Not sure what I was doing awake at that hour but it was what it was. I woke up back in a place where I'd lived for five years, where my husband had spent his teenage years. Sipping my first coffee of the day I glanced out the window, if I peered hard enough I could see the white of the little house we used to own.
The little house that saw the start of our married life, the birth of our family.
525 square feet, tiny by anyone's standards but we made do with what we had. I remembered preparing for my wedding day six years in the waiting, I was finally going to become his wife. Memories of bringing my daughters home after they were born, 2 1/2 years apart. We might not have had much in the way of tangible things and times were tough in many ways but we had each other and our little family.
I walked by that house yesterday looking up at the tree tops towering above the electricity wires. Those trees were no higher than my shoulder when I had lived there. I keenly felt the passage of time trying not to think of how many years had gone by. It was an odd sensation, sadness yet comfort of an old familiar place, each emotion struggling to win over the other.
I continued up the country road in the warmth of the sunshine, echos of the past wrapping themselves around me like a favorite sweater. Time seemed to have stood still in this place yet I saw evidence of seasons come and gone. The old maple tree that once freely gave it's sap now stood waiting for Mother Nature's final push, giving it's life back to the earth that had nurtured it. The tin roof of the sugar shack laying on the knoll, it's walls long crumbled into nothing yet proof of it's existence there to draw in the passerby's curiosity and in some cases, memory.
I chopped wood on most days I was here, long ago this was my only source of heat in that little white house. I could cut wood along side the best of them. My aim was rusty at first but it wasn't long before that axe and I were old friends, my aim once again true. The earthy smell of corded wood, the sound of maple splitting under protest. Not an easy task but one born of necessity. My muscles not accustomed to the workout protested but I persevered much like I had long ago.
I fixed a toilet after getting the much needed parts, hooked up an old VHS recorder to a satellite T.V, each a juxtaposition upon the other yet working in tandem. I was unstoppable looking for other things that needed tending to. Long ago I had lived in these mountains away from the basics of what we took for granted today- a hospital, a coffee shop, a grocery store. This is where I had survived, triumphed and trumped the elements, the seasons. I smiled knowing I could do it again if I had to. What a heady rush it was.
Turning my face to the sun, I felt myself getting drowsy. The spring sun was gaining strength anxious to do away with the remnants of winter. I laid down on the old bench in front of my mother in law's house. Its wood slats rickety from years spent outside, thirsty for a fresh coat of paint but still functional. I closed my eyes and tuned in to the sounds of my surroundings, the rushing waters of the creek behind the house gurgling, very much swollen by winter's melt. Birds calling out to each other, all busy building nests and preparing for new life that came with Spring. The familiar sound of a car driving up the road, its tires crunching on the gravel. I lifted my head with a great deal of effort to give back the salute the driver sent my way.
Setting my head back down on the bench I was drawn back to when I used to fall asleep in that little house, each night brought with it its own special kind of magic. Racoons cooing softly, greeting each other down by the creek as if making plans for the next few hours. Other creatures settling down for the night, some coming alive with the sweet melody of the woods.
Memories of this beautiful woodland song enveloped me in it's rhythm, beckoning me back. But I knew those memories were what they were meant to be, the past. Time had marched on and so had I.
This place would forever hold a part of me and to understand where I was today I had to remember where a part of my life had gotten it's foothold.
. .a foothold from that little white house where the woods sang it's woodland song and nature ruled with an iron fist.
