Wordless Wednesday {Self-Portrait}

Thanksgiving 2011: One More Stop in the Cove

Thanksgiving 2011, Part One is here...Part Two is here...Part Three is here...Part Four is here.  Will I ever finish this unintended series?!  ;-)  I always think I'll have more blogging time than I really end up having, so I never get as far with this as I plan to.  Oh, well, I am utterly certain that in years to come, I will be SO grateful that I took the time to document this trip...even if  it did take me "forever" to do it!  :)

During our trips to the farm while my grandparents still owned it, there was something that Jeff wanted to do but never did.  

See this hill?  See that dark area near the top?  It's a cave opening...

...and Jeff, being the explorer-type that he is, had always wanted to climb up there and go inside, just to see what might be in there.  I, being the I'll-keep-my-feet-on-the-ground type that I am, had never had any compelling desire to climb up there and go inside, because I thought I knew what might be in there.  Bears!  Or snakes!  Or some kind of terrible creature!  Who would want to go poking around and find something like that?!

He would...

...that wild man that I married would go up there.  And so he did, the day before Thanksgiving, wearing cowboy boots, of all things, which didn't do much to increase his traction on the wet, leafy cliff.

Here's how it happened: after we had looked around at the farm and were getting ready to leave, I wanted us to drive down the Wallbash to the bridge where we used to walk; and after we turned around and were heading back to the main road, Jeff stopped suddenly in the middle of the road, got out of the van, and started up the hill.

 All of us crowded over to the windows in the side of the van facing him, so that we could see his daring exploit...and watch as he slid down the hill and broke his wrist...which didn't happen, but I feared it might.

 He used tree trunks and branches and vines and a rope that someone previously had tied there and anything else he could grab, I imagine, to reach his goal of making it to the top and going into the cave.

 Fortunately for those of us who were waiting anxiously in the van, he didn't stay inside for too long before coming back out and carefully descending the hill.  Guess what?  He didn't break his wrist coming back down the cliff either!

As soon as he got into the van, we peppered him with questions:  what was it like in there? how big was the cave? did he see anything in it? could he stand up all the way? how wide was it?  He told us that it was tall, not wide, but it extended for quite a ways, definitely further than what he could see, even using his small but powerful flashlight (which I didn't realize he had with him).  He said that he'd like to go there again someday and explore it more thoroughly, to look for arrowheads or other signs of life in it.  He also told us about the one artifact he found in his quick exploration.  It was...

...a Pepsi can.  ;-)

And with that, we finally said goodbye to the farm, continued our drive through the Cove, passed through Mercersburg, met up with the highway again, and set off for the remainder of our journey north on our wonderful Thanksgiving trip!

Rain on the Land

If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today...all these blessings will come on you and accompany you...

The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity--in the fruit of your womb...

The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands...

The Lord will make you the head, not the tail...

Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them.

~ from Deuteronomy 28 ~ 

~ pictures by Josiah ~

Thanksgiving 2011: Finally, the Farm!

Thanksgiving 2011, Part One is here.
Thanksgiving 2011, Part Two is here.
Thanksgiving 2011, Part Three is here.

"You'll be disappointed," my dad had warned me several times as we talked about our trip through the Cove and my chance to see my grandparents' farm again.  Although there is a certain amount of stuff that necessarily accumulates on a farm, my grandparents had done a good job of keeping things neat and tidy.  Their home and farm would have never made the cover of a magazine; but the house was always clean and well-taken-care-of, the garden and flowerbeds were recipients of much attention and responded by producing beautifully, and the clutter and disarray that seems to encroach on any piece of property were held at bay by my grandparents' hard work and devotion to their daily duties.  They were not slackers.

The family who bought the farm after my grandparents died had never farmed before; and perhaps they underestimated how much time, effort, and sweat (and tears?) goes into running a successful farm.  At any rate, things have gone downhill around the place.  My parents have been back to visit a time or two; and when they've traveled through the Cove to visit family or attend a funeral or enjoy a class reunion, they've kept their eyes peeled as they drive by the farm, just for the chance to soak in the view again.  Each time, they realized that the farm was deteriorating: hence, my dad's warning to me.

By the way, lest it seem like I'm casting stones at the current owners, let me assure you that I am not.  For goodness' sake, I can hardly keep up with my laundry and shoo the fast-accumulating dust bunnies out the door of my house, much less run a whole farm!!  So I sympathize with them, not judge them harshly.

I've written before about how dearly I love that farm and how much I treasure the memories we made there.  As we drove into the oh-so-familiar curving lane on Wednesday and my eyes started to absorb all that I could see, I caught glimpses of the place I once knew.  But my parents were right: it was different.  I wish I had pictures at my fingertips of how it used to look, but what I do have are the photos I took last week.  They are enough to remind me...and to take me back in time.  Although we didn't get to go inside the house, it's probably just as well.  I can still picture it the way it used to be, with Grandma and Granddad at their places at the table and warmth and love and good cheer filling the air.  I'm blessed to have had so many happy moments with them here in this beloved house...

...and on this cherished piece of ground...

...and in these old farm buildings.

Even before I got out of the van, I was snapping pictures--in this case, of the old chicken house.  How well I remember climbing those old steps and turning to the left to go in among the clucking chickens, wire basket in hand, to gather eggs.  I never liked having to put my hand under a sitting chicken to search for an egg, but my granddad did it so calmly.  That, to my childish mind, was true bravery.  :)

"There's the corncrib!" I told my sons; and in return, I got blank looks from boys apparently unfamiliar with that word.  Have they never been in a corncrib and seen the golden ears filling both sides, the kernels peeking out from behind the railings?

Though the buildings had seen better days, to my eyes, they were still beautiful.

One of the first things I noticed was the multitude of cats about the place.  When Tobin saw them on the front porch, he headed towards them, eager to pet them...

...and although many of them scattered at his approach...

...he did find some friendly ones.  :)

David had been so excited about seeing a spring (there are several on the farm).  I knew we wouldn't be able to do as much traipsing around as I wanted to, and the old springhouse wouldn't be accessible to explore (if it's even there anymore--in its location behind the house and down by the crik, I couldn't see it from where we were).  But there is also a spring right across the road (still on the property), so we headed down the driveway to see that, followed by the friendly kitty.

Here, in all its glory, is The Spring.  :)

Shav, Jeff, and my dad stayed in the warm van as the rest of us wandered.  It was rather chilly out in the wind.  :)

This country road that lies directly across from the farm shares a name with the street on which I now live; in fact, when our county was putting in the 911 system and requiring every house to have a regular street address (even for those who get their mail at the post office), my parents were able to suggest this name, and our county agreed.  When I was a girl visiting the farm however, we called it the Wallbash (I'm not at all sure how that should be spelled, but that's how it sounds:  wall-bash); and we would often take evening walks down its length, all the way to the stream that lies at the end of my grandparents' former property, before turning around at the bridge to come back.  The adults would all take a walking stick, which (I now realize) gave needed support to my granddad who had broken his back some years before in a farming accident and consequently always walked with a stoop and to my grandma who suffered from scoliosis and had quite a significant curvature of her spine.  Because the adults had walking sticks, my brother David and I liked to take one, too.  I suppose those sticks might have been useful if we had seen a snake (although those who have read my blog for a while and remember my snake stories would agree that the only things useful to me in that situation would have been my lungs screaming for help and my legs getting me out of there as fast as I could!--it was not until much more recently that I was able to summon up enough courage to face down, and defeat, a snake).   ;-)  Here are Josiah and David being silly at the beginning of the Wallbash.

From our vantage point across the road, I could look across to the opening to the farm, with its upper and lower driveways.  That curve in the road, of which this picture only shows part, was quite a nuisance over the years, with more than a few times someone crashing into the wall by the garden and having to come to the door in the middle of the night for help.

This dear farm wasn't the first home my mother lived in, but it's certainly the one she spent most of her childhood in.  How very special for me to be able to go back and visit it with her again.

Although I'm not sure I really needed an extra reason for giving thanks, this visit gave me one anyway.  If only my Aunt Joyce from British Columbia had been there with us, it would have been even more special.  When my dad told me that the current owners of the farm were thinking about selling it, my heart leaped.  Oh, how I wish one of my Canadian cousins could buy it!  I know that will never happen, but one can always dream.  And I do...  :)

So Far, This Is What We've Purchased for Our Baby Girl

One of the first nights after we found out this tiny one is a girl-child, I typed "first doll" into Ebay's search bar and started browsing.  When I saw this, I impulsively asked Jeff if we could get it.   He kindly said yes.  ;-)

Can you see what's embroidered on the front?

It says "my first doll," but really, it's more like a snuggly, cuddly, stuffed toy with a rattle inside--not a "real" doll with clothes that can be changed and accessories that can be added.  Ah, well, there's plenty of time for that later.  :)

For now, I think this bit of pink sweetness is the perfect thing for our daughter.  And it's the only thing we've bought for her...so far...  ;-)

Thanksgiving 2011: Since We Were in the Neighborhood...

Thanksgiving 2011, Part One is here.
Thanksgiving 2011, Part Two is here.

After we left my great-grandparent's farm, we headed north through Little Cove to my grandparent's farm; but although we had not previously planned it, we decided to make another stop: at the cemetery of the little red-brick Methodist church that sits along the road.  My great-grandparents are buried there; and I wanted to see their tombstone again, particularly because it has the unique feature of having a sundial on the top of it.  We left Jeff, my dad, Tobin, and Shav in the warmth of the van, and the rest of us climbed out into the chilly wind to find the tombstone.  It's not a big graveyard, so our search didn't take us long.  There it was...

...the McKee plot.

Since I first learned that they were going to have a sundial on their tombstone, I've thought what a wonderful feature that is.  For some strange reason, I really, really like it.

My great-grandfather, whom I never knew (but if I had been a boy, my middle name would have been Austin after him)...

My great-grandmother, from whom I get my middle name...

One of their daughters...

My great-aunt, whom we had just visited...I wonder how it feels to know a plot of ground and a stone is awaiting one's death...

Aunt Rosa Lee's daughter Bonnie (her only child) who preceded her mother in death (from cancer--ovarian, I think)...I hear having one's child die is just about the worst thing one can experience...I know losing Bonnie left a huge void in Aunt Rosa Lee's life...

Since Jeff loves genealogy so much, he was glad for me to take pictures of some of the other tombstones in that graveyard.  I don't know my genealogy half as well as he does, so I wasn't exactly sure which stones to photograph.  But I thought I recognized John and Malinda McKee as being in my line...

...and Jeremiah and Reuhama McCulloh seemed like very familiar names to me so I figured they must have been some of my ancestors.  It's not easy to forget the name Reuhama!

A few other stones caught my eye in the short amount of time I spent snapping photographs.  This old one of Martha Ellen McCulloh interested me because the name Ellen shows up quite a few times on my mother's side of the family (it's the middle name of my mother, my sister, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother; and it goes back even further than that, although I don't know exactly how far back it goes).

And this stone of another Jeremiah McCulloh showed that he must have died as a soldier in the Civil War.

If tombstones and graveyards could talk, what stories would they tell?  What mysteries would they reveal?  To me, cemeteries are not fearful places, but they are sober: a graphic reminder that all of the people who lie buried there were once alive ...breathing...moving...talking...living...growing...laughing...crying...loving...dreaming.

  

Just like I am now.

Unless Jesus comes back first, my turn, too, will come to die and leave my body here on earth as an empty shell.  How I long to live a worthwhile life, so that when my end comes, my time will have been well-spent and my life will have been well-lived!

Thanksgiving 2011: Over the River and Through the Woods

Thanksgiving 2011, Part One is here.

Our tradition for Thanksgiving has developed into an annual trek north to the lovely state of Pennsylvania to spend time with my brother David and his family, and so again this year we made that journey.  However, unlike other years, we made a slight detour, forsaking the interstate highway and wending our way through the countryside so that we could drive through Little Cove, the area in which my mother grew up, stopping to visit relatives and see once-familiar places.  I knew it would be a trip absolutely laden with nostalgia, and it did not disappoint.

As we drove along on our way to the Cove, we noticed several places where the water in rivers seemed to be rather high, most noticeably in Hancock, Maryland, where we stopped for a bite of lunch at the local Park 'n' Dine.  The best parts of our lunch?  The view of the river through a wide wall of windows, the surprisingly quick service and food preparation, and the nice little old lady who came over to our table to compliment us on the good behavior of our children and tell us that she used to be a schoolteacher.  The worst parts?  The dated and run-down appearance of the restaurant and the...ahem...lack of cleanliness in the men's restroom (so I was told--I'm not reporting from personal experience).  ;-)  The funniest part?  The way all eight of us shared food with each other all around our circular table.  The boys, especially the little ones, demonstrated that not only is the grass greener on the other side of the fence but the food is better on someone else's plate; and they asked for bites of nearly everyone's food.  We obliged; and as they sampled our potato chips and sandwiches, we took bites of their french fries and applesauce, helping them to clear their plates even as they did the same for ours.  The way we were acting, it would have been more convenient if we had had a revolving table so that we could have set it in motion and all grabbed a bite as each person's plate went by!  ;-)

After that, we drove on, noticing creeks out of their banks and pastures made marshy by the heavy rains that Maryland and Pennsylvania have experienced recently.  If I remember correctly my brother's words, he said that in the beginning of September, Pennsylvania surpassed its record for annual rainfall.  At the beginning of September!  With four more months to go in the year!  No wonder we saw high water.

After lunch, it didn't take long to get to Little Cove, winding our way on a little country road through woods and fields to our first stop: a visit with my great aunt Rosa Lee, the sister of my mother's mother.  

At 91 years of age, Aunt Rosa Lee is doing very well--still living by herself, still driving (but not to the big city; when she needs to go there, her nephew who lives nearby or one of his family takes her), still alert and spunky, although age has slowed her body and speech slightly.  Seeing my children playing (mostly) quietly...

 ...in her always-tidy living room filled with dustless knickknacks, an ever-present candy bowl, and other "treasures" took me back to my days of being a child and sitting in that room.  There's a feel to that room: the need for quiet respect, the wonderment at all the pretty and special things, and the longing for a piece of candy from the bowl.  It was fun to watch my boys as they experienced all of that.  Although I was a little nervous about how they would do (and Jeff and I exchanged anxious glances a few times as one or another of our children did something slightly out of line), our boys actually heeded our this-is-how-you-need-to-act-here-because-it's-not-appropriate-to-treat-a-91-year-old-like-you-treat-your-brothers speech fairly well, and nothing got broken.  Whew!  ;-)

Aunt Rosa Lee has always had a tenderness about her, and she still does.  How grateful I am to have had the privilege of knowing her through the years, and this visit was very special to me.  Plus, it gave me the opportunity to have the closest thing to a four-generation picture that I'll get.

I wish my grandmother could be in that picture, too; but at least her sister was able to stand there with my mother, myself, and my daughter.

After we said goodbye, gave gentle hugs, and waved to Aunt Rosa Lee who stood in the doorway and watched until we were out of sight, we drove to another sentimental place: my great-grandparents' farm.

 I never knew my great-grandfather, since he died long before I was born; but I was fortunate to know my great-grandmother, the Grace whose first name became my middle one.  She lived on this farm, alone in the big farmhouse, until she died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 98, I believe.  One of her sons, Uncle Junior, and his wife, Aunt Thelma, lived on another house on the farm; and so did their son, Little Austin, the 3rd generation of Austins in that family.  My great-grandma had lots of close family support, and that allowed her to remain independently in her own home until the end.  Don't we all wish to be so blessed?

As we drove on the little road that literally goes through the middle of the farm, who should we see but Little Austin himself?  He is my mother's cousin (in case you got lost in the genealogy like I often do!), and he still lives there on the farm, although he has a job in town.  When we saw him, we just stopped right there and opened the van door.  After recovering from his surprise at seeing us, he leaned right in...

 ...and had a nice chat.

I asked if I could take his picture, and he sort of laughed as he said yes.

As he and my parents continued to talk and catch up on each other's lives, my gaze drifted around to various parts of the farm.  Uncle Junior had a junkyard, so it was never a very tidy place, but my memories are pleasant.  Childhood pleasure does not necessarily depend on a clean environment!  ;-)

Through these windows in the old barn, I could see the stanchions where the cows used to be milked.  Though years have passed, I could still visualize my great-grandmother, a worn sweater over her faded print dress, standing in the barn...and my great-uncle, doing his chores and wearing his blue bib overalls.  I'm not sure I ever saw him in any other clothes but that.

 An old tractor caught my eye.

 When was it last driven?

 What stories could this old seat tell of those who had climbed up to guide the tractor over the fields?

Where had these huge tires taken it?

And then the house.

The place where Grandma McKee lived and loved and worked and served and laid down to rest and died.

 The place where we visited her, sometimes bringing a red velvet cake for her birthday, often being offered goldfish crackers which she always seemed to have on hand.  We always sat in one certain room, probably swinging our legs as children and wondering when the adults would ever finish up their conversation.  The rest of the house was unfamiliar to me, and it felt very mysterious whenever I ventured from that one room.  Even going into the kitchen was exciting, but going all the way upstairs to go to the bathroom felt like a true expedition.  What funny impressions children develop!

Even though in the eyes of the world, there's nothing special about this particular run-down old farm near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, to me it is precious, and I was so glad to just be there this week.

Simply being there.  Seeing these places with my own eyes.  Showing them to my children.  Remembering so many memories that I didn't even know that I knew until I was there and they came flowing back to my mind.  Seeing Austin again.  Hearing his voice, whose accent and inflection so closely mirrors the voices of other family members I knew and loved and mourned their passing years ago.  Watching him give my mom, his cousin, a big hug as we said goodbye.  Wondering when we would pass that way again.

All of that made the detour into Little Cove well worth it.  And that was only the beginning...