Good Morning Sunshine! Memories

Autumn, is a lovely time of year, but I do love to see the crystalline world of winter. It’s not that I like the cold, as long as I can be warm, I am ok with it. I think the sudduction is the beauty of everything covered in white and glistening. I recall being awed as a child. I do not think we ever lose that virgin feeling.

I love to be out in a field, on a hill looking back at old houses, with smoke coming out the chimney. Better yet, if I can smell the woodsmoke. Coming home from skiing in the big field was like this, and I would stand and examine the dark windows, checking to see if someone was looking out, looking back at me. No one ever seemed to be there.

I would think of the families that lived there before my family, and wonder about the nonexistent barn had been. How big had it been?

One part of the house we called the shed, had a walkway leaning at a slight slant, leading from the back door, with three steps down. Here it met the walkway that was attached to the old outhouse.

Between the woods and the house was a long narrow field. Now covered with snow, no one would know it turned into a garden full of beans, corn, potatoes, and other vegetables. once spring got rid of the snow. This was one of three similar gardens.

On my right, there was a huge pine tree. Below the pine, there was a Concord Grape Vine, and near the vines and all around the tree, there were cultivated blackberries. The blackberries were as big as a man’s thumb. So Mom made lots of jam and jellies.

I would stand there on my skies, feeling my chilled cheeks, not minding the coldness. I thought of all the now hidden things. Even the road coming from the driveway and continuing into the woods ended at the boundary of the 40-acre plot of land.

Hidden, Mom’s horseradish patch, and Rubbarb patch, the blueberry bush. The Old Well____ The Mackintosh apple tree and Yellow Transparent Apple trees___A Bartlet Pear tree.

I liked that it was like having a secret, my knowing what was underneath this white blanket.

That old house was a huge place when I was little. Two parlors, two twin kitchens, two twin porches, overhead chambers, the main hall that divided it for two families originally. The hall led to the right and left and a hall to the back and stairs going up to a landing that went into the rooms on both sides. The rooms led to the overhead chambers and down into the kitchens from two entryways. A maze. The front bedrooms had Dorma windows. The windows on the front side, where very large letting in a great deal of light in both the parlors and the two front bedrooms. Now my middle daughter has this huge house. The landscape around it is pretty much the same. There is a chicken coop somewhere up there. She lives two and a half hours away so I do not know of all changes.