Saturday morning frost cloaked the roof and garden in wedding white. The growing season for the uncovered tomato, pepper and eggplants ended too soon on a morning when fog hovered above the low land along the creek bottom.
A bow hunter called the day before to get permission to hunt the pasture. He had used a camera to record four deer that made the pasture their home. I wished him good luck and talked about the monster tracks I'd seen. I had once been a small-game hunter armed with a hand-me-down .22 rifle with a faulty firing mechanism. Shots misaimed at squirrels and rabbits startled but seldom killed. The hunt's thrill was replaced with admiration for the colorful quilt woven by fallen leaves and ocean-deep blue skies.
It's time to bring the harvest home. The onions are drying in wire baskets while the mud from newly dug potatoes falls away. Potato digging — best done when children are present because finding out what has grown beneath the plants is akin to Christmas morning surprises — is most anticipated. Misshapen spuds look like rabbits, dinosaurs and Dumbo and are kept apart as window-sill treasures.
When cold crept into our house, Mother stroked the wood furnace with corn cobs. It was time for winter things, which included the wood quilt-making frame that had been been handed down from her grandmother. The material gathered throughout the summer stitched together would be transformed into steel-strong fine art. Its imperfections, and there were many, in the creator's estimation, were bothersome but unnoticed by those who received it as a gift. A quilt can be compared to a community. Separated, the cloth is utterly unremarkable. Bonded together, it becomes a masterpiece.
I return to my roots, which are found at St. Henry, a rural church with gravestones on either side. Some stones are engraved with Mutter and Vater, others speak of Irish heritage. The cemetery's quiet is broken by a couple seeking ancestors who had left old world problems behind for new world promise. The stone search unearthed the names of two sisters in their early 20s who died in a flood; three children who died before their eighth birthdays; and an Irish solider who lived to be 100. Each marker had its own story to tell, if only there was someone besides the crows to listen.
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I found the marker crowned with a faded geranium. The site is on a hill that overlooks a big grain field. Dad died the day after Labor Day 1973 when a killing frost came early. Mother lived more than a decade longer, during which time she continued quilting and piecing together the colorful pot holders that are among my most priceless possessions. A tractor is engraved on another important stone along with praying hands.
I laugh to throw off the melancholy and to thwart the tears. I do not know from where the emotion springs, but there is a cost involved in remembering what was and isn't anymore.
I'm not sure roots, when severed, can be stitched back together.
We were dreamers of big things — more acres and cows and things bigger than ourselves. Reality intervened and lives connected like a fine quilt were pulled apart. Perhaps it is true that one can never go home again. It is also honoring to remember what was. The emotional storm ended with a walk across the ball field. Young boys making catches and hitting balls a country mile with the smell of hot dogs and cheering parents.
"Do you want to move back here someday?'' Kathy asked.
It wouldn't be the same because I am not the same.
We drive past the old homestead. The house still wears its green siding and chickens roam the grounds. Empty silos stand as monuments to the past.
