Forged in the Fire

There was something not quite right about the window. My family thought nothing of it. When they’d been confronted with my unease over the peculiar panes, they had merely reminded me of my tendency to remember things wrong.  We all knew that I was a girl known for hyperbole and metaphors that only made sense to a madman. My vision of the world was often too fantastical to align with reality when the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia were removed.

But the summers were different; I could remember all of them with perfect clarity. Each year, my family would pack into a city car and trek across the East Coast, not stopping until we hit Lake Champlain. There, we would be greeted by my cousins chasing each other through cobweb-riddled cornfields. Then, once the sun fell, those boys would tell us gullible girls tall tales of the monsters lurking behind still-green stalks.


I hadn’t believed in monsters, but I’d avoided the grain all the same. I’d opted for more populated places, with animals closer to my age. That was why most of my memories took place between the sturdy red cedar walls of my grandmother’s barn, caring for kittens living on borrowed time. My grandmother never had the heart to tell me my efforts were fruitless because the kittens would never last through the harsh Canadian winter. 

My grandfather had told me every chance he’d gotten, but I’d never believed him. After all, my grandmother had always taught me to follow my instincts. Us female folk had always possessed more of them, she’d say. That was why we had a higher average number of fingers than the boys, despite there being more of the latter. 

I’d wanted to be right about the kittens, and every few years, the kittens would live. That was why I knew that there was something wrong with the window. I tried to recall what it had looked like before, but every snapshot I summoned depicted something different. This had been the first time that the ‘different’ felt wrong. After a few moments, though, I realized the mistake staring me in the face. 

It was not the presence of something, but the absence of it that struck me wrong.

The wooden planks that surrounded the window were all brand new. 

My summer-specific memory hadn’t failed me, though. I’d forgotten the story my mother told me of the barn catching fire a few years ago because it had happened on a quiet December night when no one had been looking. No one but my cousin, who’d been a bit preoccupied chasing some poor woodland creature around with a stick soaked in gasoline. The young boy had lacked the sense not to start the fire, but he’d at least been quick enough to stop it before the flames engulfed everything.

It wasn’t the first time that the barn had caught fire. It’d happened as many times as there were sons. Each time, some memory of the barn that once was, remained in the aftermath. Carvings of grandkids’ names would be charred, but still legible. That creaky floorboard would be replaced, but the noise would stay the same. And of course, hardy cows somehow always lived to tell the tale. 

I’d always admired the tenacity of that old barn. The stubborn relic standing before me was only as old as my grandparents, but it felt ancient. I’d attributed it to the somewhat mystical feeling that was present in any old structure. That odd, unsettling creeping of the vines that had come to reclaim the wood that had been taken from them. Except as I looked around once familiar walls, I saw nothing green. Only sad, sun-bleached dreariness.

My memories of my grandmother’s barn had been much like the woman who’d cared for it all these years. She, too, had been forged through hurricanes and sweltering sun. My grandmother was an islander, a woman known for her hubris. So, it was no surprise to me that her barn refused to fall even after she was gone. 

But as I gazed upon the patchwork walls, there was no doubting that the old building had seen better days.

I didn’t blame the barn. It had been a hard few years. My grandmother had been sick for some time. No doctor could ever pinpoint the exact reason why, but it had been almost a decade since we’d seen that lively islander woman. It’d been five years since she’d spoken any coherent thought. It’d been two years since we’d seen her at all. The visit had been short, consisting only of us saying her name, and the distant, pained wails of a woman fraught with memories she wanted to recall, but couldn’t.

That had been the last time I saw the barn, too. Like my grandmother, the barn had started to show its age. Tired wood had begun to splinter into crevasses wide enough for the sun to filter through. Inside, all it would find were miniscule particles of dust that were almost too small to be seen by the human eye.

It was hard not to see the barn as a metaphor for my grandmother. The tenacity I’d once revered had become foolhardy in the worst way. In her last years, she had apparently spoken often, but never to us. I think she’d thought that her telling the truth, that she had wanted to die for some time now, would’ve been the same as giving up. She didn’t like giving up. 

I’d been relieved when my grandmother finally passed. It almost felt selfish to be sad about it. She had been ready to go; she wanted to go. It would, in the very least, be hypocritical for me not to trust her instincts. 

But it was hard to understand why she had held on for so long if that had truly been what she wanted. I had spent years trying to understand, all the while failing to remember that, above all, she was a woman filled with fiery hubris. That, and the fact that legally mandated life-saving tactics couldn’t be waived where she was. 

When I’d come to Lake Champlain to attend my grandmother’s funeral, I’d expected to find the barn sprouting with new life. Instead, what I’d found were corners so desolate that even the spiders refused to make homes there. 

My grandmother wouldn’t have recognized the barn that I was standing in. Not because her memory had become unreliable in her final years, but because it wasn’t the same. It was not the nostalgia speaking, either. The barn my grandmother knew was one filled with prattling cattle and kids. It was not ever empty. Not like it was now. 

The space around me no longer provided comfort to an aching heart like it once had. I looked around and found no kittens to save or work to be done. I found myself wanting to cry, but felt it wasn’t right when the always leaky spigot had been disconnected some time ago. 

But I was determined. I looked at the window again, but that time, I didn’t stop at the planks surrounding the panes. I followed the repaired parts until I found something old. Something original. Something that still felt like the summers I’d spent there. 

When I’d gotten to it, though, I couldn’t bring myself to look at it for long. 

Because there, carved into the wood with a pocket knife and rage, was the name of a ghost. The plank was half-rotted, and the letters were almost illegible because of it. But I recognized it all the same. It was the name of the only grandchild who hadn’t outlived her grandmother. 

I looked for something, anything else that I could find to be fond of. I found nothing else. Nothing but the courage to accept the reality that one of the last remaining pieces of my childhood refuge was being held up by planks that had no memory of that spunky little girl. The barn had also belonged to her, but she wasn’t around anymore, and it was going to forget her. When that plank fell, she wouldn’t be there to make a new one. Her memory, like all the others, would eventually fade into nothing but a sun-bleached remnant. 

I tried to convince myself that was okay. I wanted to believe that the barn could continue to exist even though the people who’d loved it weren’t around anymore. But the longer I stayed, the less I recognized. Eventually, those red cedar walls were no longer my grandmother’s barn at all. The realization was devastating beyond explanation. Even I couldn’t come up with enough hyperbole to describe the pain that came from the foolhardy hubris of lonely wooden planks. 

I thought of my grandmother, and all of the secrets she hadn’t wanted to share. I wondered what the barn would have said when they’d hammered new planks in place of the ones who’d fallen. Had it shouted for them to stop? Had anyone cared to listen? 

It was impossible not to see the barn as my grandmother. It, too, had grown weary, but it stubbornly remained standing even as it slowly lost pieces of itself. Eventually, though, the barn would fall. I knew that it would happen because I had seen it happen to her. That wonderful woman drifted off slowly, with an ending so prolonged that even she begged for it to be over. 

There was nothing I could do to help my grandmother. In the end, even my presence did nothing but cause her more pain. I would forever be burdened with the knowledge that her final moments were spent with people whose names I would never know. 

But the barn didn’t have to die that way. The barn, and all of the ghosts that it kept, could be cherished until its last dying breath. 

In an act of mercy and a little bit of selfishness, I found a stick not unlike the one my cousin had wielded a few years before. Unlike the barn, the shed was exactly how it’d always been. Each of the tools were laid out exactly as I’d remembered, patiently waiting for someone to come and do what ought to have been done when my grandmother was still there to say goodbye. 

As the scent of gasoline filled the air, my mind raced to remember as many things as I could of those perfect summer days before I would let them go. 

And then I let them go with the makeshift torch. 

The fire tore through the barn so quickly, I only barely escaped being burned. The girl that my family knew might even say that I only made it out alive because the fire had wanted me to. 

But I was more jaded than I used to be, so I would blame it purely on my instincts. My grandmother had always told me I’d had more of them than most. 

As the flames began to wane, I waited with the barn. I bore witness to its final wailing cries until it was no more. Until the creaking turned to whimpers that also faded into silence. Until I was alone again, no longer haunted by patchwork walls made up of things that were unrecognizable, even to the unrivaled memory of a little girl who missed her grandmother. 

Then, and only then, did I breathe in cedar scented smoke and allow myself to wonder what the world would be like now, having lost that tenacious old barn and the island woman who’d called it home. 

But then I felt the answer to my question burning in my gut and written on my skin. 

Because the ashes and smoke of what once was, still kept me warm. 

Warm, I realized. Warm was the answer.

Written in loving memory of my grandmother.