To and Fro

Standing on the front porch, I watched the fog lifting and burning off with the morning sun.  The valley slowly came into clear focus and soon I could see all the way to the end of the dirt driveway and then all the way to the horizon.  The only sounds were the far off birds in the apple trees and the more distant ringing of cowbells.  It was my last day on the farm for that summer and oh, how I wished I could be in two places at once.  As anxious as I was to get back to the island and the ocean, I didn’t want to leave the peace of this beautiful valley and the comfort of this old farmhouse.  It’s hard to put into words because while I have fewer memories of the old place – having spent the better part of each of my summers on the island –but there was somehow more childhood there.  The island caught in my throat each time we arrived but the farm was more real.

The two houses were as different as their occupants.  The farm was made up of small rooms, some a little shadowy, all mostly cluttered.  It had a clearly old fashioned feel to it, like hard work and early mornings. It was old and creaky and muted and there were lots of books and dark corners.  It was easy to imagine it filled with children, sleeping two to a bed and growing up in hand-me-downs.  Happily enough, it stayed in the family.

The island house was wide open with big, sunny rooms and walls made mostly of windows.  The furnishings were bright and colorful, the rooms always filled with light and kept scrupulously neat.  It was clearly a summer house, never intended to be a year round home and it felt like an escape.  Sadly, it was sold for taxes a dozen or so years ago – a process that was carefully kept from me, one I’ve long suspected was my mother’s last attempt to get even – sad to say, one that worked all too well.

The two families were not close – they barely kept up with each other’s goings-on beyond an occasional exchange of Christmas cards – each was quietly and reservedly critical of the other, mindful I suppose that any obvious display of contempt would be found out or worse (perish the thought!), repeated.  Everybody seemed to walk the narrow line of hypocrisy, usually but not always with a smile and a pitying, tolerant shoulder shrug.  Each might’ve found common ground and a way to get past their differences but summers were short and the rest of the year they were in separate countries.  No one on either side cared enough, I decided early on, all they ever shared was grandchildren.

For the most part and as far as I remember, only my mother and daddy managed to slip between these two worlds with relative ease.  Each appeared to be comfortable in the house of the other as long as they didn’t stay too long and as I grew up I can remember thinking that the families were distractions, something to focus on when they were together and help keep them from looking too closely at each other.  But then I was a romantic and imaginative child, fascinated by the workings of the adult world and the undercurrents I seemed to sense all around.

Meanwhile I went from the summer house to the farm and from the farm to the summer house, a part of me always wanting to be where I’d just left and come September, missing both dreadfully.

That hasn’t changed.