, prime knitting time). What a game this was! Two entire periods of play with no goals, but numerous shots on goal Third period started much like the previous two had, the only difference being in that the roughness of play was called out on penalties much more frequently...oh, and a number of broken hockey sticks littered the ice. Shortly after the period began the opposing team scored, which our guys answered within minutes. We should have had another score but the ref's ruled it as Not because the entire puck had not crossed the line (we were sitting in the corner above the goal, so we and the entire student bleacher area directly behind the goal say it did, but it wasn't our call to make)...of course, the question remains, can we call a player in the net a goal ...lol ? Long story short, period ended with score tied 1/1, ruling made for 20-minute Sudden-Death Overtime. I continued to knit until a few minutes into this period where it just got to wild to pay attention to both handwork (even a simple rib pattern) and the game. Our guys scored the decisive game-ender at 4:57 left to play...can you say pandemonioum on ice? helmets flying, pigpile in center ice, cheers and horns....kind of what I expect to see on TV this afternoon when USA plays Canada in the Olympic finale...hmmm, more prime knitting time...sounds good to me!