GOING HOME
By P.A. Isakson
The open window above the sink where Anna filled the potato-laden kettle blew in the pungent, dry-leaf aroma of the early September afternoon. The house would be full with family for supper once again and she sighed deeply. It had been a long time since they had all shared the same table. Too long. And this time it was for reasons that none of them saw coming.
Having put the potatoes on to boil she made her way to the back porch. Her petite, forty-something frame leaned against the back door as she allowed her cornflower blue eyes to peruse the familiar farmyard. The final harvest of wheat behind the barn waved lazily in the warm breeze. Pausing her gaze at the barn, a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she recalled their rag-tag lot, otherwise known as ‘those-Ohlsen-kids’ and the mischief they used to get into. She fondly remembered that the hayloft had been one of their favorite spots to find baby kittens, burrow in forts and jump from hay mountains.
The landscape surrounding the barn faded as she was transported back to another day – a bitter-cold January day in 1951. She was about six years old, and the oldest of five children when her Dad had brought his young family to this Midwestern Minnesota farm.
A several-day blizzard had forced them to stay at the boarding house in the nearby town before a horse-drawn sleigh could bring them out to their new home. Smiling to herself, Anna recalled how her Dad, in an effort to distract the young ones from the cold, told them to watch for polar bears.
Anna hadn’t been sure what their Mom had been expecting at the new place that Dad had purchased sight-unseen, but she imagined her Mom happily anticipating a wonderfully warm farm house in which to create a loving home and watch her children grow.
Arriving at the dilapidated building, however, had been heartbreaking. aNNA REMEMBERED THAT The walls were covered in peeling red paper and black paint, and filth HAD covered every horizontal surface. Her Mom HAD handed Anna’s sleeping infant sister to her, and with slumped shoulders sat down on the dirty kitchen floor and began to weep. It was one of the few times that Anna had ever seen her mother cry.
When she had finished, her Mom had taken a handkerchief from her coat pocket, wiped her eyes, lifted her chin and marched out to the sleigh. The first order of business was to find cleaning supplies.
The next day, she pondered her mother’s tears once again as her fingertips now lightly traced across the deeply burnished mahogany casket framing her mother’s peaceful, deeply lined, face. In her minds’ eye she saw once again that beautiful face BATHED in laughter, when Anna had first brought her newly adopted five-year-old daughter home.
It had been a hot summer day and her Mom had met them in the SAME kitchen where Anna and the family had just gathered last night. Her Mom’s dark hair had been adorned in bright pink curlers and her feet clad in floppy slippers. Smiling from ear-to-ear and her deep azure eyes twinkling, her Mom buoyantly greeted them both, “Hello! Hello! THIS must be Patsy!! Hello Patsy!” Anna GRINNED WITH FONDNESS at the memory. She had always loved her Mothers beautiful smile.
Standing at the foot of the casket and surveying the small crowds of family and friends speaking in hushed tones, Anna suddenly thought she understood. Life is a journey. As we go through it we pick up things we want, and we receive things we did not want. There are moments that are overwhelmingly sweet, and there are heavy moments that take our breath away under the weight of their sorrow. Life is not lived in a straight line. Nothing in life is linear. The fact that life is full of people and curves and twists is also what can make it exciting.
And sometimes going back home again isn’t what you expect it to be either – sometimes going home is actually going to a place you’ve never been before. Sometimes it takes going to that place to understand, that, when all is said-and-done, when lives are lived and then come to an end, what truly matters are the Life Stories, experiences and wisdom that live on in the hearts of those we leave behind.
