My Old Barn
Reflecting on days gone by
Every now and then in a nostalgic mood, my mind takes a leap back in time. This happens more and more as the years go by and I think about my mortality. This morning I was thinking about my old barn.
My mind drifted to the magnificent sunrises that I’d watch from my bed coming up from behind and expanding the sky above the barn. Even after the barn was long gone, I would lie in the same spot and watch the sun rise and blanket the sky as it had always done.
Aging reflected in so many ways
The barn was over a hundred years old when we met. There it was, on the farm my husband and I bought back in 1978, already fighting its own losing battle with time. It had withstood a lot, standing at the top of a mountain, open to the elements.
The front doors did not move easily along the track, hinges and runners brown with rust. Step inside and you stepped back in time. Beams were trunks of trees and the ground-level second story had a random pattern of wooden floorboards, some twelve inches wide and two inches thick. Solid.
There was no creaking as you walked across the solid floor. In spots you could look up and see the sky through missing slats or where the tin covering the slats had been torn away by the wind. The back walls were disappearing, but enough remaining to hold up the concord grape vines meandering their way up the back of the barn and in. Despite its dilapidated appearance you felt safe, even comforted by the sense of a very strong foundation.
History, the evidence of what’s gone before
Ah, so much history here. An old rusty light bulb socket in the ceiling suggested that somewhere in the distant past, work went on here after dark. Huge pulleys ran the length of the ceiling from one end of the barn to the other. There were two levels, with divisions of space upstairs and stalls and sinks on the lower level dirt floor. It use to be a dairy farm, so apparently the lower level was home for the cows.
There was a ladder built flat against the inside side wall of the barn that led to a loft with two picture windows overlooking the upper meadows and blueberry fields. One was perfect if you were sitting and the other if you were standing. The idea of windows seemed to have been an afterthought, just two unequal rectangular holes cut out, not lined up with anything or each other. Still adequate for their purpose, which was to provide a perfect overlook or view of the upper meadows, or what might have been grazing fields years ago.
A refuse for sentimentality
After many times being used for this and that, I smile remembering some of what I saw when first I stepped inside the barn. There were the remaining clumps of burlap bags, chicken wire, rolls of barbed wire, rusted machinery, tools, a hospital bed, rusty push mowers, all manner of stuff.
One of my favorite oddities left in the barn was a black sign with a giant orange arrow pointing to the back of the barn saying, “Detour.” Considering this was the second level, you’d indeed be exiting at your own risk. Funny, but not that funny! Probably the joke of an elderly neighbor with a long history of working the farm. He had a ready joke on the tip of his tongue for any and all occasions.
After spending an enormous amount of time cleaning out the barn and having everything taken away, we later used it for storing stuff other than hay ourselves. For example, my husband decided to store his canary yellow 1974 Jaguar XKE in the barn. We covered it with blue tarp which had to be continuously tied down, especially in winter due to fierce winds tearing through the openings in the barn.
Nothing lasts forever
Over time, the poor barn began to lose its grip on holding itself up. And one winter’s day, under the weight of heavy wet snow, one of those old beams gave way and came crashing down on the car.
Nothing lasts forever. Time and aging takes a toll. Yet, to become old does not mean that we automatically become useless. We simply become useful in different ways. A barn that was once the very center of a family’s existence became a place for the storage of sentimental things, some of questionable value. My barn definitely had its own stories and told them in its own way.
Lessons learned
We humans are very much like the barn. As we age, we are also standing strong against the ravages of time, giving that which we have to give. Sharing our memories and our stories. Being more forgiving and more tolerant. Perhaps passing on words of wisdom and life lessons learned to our children and grandchildren. Passing on family recipes and like things of consequence.
Let us harbor no regrets for getting old, for falling down, for changing our outward appearances. Instead we must be grateful for our usefulness to the very end.
