Sugar On Snow

The path to the past is like sugar on snow: sweet and malleable. The hot maple syrup swirls and settles on its plate of snow. Then, in an instant, the syrup freezes, shattering as it touches your tongue. There must be some chemical component to it all and I wonder if memories are the same way. Pulling into the overgrown driveway of my grandparents farm the feeling was certainly there, the sugary sweet memories of childhood returning in a viscous wave.

Even with the apparent deterioration of the barn and out-buildings, the veil of long-ago days revealed the gentle sway of pink and red hollyhocks by the old well and the flash of cats chasing mice through the hay. There was Sparky running through the yard, tongue lolling, black ears flopping, and the taut clothesline strung between the house and Grandpa’s workshop, his work clothes drying in the summer breeze.

Inhaling deeply, the familiar scents of grease and oil and sweet mint mingled in my nostrils. The key hung where it had always hung above the woodshed door. Though rusted, the key fit snug in the chain lock and clicked open.

Inside it was dark and musty. The woodpile still filled the back corner, unmoved since Grandpa last split and piled the logs. Turkey feet and fans of iridescent feathers were pinned to the beams; an old fishing basket hung beneath several hand saws. The box freezer, where once fudgsicles waited for grandchildren to visit, lay silent though it seemed to me a faint hum followed me as I unlatched the heavy white door to the farmhouse.

Entering, I was caught off-guard by the heat emanating from the old woodstove. Fresh baked bread and tantalizing donuts fragranced the welcoming space. Earthy red geraniums lined the windowsills and the old orange hand pump creaked and water flowed into a sink full of dishes. Above the woodstove ran a double clothesline—a few stray clothespins and rag potholders draped above the phantom heat.

“Do you remember how Grandma hung our wet mittens above the stove to dry?”

I turned, half-expecting a nostalgic reply. Blinking, the sugar shattered on my tongue. Like my grandparents, my childhood and soon this farm, my sister was also a memory.

A fat brown mouse jumped out of an open cupboard setting my heart into a wild and rapid thrumming. Inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly, I made my way into the living room. Once more the past trickled in, whispering of sleepovers and popcorn, games of Yahtzee and dominoes and snuggling in the back bedroom under comforters to keep off the chill.

The floor creaked; dust motes swirled along a beam of sunlight that streamed through porch window, dancing lightly over the yellowed keys of the piano I never learned to play. I pressed one feeble note, low and lonely. It echoed through the cluttered, yet empty space once filled with laughter and family.

With a sigh, I turned from the piano, glancing at a few faded blooms in a green glass vase. Lacy cobwebs trailed upward toward the ceiling clinging desperately to the peeling wallpaper. I shuddered, recalling the cobweb I was caught up in out by the workshop. Invisible, the strands draped from one side of the shed through the tall stalks of bamboo. It struck me how vivid the strands were on the living room wall, not invisible, but almost amber in the shaft of sunlight…like sugar on snow.

I stumbled back, jamming my calf into something hard. Wincing, I looked over my shoulder. It was a thick gold knob protruding from my grandfather’s safe that caused the pins and needles pain in my lower leg. As children, my sister and I had tried to open it, spinning the dial trying to guess at the combination and pulling on the heavy knob. For the greater part of the summer, I had gone through about everything in the entire farmhouse. Except the safe.

Intrigued, I bent to gaze at the dial, the white numbers blinking like little stars in twilight. The dial spun in my hand a few times, clicking like a wheel of fortune. Luck had never quite been a friend and lately had been painfully distant. Slowly, I turned the dial to the right. One. To the left. One. To the right once more. Three. One, one, three. 113. 1:13. The hour my sister was born. Her number. Her remaining presence. My breath caught as my heart pulsed and strained heavily against my ribs. Trembling, I reached and gripped the cold knob. I pressed down and pulled.

The heavy door swung, knocking me backward onto the uneven wooden floor. I blinked, unable to believe the combination worked. The safe opened. It opened!

Outside, the sun had drifted lower into the sky and afternoon light flooded the room, shifting enough where I could peer inside the dark safe. I knew my grandpa had kept important papers and bank CDs in the safe but those had been cashed long ago to pay taxes on the farm. For a moment, I hesitated. What else could there be but spiders or a pile of mouse bones. I shuddered, and yet, my child-curiosity had to know. I ran my hand along the bottom of the safe feeling the grime and dust cling to my fingers. They trailed every inch until my entire arm was engulfed. For a moment, I was about to withdraw my arm, give up whatever fortune there may have been. As my fingers slithered back along the inside edge of the safe, they brushed something soft, almost velvety. I shrieked, imagining the furry body of a petrified mouse. As I waited for my heart to stop pounding, my fingers fluttered down, touching the velvety mystery once more. With some careful examination, I realized the object was a small book. Not the most exciting treasure yet to me was one last connection to something I thought would be more lasting.

Lifting the book gently from its grotto I set it before me, tilted slightly against the front of the safe. The book was ledger sized, like something used to keep records. My mind imagined what it might contain: farm receipts, bank statements, perhaps a family history. The black velvet cover was worn along the edges, but the binding was intact. There was no title, no name, only a thin frayed ribbon to keep place. Hands trembling with anticipation, I opened the book…

Figures and calculations spread along the inside cover as if the author had been determining prices or debt or cost. The writing was old, not more than a century, yet to me the swirls were ancient. Aside from a dozen or so pages with names and services rendered and paid for, the remainder of yellowed sheets were pasted with newspaper clippings. Not articles or news events, but short stories and poetry. There were tales of love and of intrigue, verses of beauty and death. As I poured over the countless words, I wondered who had placed them there. For whomever had painstakingly cut and pasted, they mattered enough to keep safe. Whether a lovelorn young girl or a wistful farm wife, those words were precious.

The sky had grown hazy, the clouds swirling with soft pinks and lavender. Still, I gazed through the book until my eyes misted and a tear inadvertently trailed my cheek landing on a short Matthew Arnold poem:

A Question

Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows.

Like the wave;

Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of

Men,

Love lends life a little grace,

A few sad smiles, and then

Both are laid in one cold place,

In the grave.

Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die

Like Spring flowers;

Our vaunted life is one long funeral,

Men dig graves with bitter tears

For their dead hopes; and all

Mazed with doubts and sick with fears

Count the hours.

We count the hours! These dreams of ours

False and hollow.

Do we go hence and find they are not dead?

Joys we dimly apprehend,

Faces that smiled and fled,

Hopes born here, and born to end,

Shall we follow?

My eyes were awash with heartache and bittersweet memories seemingly lost with time and change. What hopes could I still follow now that everything dear was fading?

As I went to close the soft velvet cover over this chapter of life, the clipping of Arnold’s question lifted from the paper. Caught beneath was a thin folded scrap of paper, so brittle I feared it crumbling between my fingers. Still, though growing harder to see in the darkening room, I carefully drew open the folds of a rectangle of paper, a bank note, of some kind. Faded, I could just make out the numbers scrawled across the middle…$20,000…Twenty thousand! I shook. Was this real? Was this only a trick of twilight and stars? Or might it be hope. Hope renewed. Hope reborn. Fears fading, replaced with the promise of the legacy I had prayed to carry on. The farm might be lost, my grandparents a memory, my sister watching from above, but now I had a chance to pass on my sugar on snow memories to the children this little black book would soon help me bear.