Dispatch 19: Over Time
Some of my friends get butterfly kisses from their loved ones. Not me. My ultimate expression of love is much better suited to my rambunctious nature: whisker rubs.
I run up the steps of the back stoop, burst through the door, on through the kitchen and into the living room. There, my grandfather greets me by grabbing me and swinging me up into the air, squealing with delight. He brings me down so my smooth cheek is level with his stubbly one, then he rubs his whiskers on my cheek. I protest until he stops, then ask for more.
Finally, he sits in his recliner and I sit on the arm next to him. He tells me that he remembers moving to the country from the city when he was my age. He remembers that it was snowing. He was seven years old and he walked behind the sleigh.
I’m a little confused and he sees this in my face. He goes on to tell me that, in the sixty or so years he’s been living here, things have changed. This used to be his family’s farm. When he grew up and married my grandmother, they built this house we are in now, next door to his parents’ house. One of his sisters still lives there. Another sister built a house on the other side of this one when she got married.
Over the years he will tell me more stories about when he was younger. He will tell me that, when he was in high school, he milked cows at the dairy farm across the street. I will look at the neighborhood full of nearly identical brick houses and wonder what that farm looked like. But my grandfather will just tell me that it was a big farm. They milked 12-15 cows by hand twice a day. He will tell me it wasn’t hard so long as the cows didn’t kick.
He will tell me about chickens he kept in the big barn behind the house he grew up in. He sold eggs around the neighborhood and at a market for many years.
Later, he will tell me about the hay field still in the backyard, behind his garden. He will tell me that people used to pay him to cut the hay. Then he had to pay people to cut it. By then, he will barely be able to find someone to mow it.
He will show me his garden year after year after year. It is at least an acre of vegetables in neat rows. He will work it every year until the summer before he dies, nearly 80 years after moving onto this land.
He will tell me about his English walnut trees, incessantly. And he will tell me I can trap all the squirrels I want and take them home so they don’t eat his nuts. I will climb the trees but never manage to catch a squirrel.
When I’m much older and he’s long gone, I’ll pull up his property on Google Maps. All of the houses will belong to someone I’m not related to. But, in the middle of this huge city, there will be a large open area that is not a park and not a golf course. It will be my grandfather’s hay field and garden. Nearly a hundred years after he first moved there, his family’s farm will be surrounded by neighborhoods with almost nothing left of the “country” he moved to. I wonder if the people who live there now know why it’s there?
But for today, I’ve sat around listening to his stories long enough. I beg for another whisker rub before I run out the back door to spend the afternoon rolling down the hill.
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