homecoming

Written with love to the place that has, and will forever, have my heart.

The grass remembers the arches of my feet, forever calloused to support summers spent barefoot. The Earth holds me like I’ve never left; like an old lover whose palm in yours you’ll always remember. Flowers cling to their stems among the changing leaves in early autumn as desperately as I cling to the past. I have no claim to this land. To “own” land as a concept feels the same to me as owning a wave in the ocean- it belongs to no one and everyone and is fleeting and changing in ways we can’t ever understand. It will exist long after we are here and it has existed long before as well. I have no claim to this land, to this farm that one could only conjure up in dreams- but she has every claim to me. For years, she held me, molded me, however subtly or drastically, into the person I am today. My body remembers what my mind does not- the holes in the ground to avoid, the turns to take slowly. My body begins to breathe deeper and slower, purely out of habit. I know, have always known, that the air here is more pure than anywhere else I’ve been, that the silence here can heal all.

The old windmill spins, no different than when it was ours and it will continue to spin until the day it inevitably falls over, from years of rust and snow. My grandfather shaped this land, as much as land can be shaped by one man anyways. He grew elm trees in rows, carefully designed to help them prosper. To love something of the Earth so dearly, going to extreme lengths to save it, is a passion of my grandpa’s I see in myself- for which I am eternally grateful. I am glad to see the porch decor has not changed and that my favorite trees, the weeping willows, still stand tall over the pond. The pond where we used to spend our days, no matter the weather: fishing, swimming, iceskating, row boating, catching frogs and pretty much any other activity involving water you can think of. Any and every good memory of my childhood took place here, where we spent hours in the fields, in the barns, in the yard. Where we played house and watched movies and put on shows. Where we learned to sew, to create, to drive, to pick the ripe blackberries before a wild grandpa could eat them all off the bush. To snowshoe and to sled and to tap an oak tree for its sap to process into maple syrup. Where I learned loss and what it meant to leave.

The place that built me still remains, and a piece of myself I haven’t yet found anywhere else, lives there with it.

Note- I could write an entire book about this farm in Vermont. This barely scratches the surface, but today I went back after almost 5 years of it not being my grandparents’ anymore. I miss it deeply and am lucky to have ever known such a peaceful place.

My cousins and I, summer 2004