By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist
Should
today I revisit an earlier time my father steered our car onto the gravel road
that carried us to the wonderland of incredible beauty and mystical charm that
was my grandparent’s farm, I would remove the watch from my arm and switch off
my cell phone. Back then, I marked the 90 minutes of the 85 miles between our
city home and that country place with breathless anticipation, and at the exact
point our car pulled to a stop at the front of the farmhouse, I disconnected
myself from my city shoes and left them in the back seat of the car. There
among the flowing spring-fed water; the winging birds; the lowing farm animals—cloud-trails;
lightening bugs; crows; sour apples; blackberries; cats; dogs; baby cries;
brotherhood and sisterhood; and the high feeling of the earth beneath my bare
feet, by weekend’s end my bare feet also tallied the hours in cuts and scrapes,
or stone bruises, or stubbed toes. Even as the loose and disparate boundaries
of the world congealed and closed in around us and transformed into a crucible of
sky and land seeming without end, time ceased to have meaning, or contained all
meaning. It was in that sky and land that although limping, I first saw
infinity.
As
time marched on, the demands of our big city life led to a fading away of our
country traditions. Time spent on the farm came about less often, and like a
caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, I changed from a country girl into a
city girl. School awaited me and with it was breathless anticipation the equal
of my former eagerness of my childhood weekends with my extended family on the
farm. Both my father and mother worked away from home when I entered first
school. At the time, my aunt Anne lived with us and she took over the duties as
“nanny” to my little brother and me. Now in her mid-nineties, Anne tells me
stories of those times. One of her favorites (and of mine) revolves around the
routine I created for myself in getting ready for school each morning. And in
her story, I see that the foundation of “I” was set and solid even as a
six-year-old.
As
the story goes, I arose from bed far earlier than anyone else in the household.
I washed and dressed myself for school; prepared my own breakfast, and by the
time the others ambled downstairs, I was parked by the front door, ready to
bolt outside and board the school bus. Some mysterious energy inside me had
prompted me to pester my parents into teaching me how to read and write during
the year leading up to entering school, and I wanted to learn more—much more. I
am now as I was then.
The
summer leading up to my entering school, my mother undertook to “train” me away
from my love of going barefooted. It was stop and go during the whole of that
summer. It was common practice to go in search of my discarded shoes at each
day’s end. But, by the day after Labor Day (when school opened back then), I
had the hang of it. With more time, a transformation took hold in my
consciousness. I fell in love with shoes. I also developed an intense liking
for the protection shoes afforded me against those nasty cuts and scrapes and
stone bruises and stubbed toes.
The
years marched on and throughout the whole of my adult working life, shoes were
probably the most important staple of my wardrobe. At any given period, fifty
pairs or more of shoes were lined up neatly like soldiers in formation on the
closet floor of my various dwellings. As I reminisce on it now—yes, the shoes
protected my feet from wounds, but they did nothing to shield my heart—my
self-concepts—my relationships. Despite the number of shoes I accumulated, or
the gurus I consulted, or the saviors I invited into my head, the contrarian that
managed my life kept the wounds coming. Like learning to wear shoes decades
earlier, I got the hang of life, or at least a better handle on it, as time
rolled by. But now I, and you too if you are anything like me, face the
cruelest injury of all: the pulling to pieces of our country unleashed through
Covid-19, and with it, a drastically altered perspective on infinity.
What
to do with all those shoes now? Donate them? Of course—donate them to make way
for stacks of canned and boxed food-goods, extra medications, and possibly
bundles of sticks to rub together to make fire to get me through the
cataclysmic fall and winter said to be on the way. And I will tuck some extra
blankets in a corner of the closet in which to curl up and hide.
As
for infinity, infinity is here and now, up close and personal in the light-beam
of my outsized flashlight, and the spark that will ignite the candles in my
survival kit. If luck comes my way, I will get to crawl out of hiding someday,
bent up like a pretzel, no doubt, and with a tendency to keep my head lowered.
I suspect that while Covid-19 kicks the butt of everyone, no matter the race,
nationality, class, age, and gender, that infinity will look a lot different to
me yet again. My hope is that it will show as a level playing field stretching to
the horizon and beyond. The one thing I do know for sure, though, is that I
will go out and get me some cool new shoes.©
#farm;
#farmhouse; #GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS; #Americana; #twentieth century; #Linda
Lee Greene; #multi-award-winning author
Image:
Three Kids on a Porch Step: Linda Lee Greene, her little brother David Greene, and
her uncle Dean Gaffin.
Multi-award-winning
author, Linda Lee Greene’s GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS, a novel of historical
fiction based on a true story, is a “seamless blend of fact and fiction that
spans the early to mid-twentieth century, including transcriptions of actual
letters written by members of two American families. It is an unputdownable 5
star read.”
Purchase
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Thank you for the entertaining read. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteI am glad you liked it. Thanks for commenting.
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