Night Owls & Rebirth

The old farmstead was not as I remembered it. I parked next to the rusty carcass of a disintegrating tractor next to the rotting barn, my eyes filled. The last time I had visited, my grandparents had met me at the front gate, frolicking with the joy of seeing me, as I stepped off a rural bus that dropped me right there. Grandpa grabbed my bags, and Grandma my hand as they hustled me up the then spanking new, then deep red and bright white barn, of which they were so proud and then to the farmhouse, and one of the most sumptuous meals I had ever eaten. Tears rolled down my face, that I didn't bother wiping away, as I walked to what was left of the big porch at the front of the house. It lay in shambles looking very little like where hand carved rockers stood, and where the most delicious hot apple pie and coffee were served, enjoyed along with Grandpa's many silly jokes, tall tales, and songs he and Grandma knew by heart and sang in harmony. At one point or another every evening Grandpa would point at the barn and say "There they go, like clockwork" as we all the two huge, beautiful barn owls swoop from the hay bay out to begin the night hunt. "Go ahead my friends," he would say, " Safe hunting. Go feed them babies." And they would, and they did, and although I was not allowed to go visit the owls nest in the barn rafters, I would hear the cheeping of the owlettes, and see their parents come in and out time and time again. My Grandparents had very firm beliefs about many things including "their '' night owls, because, they said, unlike the horses, cows, goats and chickens on the farm, the owls "chose" to live there, and bless them. They believed living their good lives, being kind to others, and working hard, being faithful to each other and their family, that they earned blessings, manifested in tangible things like resident owls, good crops, enough rain, good health, good everything. In the end, they were confused, and heart broken because, as my Grandpa said as he wasted away, grieving the loss of his wife just weeks before, "Child, how did we run out of blessings?"

I stood looking up at the house remembering how my yearly summer visits to this farm and my grandparents' open arms and unconditional love saved me. They were my escape really from the crazy life of changing schools, bouncing schedule of court directed custodial visits with divorced parents, and general yearly upheaval. Every year, every summer in a month's time, somehow the soul, spirit and magic of this place and those two people rebuilt, replenished, and rebirthed my withered spirit and soul indescribably. When in high school, a young friend with a very similar home life and situation committed suicide, I remember thinking if only she had a place and people like this, she might have made it. Although they would have called it "hooey" my Grandparents lived a life of what we would now refer to as "good karma" and saw the world "through a lens of the possible." In the worst of times, images of this place, particularly the swooping flight of the "blessing" owls dragged me away from giving up and toward Grandpa's daily mantra. Action, he said, was the opposite of despair, "You hit a rut in the road, you don't stop and cry about it. You get up, dust yourself off, and get to work."

Now, only relics remained of the amazing life they had built here, the decrepit barn, the disintegrating tractor, the broken and peeling gate and fence, and the vandalized house with its once beautiful huge double doors, smeared with graffiti, nearly broken off, and gaping open, between broken windows. I stood weeping, remembering a letter from a local lawyer. He advised me that my grandparents estate including the land was left to me, not my parents as we all had expected. Oh, the drama that followed when Mom realized she could not immediately sell everything to a local developer and pay off some of her burgeoning debts. It was my last tour of duty far away from home, sitting on my bunk alone in a barracks with six months to go and get back stateside. I could not give into my emotions there and did not until I stepped off the military transport at the airport, slipped into my rental and drove here. Now my heart shattered, shards melting into a thousand tears, as I sobbed thinking about the last 4 Christmases I had missed on the farm, as my grandparents aged, sickened and died, without seeing me again. I stumbled back to the car, dropped into the seat, and resting my arms and head on the steering wheel, sobbed and screamed with sadness, guilt, anger at the world. Hours later, I woke up in pitch darkness, cold and disoriented realizing I must have cried myself to sleep, giving into exhaustion of body and soul. I grabbed an overcoat from the back seat and my long to go lunch form the airport and started the car and its heater, to warm up and eat.

The sky was ablaze with myriad stars, and the half moon lit up a radius of light I had not seen in such a long time. "Who needs TV, my Grandpa would say, looking up at this heavenly light show, "When we've got this?" With no ambient city lights close by, the night sky was blue black velvet, that someone had haphazardly dropped diamonds and dazzling crystals that reflected in every direction. The darkness masked the deterioration of the barn and house so vivid in the daylight, and for a moment I saw the farmstead as it once was. I could almost hear again the low sounds of the cows and soft whinney of the horses that once graced the land. For a moment, sipping the remainder of my way too cold coffee, I looked at the shadowed silhouette of the farm that once was through my Grandpa's lens of the possible. I made a crazy list of what it would take, to put things right again, all the hauling, and demolition, rebuilding, repainting, planting, blood, sweat and tears, this time invested by me, adding flesh again to the skeleton of what once was. A good year or two of work I imagined, lots of dollars, and to build a life on a farm - did I even want that? It was compelling, but ridiculous, oddly seductive, but irrational. Looking at it from the outside, a recent, ex-military soul like me, pretty fit and strong, with some savings and no family to speak of, maybe a "project" like this would be just the right thing. But even if I could rebuild this place, could I replenish what made it so unique in the first place - what would replenish its soul? As I reached for my cell phone I had carelessly thrown onto the dash, my eyes caught some movement skyward, off to the right of the barn.

Silhouetted silver in the glow of the moon, soared a returning night owl. There to my astonishment,swooping from on high with some small prey clutched in its claws, it disappeared through the hay bay window. I do not know how long I sat and stared at the black shadowy square at the top of the barn where what seemed like a night owl apparition flew. In just seconds, the returning night owl had changed everything. "There it went," as Grandpa would have surmised, just going about its normal routine, unchanged even as the farm rotted away, the night owl went about its business of survival. And in that simple act, replenished my soul. I did not see the night owl that night, and I was unaware at the time that we would soon become fast friends and guardians of the land as I rebuilt, and was rebirthed. As I drove away I designed in my mind's eye how one could shore up, reinforce and beautify an old derelict barn, without disturbing the nest of a blessed night owl, and so the adventure began.