Grandma's Barn

I always loved visiting my grandmother. She lived in Woodstock, Connecticut, the northern part of the state that is usually left unconsidered when people think of it. Unlike the southern coast of the state, it is unadorned by large cities with busy commuters. Instead, it's a forested landscape doused in small valleys, accompanied by rolling hills and stunted mountains, and dotted with farmhouses and wild berries, with the occasional quaint town in between.

I was young when Grandma was around. She had seven children, and I was her youngest grandchild. All of my cousins were much older than me and therefore had many together with my grandmother. I only have these small memories, memories of a young child that appear hazy and vague in my mind's eye as if they were a dream. Memories of long strolls down a gravel road, with blackberry bushes lining both sides of the street, sweet and tangy, perfect for picking.

I remember the long car rides back then (two hours was long for me as a young kid). It usually consisted of me laying down in the back seat of our Honda Odyssey sleeping during the congested journey up I-95 in Southwest Connecticut, and then waking up here and there and looking out the window at the passing trees and farms. I’d come in and out of sleep, sometimes bringing the quiet, peaceful landscape back into my dreams, and then waking with those dreams still fresh in my mind as I looked out at the land.

I can remember the last time I visited Grandma I was about nine years old. It was autumn. We were on a long walk, just the two of us, she had been showing me the area around where she grew up.

“I was just about your age when we moved here ”, she said with a soft smile. We were walking down this backwoods, dirt path. A barren field could just be seen to our right through the brambles. Forests surrounded our backs and left side. “Yes, my mother and father, Grandma and Grandpa Rivers, had grown sick of city life and decided to start fresh with a little farm out here. They’d get all the help they needed with me and my brothers and sisters around. I remember how upset I was when they told me the news…”, she trailed off, immersed in the memories of her childhood.

“Why didn’t you want to go?” I asked, “It’s so nice out here”, I said with a big smile.

“Well, all my friends were in the city, it’s all I knew. I didn’t want to come out to some farm and dig around in the dirt all day”, she said.

“Did you end up liking the farm?”

She laughed, “Not at first, and to be honest some of the work never grew on me. But the farm life, the quiet, it really sets into your bones”

“What do you mean?”, I asked naively.

“The city life, Tom… it’s all hustle and bustle. Everyone is trying to get somewhere. They’ve always got their minds set on some goal, and they treat the way of getting to that goal like some chore they just need to push and suffer through. Nobody appreciates the process, the small steps, the toil. People don’t realize that whatever ends they’re trying to reach is really a speck in the spectrum of their whole life. It turns out that most of life is that journey of getting to wherever you want to be. And farm life makes you appreciate that, it forces you to. It allows you to slow down and appreciate something as simple as weeding. Trust me, if you had to weed for 9 hours a day a few days every week, you’d find some way to appreciate some part of it. Here, we’re almost there, I’ll show you”

“Almost where grandma?”

“Almost to Grandma Rivers’ barn, my favorite part of the farm, where I learned to breathe in the farm life and finally enjoy it”.

The barn looked similar to a lot of the other identical red barns in the area, and probably all over the country. It was boxy, red, two stories, simple: the two sides of the roof met in the middle of the barn, directly above the front entrance at a near-right angle. The front entrance was made up of two, large wooden doors that swung out, to allow big machinery, animals, and hay bales to be easily moved in and out. There was a white trim along the front entrance and a square window that sat above the door, the white paint was chipped. It was flaking off like the red paint covering the rest of the barn.

Upon seeing it I felt a feeling almost of awe. It was beautiful in its own way, like a huge pine tree near a cliffside that has visibly withstood dozens of storms and more decades than most people ever will. It had character.

Grandma motioned to me to get one of the doors, and together we swung both out, the old wood making a loud creaking sound. We stepped inside and immediately the musty smell of hay and antique wood flooded my nose. There were a couple of slats missing from the roof and stripes of light shone dully on the hay-covered ground.

I felt calm being in that old barn. I could almost picture the hens that grandma used to tend to inside the barn, I could feel the dull thud of the bales being hauled in and out by her and her father. It was like a dreamscape, time was slow inside the barn. It felt safe and calm. Silent.

Many years later after my grandmother had passed, I went back to the barn with my family. Hurricane Sandy had recently hit and the barn wasn’t able to withstand the winds and falling branches. Part of its wooden frame near the front still stood, but the roof and back had all caved in. While my family was reminiscing about old times, I slipped away. I walked through the front, pretending the wide doors were still standing open. Stepping over fallen planks of wood I went to the center, keeping that last memory with my grandma in the barn near. I could almost get that feeling back of the slow activity of the farm life that was going on decades ago when grandma was just a girl, but I couldn’t quite get a hold of it. I could see my grandmother’s weathered, kind face and soft smile as she dove back into her past that day in the barn. Her memory of a quiet life becoming everything for her. All thanks to that old red barn. I wondered if I’d ever find my own.