Thoughts About Home by Deborah

Flickering Candles

   

 And so we talk, deep into the evening on our small back deck, with candles flickering in their glass baskets. It is May, the month of our marriage and in a few days we will celebrate our 36 years together as man and wife, father and mother, Granddaddy and Amma.

 We share a bottle of chilled white wine. The evening is perfect, no air conditioner compressor, no mosquitoes, just the cool presence of early spring with the night birds calling to one another and the occasional siren in the distance to remind us of the city in which we now live.

     Together we have buried parents, witnessed births, faced difficult financial times, weathered illness, celebrated graduations and marriages. Sometimes, I confide, I wake in the middle of the night in a panic certain of the tasks that lay before me: waking Kate early so she can review for a test, reminding David to practice piano for his evening recital, fold the clothes still in the dryer, schedule dental appointments, shop for the week (Mom, there’s never anything to eat in this house…i.e. no chips, dips, soft drinks or sweets of all kinds etc). Then I open my eyes to the renewed awareness that Kate is now married, in her own home with her husband, Craig, and if she needs to get up early she sees to that.

 David is probably cradling his sleepy son who sometimes wakes in the night for a drink or to snuggle between David and his wife, Karen. At two, Dave the 4^th aka Baby D, states solemnly that it’s mommy’s bed, not daddy’s bed, proving once more that the Oedipal complex is alive and well among the two year olds of the world.

“If we were at the farm,” my husband says, “We’d be listening to the whippoorwills and the owls.”

“If we were in Paris," I say, "we'd be out walking until dawn, maybe stopping in at that tiny jazz bar just down the street from our room. Remember?"

“If we were in Monterey," he says, "we'd be walking the beach, listening to the rush of the sea and the snores of the seals."

“If we were there,” I say, “we’d have just finished dinner in that Greek restaurant which was, do you recall, smothered in fog that night. It was like walking in a dream.”

“If we were there,” he says, “I’d build you a fire in our bedroom fireplace and it would burn all through the night.”

“Yes,” I reply. “That was when I was afraid of the dark.”

“But,” he reminds me, taking a sip of his wine, “you’re not afraid anymore.”

“No.” I raise my glass to a toast. “You’ve been strong and kept me safe for a long time now. I’m not afraid anymore.”

“We’ve been strong together,” he says.

On our actual anniversary, we would celebrate with dinner at Lilly’s where the food and wine were exquisite. But, it’s that brief moment in the candlelit darkness of our back deck that held for me the true celebration of our marriage.

Cheers!

 

Finding a Way Back

  My father’s woods are laced with redbud and dogwood. The iris down near the first pond are in bloom and deep in the lane I know just where to look for the sweet William hovering like blue butterflies in the new shade. The peepers have made themselves known for weeks now in the pond out beyond the horse barn, the same pond where the cattails are coming back along the steep and muddy banks.

There are calves that shyly watch my approach as I walk into the midst of my brother’s herd. I sing old hymns to the cows and they seem to like it. None of them moves as I sing and walk through their congregation. At night I sit on the side porch and listen to their lowing in the dark.

I rarely sleep in when I’m out in the country. A cup of hot coffee never tastes better than in the cool mists of early morning out on my father’s farm. A blue bird has nested in the side of the farmhouse and my mother has decided to let her stay. Mother walks me to her flower beds and introduces me to her plants, Mama’s old fashioned pink, Mrs. Sheely’s daylily, the bleeding heart she thought she’d lost to last winter’s frigid January temperatures, the rose my father gave her the last summer of his life, the wood ferns she brought to the base of the sugar maple from the woods last year. It is a ritual with us. I’ve met the flowers in years past but this is the first year she has ever added, I want you to know where everything is so when I’m gone you can enjoy them.

I listen and remember. Then I tell her about a new tree I’ve noticed for the first time, down near the lake. It’s in bloom and I have no idea what it is. I describe the delicate blossoms and sweet fragrance. She nods and we walk on.

Last year David and I helped deliver a calf on a hillside (up near the old pear trees) in a swift cold wind. With phoned assistance from the vet, we eased this animal into life and then stood back and watched as the mother did the rest. After a while, the calf wobbled to its feet and stood next to its mother. The other cattle kept a polite distance but nothing escaped their notice. When the time was right, the herd closed in around them and everyone moved on out into the fields.

I’m not sure I want to be too specific about why going to my father’s farm is such a comfort to me. It’s a home like no other. I’m not ready to live there, but every time I leave, I always know I’ll find my way back.

Together

            I planted pansies this morning. Rain is due by noon so this morning I dug in the dirt, felt winter’s chill still in the spring soil, and then swept the courtyard clear of old leaves and magnolia pods. Our dog, Souri, accompanied my every move with a curious nose and then a loud bark of protest when she was shut in the courtyard and our white cat, Lydia, slipped through the rungs of the old iron gate to join me out under the tulip magnolia where I planted the pansies.

There is a brisk, warm breeze and the luxurious swish of cypress and magnolia. The wind chimes are alive and I pretend I am near the sea and the rush of wind overhead is the shore just beyond my walled courtyard. The UPS jet high overhead becomes a surging surf in my mind and all that’s missing is the smell of salt water on the breeze.

I have stretched the wood pile’s tarp over the porch railing to dry in time to store before the rain comes. It blows free, catching against the trunk of our holly tree which stands three stories tall and has a straight, flat trunk that shimmers when the rain comes and courses the trunk like tears. In my fantasy, the tarp flapping against the holly’s trunk becomes the main sail slapping against the sail boat’s stanchion which stands nearly as tall in memory as the holly does in the present.

GeorgiaFort Lauderdale Before we had children, David and I used to sail. We’d pack a sail bag with old jeans, bathing suits, deck shoes and sun-block and drive all night from our home in Georgia to Ft. Lauderdale where we’d catch a small plane out the Abacos and one of Judy’s charter boats. We’d live on our borrowed sail boat for days, cooking in the narrow galley, sleeping in the forward berth and showering in the tiny head, careful all the while to conserve our precious water.

Those were wonderful days to learn about one another. One night I woke with a start to the sudden rush of a spherical hum which wrapped our entire world deep in the night. I was afraid and it was David who reassured me there was nothing to fear. It was only the wind in the rigging creating the high pitched whine. Only wind in the rigging.

Now, on this spring morning in land-locked Kentucky, all these years later, the wind in the trees takes me back to such sweet memories of our home on the sea where we first understood what it was to be alone together in the midst of this wide wonderful world.

The Opportunity for Slow Growth

     What I love about winter is the opportunity for slow growth. Whether it’s reviewing and pruning my client files in anticipation of a busy spring and summer or settling in by the fire with Tolstoy’s biography, I do not feel rushed as I would in other seasons.

On a recent Saturday I decided to clean this old house in a way I haven’t since late September. With a soft rag in hand, I dusted the tall baseboards. I took time to notice that most dust collected in the front hall, near the cold air return. In the dining room I drew close enough to one of the large windows to feel the cold air seeping in around the window’s edge.

This winter I’ve learned the particular nature of each of our fireplaces. The living room’s is a little deeper but more narrow. The library fireplace smokes unless you build the fire close to the back in which case it draws just fine. Our bedroom fireplace is the least trouble. It draws well and has a slightly larger firebox so it is easier to fit odd sized logs in there.

Winter’s first light comes in the broad bay of the library on the northeast corner of our house. I love watching the light shift quietly from morning to dusk. It alters the color of the room, the pale yellow walls shifting from nearly white to a deeper, almost burnished gold depending entirely on the light of the moment.

This is a house for candles after dark. Late each day I light a fat, squat candle in one of Ama’s (David’s great grandmother) lovely butter dishes taken from the farmhouse in Wilmore, KY where routinely 13 sat down to the long dining room table for meals. So I light this candle in the fading light of a winter’s day and feel somehow closer to the women who’ve weathered the long hard winters of the past and I am reassured.

The flickering light carries me into night with the sure knowledge that winter will not last forever and my house will have fresh secrets to share in the spring. In the meantime, I am content to snuggle in and wait. Winter teaches us endurance, patience.

My house is now in its 106th winter. I can only hope I will age as gracefully.

(Picture: "Winter Road" - Wallpaper by CloudEight)

Lessons Remembered.

It was cold even in the kitchen with our small electric heater on high next to my chair. I told myself to think warm thoughts…attics in the heat of a summer’s afternoon; walking the dogs down to the park, careful to stick to the shady side of the street; the taste of a sweating glass of iced tea in the heat of the afternoon; perspiration trickling down my back as I write in the morning on our small enclosed deck; how David and I leave the back door open so the dogs can come and go while we have supper outside, swatting at the mosquitoes in the gathering dusk; how even on the hottest days I can feel a breeze spiriting through the trees at the highest point of the farm if I am still. Although my hands typing this letter are cold, my mind wanders deep into the warmth of summer and I forget the chill.

Despite dire reports about the economy, I know for sure that the ice will melt, the days will grow longer and the seasons will change. There’s a reassurance in that one I sometimes forget surrounded as I am by reports of everything from global warming to recession to yet another wonder drug that turns out to be just the opposite of it promise.

It’s then that we escape for a weekend to our farm where smoke rises from the two old chimneys, split wood fills the shed roof barn out back where the stalls now hold firewood instead of horses. The dogs run free and we bundle up for walks down the ridge in the moonlight beneath that age old canopy of the Milky Way. We’re surrounded by the promise of tomorrow. Light will return, a bit at a time, until the vague shapes in the distance become clearly the patience of bare trees ready and waiting for the cues of spring.

During times of seeming crisis our Uncle George used to say, “This, too, shall pass.” And I believe that. Markets will steadily rise once more, houses will sell and life will resume a less fearful pace. These are the trying times that keep us awake at night. They will pass and we’ll be busy with so many opportunities that we’ll hardly have time to remember the threats of today.

A Christmas Beacon

This is one of my old, old stories. But I love it still. Allow me to share it with you.

December 1993

Just tonight I left a light on in a house for the weary new owners who were traveling by car from

New York City. I also left some food, but it’s the light that warmed the house as I looked back from my car in the gathering darkness.

  “The Lord will make a way somehow. Well, there’s a sweet relief in knowing the Lord will make a way somehow. I say to my soul, take courage. He will take away the sorrow. The Lord will make a way somehow.”

  I can hear my grandmother singing that song in her farmhouse out on Pea Ridge near Shelbyville, Kentucky.

  She’s the one who taught me about leaving on a light for the absent loved ones, expected home after dark. I always knew there’d be a light in the front window to show the way.

   When I decided to take a job that would earn some extra money in the mid eighties, it was that image of a light in the window that spoke to me. I had always loved houses and so decided to try and make a living helping others buy and sell their homes.

  I now live in an old farmhouse at the foot of Frankfort Avenue just before it merges with Story Avenue. Our house was built in 1802. It once oversaw two thousand acres of river bottomland. Today we have less than an acre left, but the Linden trees for which the house is named (Linden Hill) still loom and if you drive by our way, you’ll recognize our house by the lights in all the windows. They burn the year round but seem to glow especially bright in these nights that precede the birth of Jesus.

  These days I sit by my kitchen fireplace and marvel at how fortunate I am to live in a place I love as much as I do this house. My first view is of the east and the return of the light after the darkness.

  Merry Christmas and the most blessed of New Years.

 

Frost On a Four-Dog Night

We arrived at The Farm on Wednesday night. It was nearly dark and the air was balmy. After unpacking, we took a walk before supper. The sky was amazing, roiling first with dark clouds full of rain which blew right over us to leave the fair sky spinning with white fluffy drift that moved so fast you could watch them like flying carpets on their way to a mysterious land. All of this was overseen by a luminous nearly full moon.

The world always seems immense out here. I have been in some of the largest cities on the globe and this planet never seems as infinite as it does in the country under the evening sky or right after a summer’s dawn. Life goes on out here without rush or much intensity. Morning turns to mid-day as late afternoon dips into early evening and the gloaming arrives before dark. You can sit in one place or walk for miles. Nature doesn’t much care. It has its task in hand and it does it well. Perfection on a daily basis.

Thursday morning I awoke to delicious aromas drifting up the staircase from the kitchen. I slid the covers up a little closer to my neck, closed my eyes and set the moment sweetly in my memory.

David had awakened earlier to put the turkey in the oven and walk the four dogs; Missouri, our 13 year old hound mix whose large almond brown eyes would melt the heart of the dourest soul around; Jude, our two year old pup, a husky-lab mix whose black coat gleams and whose bark skitters from a deep threat to a puppy’s scratchy soprano, depending on what he wants; Noah, our daughter’s orphan dog who is as loyal as the hills but who would rip the throat out of anyone who threatened Kate; and then Guinness, the other pup, a Belgian Tervuren who captured Kate and her husband Craig’s heart when he was small enough to hold in the palms of their hands. It’s a lovable pack and good company on a chill Kentucky morning’s first walk.

It is my husband’s chilled face I feel against my own as he bends to urge me out of the warm bed. “Time’s a wastin’ darlin’,” I hear him say as I look at the alarm clock that indicates I’ve slept plenty. I rise, dress and head down stairs to a kitchen full of wonderful smells and three cooks. Our daughter, Kate, David and my mother, Kay, scrunch around one another as they whip up cakes, oyster dressing, sweet potato casserole, green beans, cranberry salad, and mashed potatoes. All the while my mother is fretting over whether or not we will have enough food. She won’t rest easy until the guests all settle down with plates overflowing and the buffet shows plenty for seconds and thirds.

Much later when all the dishes have been washed and placed in their proper stacks, the leftovers covered with foil, the candles flicker against the encroaching darkness. I sit down before the fire with my soft house slippers on my aching feet propped before me near the warmth of the hearth and I read while the men sit at the other end of the room rooting for their preferred football team.

Another American Thanksgiving is about to end. Football has replaced hog butchering which Grandmother Tad said always occurred on the Thanksgivings of her childhood because that day usually marked the first really cold days, so perfect for killing hogs.

I don’t know the first thing about hog killing, but I do know that last night before I shut the lights off and climbed up to bed, the temperature was 22 degrees outside of this house that is heated entirely by wood. I was the last one up. It was nearly three a.m. and time to fill the stove with another load of wood and chunk on a last few night logs in the fireplace.

Before climbing the steps to bed, I looked into the still night and saw frost covering everything like a sheet of fine snow gleaming in the cool light of a full moon.

Moonlight & Lilies

White lilies on the breakfast table have scented our kitchen for just over a week now. I bought them in a blue
mood and ever since they’ve cheered me with new blossoms, tightly held green buds lightening to a paler green relaxing ever so slightly as the white tips open a bit at a time. First the orange stamens fully laden with rust colored pollen and then deep in the night, perhaps bathed in the moon’s light, the lily completes its birth and blossoms fully into a wholly released, fully formed lily.

While contemplating the lilies I am reminded how like my life becoming a lily is. “All in good time,” my doctor father-in-law would say. “All in good time.” My own father used to tell me that my persistently scraped knees of childhood would heal. “When they start itching,” he’d say, “It means they’ve started to heal.” And sure enough, they were both right. Eventually my body released my babies and my childhood scars faded and healed completely.

There’s a refrain I repeat silently to myself on days when I am pressured by work. I want to spend the day in my study, writing among my books. I want to watch the light of August become the light of October and take note how the gold leaves flutter toward earth. I want to sit undisturbed while this other person rises slowly beside me from the rush of life. This other me who is capable of a deep calm is always with me but I rarely acknowledge her with my full, undivided attention.

The refrain is this. “It will be okay.” Take time for work and be fully present in those moments for those who are counting on you to help them buy or sell a home. Strategize, imagine, pray and I guarantee something will happen.

When work is done, I can climb the steps to my study and sit alone among the books and set myself free among the magnolia leaves, the wispy fronds of the spruce tree and recall the lilies down in the kitchen.

I’m too old to suffer the relentless pressures of self-criticism. I do the best I can and then I rest. I read. I write. I let go. It’s a much healthier way to sell homes, breathe in the day and know the lilies are blooming in the night all around me.

Gathering

We’ve rubbed the earth bare around and under this old table, gathering as we have for the past three days at the farm to talk, eat, drink and read. In the mornings we’ve sipped hot coffee and nibbled toast while watching the mist disappear from the far ridge, sometimes disclosing deer watching us watch them.

By noon, after morning walks filled with the bird calls, we arrive back at the house, in odd numbers like explorers returning to base camp. We shoulder around one another in the farmhouse kitchen making sandwiches, or digging into last night’s leftovers. Wine is poured, dark bottles of cold beer appear and iced tea is made. We take what we will, balancing it all in our extended hands while pushing open the screened door and shooing away the dogs.

The sun rises higher and the heat and humidity become dense. My son-in-law, Craig, along with four dogs, heads into the long, tree-canopied roads for a run. My husband, David, retreats to the barn where he uses Uncle Buddy’s wood splitter which can be run safely by just one person.

My mother and our daughter, Kate, talk in one corner of the kitchen. I head upstairs for a nap. That room has a window air conditioner. The air is cool and the view takes in the garden, end of summer overgrowth highlighted by bright red peppers still clinging to vines and pumpkins threading their way through the asparagus patch.

The afternoon fades into evening eventually. Kate grills chicken breasts, makes potato salad, baked beans and we are summoned to dinner. The nightly chorus of crickets sets up and an owl arrives with a mournful call. We are each impressed with the bird’s wing span as it tilts from tree to tree against the waning light of day.

Later, long after the dishes are done and the dogs fed; after the stars are bright, the half moon will rise and I will walk out the ridge with David by the light all around us.

A Summer's Late Afternoon

It was the day after the storm, the day after the temperatures dropped 30 degrees as the wind swept through Belgravia, bending even the dead grass as only a strong wind can and then the rain came, like a long awaited sign of God’s true love for each of us. It came in sheets as people ran for cover or slipped from their dwellings with umbrellas extended.

It was the first time my nineteen month old grandson with his clear brown eyes had ever reached for my hand to lead me somewhere. He guided me to our front door. He wanted it opened.

We have a small front porch banked by an American Holly that stands taller than our three story house. Its trunk is flat and the rain courses down its long expanse like shedding tears.

Our grandson stood on the threshold of the opened door beholding the tree and the sheet of water that overflowed our box gutters ever so high above him. He ventured out, barefoot with his small hands extended. The rain peppered his body as he decided all in a moment to spin in a circle, arms outstretched to embody the rain in all its rush and density. Just as suddenly, he returned to the front hall and squealed with delight. He showed such purity of experience, such awe of newness, rain in the tree, rain on his head, soaking his bare arms, legs and feet. It was like a baptism and his laughter a blessing.

The next day with a bright sun and lower temperatures, I took him to a dear friend’s house on the very edge of Shelby Park, just down from the sweet Carnegie Library where working class men used to come at the end of the day to read the newspapers. It did not matter that their clothes were dirty or their shoes muddy and worn. Here was a place of dignity, a place to rest and read.

The day of our visit, my friend climbed to her third floor attic to retrieve the toys her now grown children had enjoyed in their Paris childhoods. My grandson warmed slowly to the playhouse and its magical contents spread across the foyer.

In the meantime, her lover arrived to play tennis with a friend on the brand new but rarely used courts of Shelby Park.

My grandson and I retreated to the kitchen for a banana which he ate in small bites as he wandered the rooms of the first floor in this marvelous old house. He stopped to grin up at me in anticipation when he found the back staircase.

Houses. A park. The distant profile of a man playing tennis. His lover standing beside me in the kitchen saying, “I just love to watch him move.” My grandson reaching for my hand calling me, “Amma,” The absolute miracle of a summer’s late afternoon early in the twenty-first century, filled with what it means to be alive and alive and alive.

Home is Much More by Sylvia Chidi

I thought of home
As a dwelling house
Where I could lay naked without a blouse

I thought of home
As a dwelling house
Playing cat and mouse with my spouse

But home is much more!
Much more than a place you lay your head

O! where do I begin
Home is within
Home is deep rooted in ones soul
Home is empty if your heart has a large hole
Home is rebirth from childbirth to death
Home is when you make peace with thyself
And return back to earth!

I thought of home
As a bed with a respectable foam

I thought of home
As a place we feel we belong
Recharging our bodies to be strong

I thought of home
As living in no chronological order
With father, mother, sister or brother

I thought of home
Associating it with family
Affiliating it with ones country
Contemplating with the idea
As where one spends Christmas, Easter and New Year
O! dear

But home is much more!
O! where do I begin
Home is within
Home is thy inside twin
Your spiritual interior environment
No one dares enter without thy consent!

Copyright 2006 - Sylvia Chidi

Sylvia Chidi