2014

2014. The New Year has passed with its charmless confetti. The frozen Massachusetts ground, with the green hair of summer browning with the chilled scrape of winter's comb, welcomed half-heartedly the passing snow showers. Christmas, as it were, was teased and tousled with the notion of a white coating. The snow soon melted and aptly fled when the lit tree twinkled in the early morning of the 25th.

I knew the flakes would fall again.

There is great faith that comes with the weather. As a child looks to the night's sky, the flickering stars like candles in the dark windows of their only known home,  I know that the winter's blackened slate held hope and wonder. If you squeeze your eyes tightly enough and the world can transform.

Transform it did.

7 years in the making and the family has reunited. All 12 siblings fell back into the world together, tumbling from their current stations in life and celebrated the holiday together once again. Families forming, new additions and happy children. Laughter and love filled our little country town, the snow  softly skirting the Powell Home, nudging the family back together again.

December 2014
Bottom Row, Left to Right, sitting: Adriana (Mike's wife), Mike holding onto daughter Lily, Sam, Robert, Joseph, Gabe the Dog
Middle Row, Left to Right, sitting: Zachary (Mary's son) on Mama's lap, Papa, Ava (Mike's daughter)
Back Row,  Left to Right, standing: Sarah, Nina, Nell, Bill, Marlena (Bill's wife), Barbara (me), Don (Mary's husband) holding Jaymes (Mary's son), Mary, Brian (Evelyn's husband), Evelyn and Gabrielle. 

Dad: A Tribute

This month on the 18th my Dad turns 60. SIXTY! That is an incredible amount of years to be alive. And that makes him the oldest person I closely know. I want to take a moment and honor who he was and who he is.

My Dad made a point to take me fishing almost every summer I was alive (and willing) to go. My strange love for canoes and the water and lakes and seashores is attributed to him.

My Dad once dragged a 50 ton (note: exaggeration) fishing net off the beach and (to my mother's lovable dismay) into our 14 passenger van and used it to rig a ladder up to the best tree house in the world. Yep, the best. It looked out over the field and backwoods and also well into the neighbor's yard. And let me please remind you that it had a FISH NET LADDER! I don't care what you had as a kid, mine was the best.

Us kids are making up a little surprise for him. I don't think he reads this blog Dad, if you are, please stop now! But the following is my addition to that surprise.

We all grow older, both kids and parents, and evolve in our own very different ways. I mean, I am living in Manhattan, the busiest place in the world (arguably, I know) and I could not be any more different from my father. I am a mid-20 year old woman with a job working for the Man, earning my corporate paycheck and obsessed with shoes. But I am similar to him in the way that I have a hard time backing down. And that I really don't like people offering their opinions at inopportune times. And we both are very very privy to onions. They're really good. Especially with sausage.

What I am trying to say is that regardless of where I am now or what I am doing with my life, my Dad really is responsible for sculpting me into this strange lady I am becoming. Strange in a beautiful kind of way.

So please, enjoy the following birthday note to my Dad and realize that the Powell brood would be nothing in character if it weren't for the Leader of the Flock. Dad.

My Dad

A game of checkers on Dad’s belly, fireplace crackling in the background. One hearty laugh and the gameboard tilted and bounced. Dad always let me choose black. Red was his favorite color, anyway.

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A short lesson in how to cast and reel at a pond in the middle of nowhere. He knew I would get it. “It’s easy, Barbara. Just don’t hook my line or Joe’s.”

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A truck bed filled with beautiful, new sand backing up into the yard. Dad then handed off shovels to Mike and Bill and Rob and a kingdom was born. Summer was never complete until the sandpile was re-stocked.

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A monstrous tickle fight in the middle of the living room. Tears rolling down my cheeks, laughing harder than I ever had before. There was never an escape!

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The first time I received Holy Communion with just the family. Dad walked behind me down the aisle with his hand on my shoulder. I turned to look at him after I received the wine, just in time to catch a smile.

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Snuggled up against Dad’s side as he read out loud on the cream-colored leather couch. My eyes drooped drowsily as Dad’s deep voice lulled me to sleep.

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My memories with Dad are always us doing something together, whether outside on the farm, in his work shop, at the beach or a trip to the dump. Dad made being a kid exciting and adventurous, with no time to be bored.

But my favorite memories, without fail, are the nights when dad would put us kids to bed. There were 4 of us girls in one room and 2 of the boys in the room across the hall. Dad would stand between both rooms and tell us stories and sing to us. Sometimes he brought out his harmonica. Sometimes he told stories about the animals he captured as a kid. He would sing “You Can’t Get to Heaven on Roller Skates” and make up silly verses as we went along: “You can’t get to heaven in a mini skirt, ‘cos the Lord will think you’re a great big flirt! Ain’t gonna try my Lord no more!” He would spend what felt like an hour or more talking to us and singing with us and making bedtime more exciting to us kids.

And you know what? I brag about my childhood all the time. Because we had it made with our Dad. He knows his stuff, doesn’t he?

A very happy and early 60th birthday to my Dad, who does not have a Facebook, nor does he have access (that I know of) to my blog. Only Mama does and she's pretty good at secrets. 

Sick Day

It was a hot and unpleasant day. The heat stuck to me like a fuzzed dryer sheet, unashamed by the electric snag it had on me. Or perhaps more so like those rascally prickled bunches that traipsing about in the woods and fields will get you. It was damn hot and I was damn uncomfortable.

To make matters worse, my head was pounding. Angry pops of hurt that refused to leave me alone, scraping up against the inner tunneling of my head, filling the gaps with reckless waves of pain.

                                

This is the worst day of my life.

It was early June. School was almost over and there was little to be accomplished in the classrooms. Teachers brought the kids outside to sit in a circle and weave dandelions in the little girls’ hair and catch grasshoppers for the boys. To quiz the group on their freshly-learned vocabulary and create stories with those new words. To laugh and bond and play in the warm shade that the beating sun created with its marriage to the trees. The four walls of the school were forgotten as children laughed the afternoon away under their melting blue ceiling poking through the harbored peeking holes in the branches.

And I was not there.

I lay there on the couch, my eyes barely able to focus on the blinking and flashing VCR. Don Quixote was there atop a plump, smiling ass, his chin crooning up to the heavens as he proudly rode down what should have been the quiet road. But his anthem followed him along his journey, a trot and a kick and a boom and a tra-la-la of adventure song, attributing the notes to his bravery and valor.

I was too uncomfortable to care.

My head lay against a swampy pillow on the couch, a blanket knotted up in a ball at my feet. A sudden surge of frozen air swept over me, causing my spine to curl against my back, a tremor to overtake my frail body. The aching coupled with a moan as I shuffled my feet, capturing the blanket and slid it up toward my arms. I grabbed at the quilted squares, pinks and roses and purples and greens sewn together in an endearing pattern.

I will always associate that blanket with being sick.

And then, a moment of peace. Of wonder. Of calm and of beauty and of perfect medicine.

The household cat—be it Checkers the dark gray and tuft white feline or Buster with the lightened gray coat or Stubby the three-legged cat— jumped up on my hot and cold stomach and nestled himself against me. It was as though he knew I was at the end of the rope, the deepest depth of the pit, the last straw of my sickly camel. He fell into a thunderous purr, brushing his head against my temperature-rising skin.

I fell into slumber, the adventurous chime of Quixote and the happy rhythm of my cat setting my sickened and uncomfortable body to rest.  

The Barn: Part 1

The barn stands tall at the tip of our rocky driveway. It's wooden body is cracked beneath the sweltering heat of the summer sun and the black top roof is ablaze. There is not even a chirp of a passing bird or a whisper of wind. All of the Granby farm sits in a pitiful pool of heat and discomfort.

Just inside the barn, within the cool, dark walls of farming days long passed, I squat in my hiding spot. The evil Lord Joseph was prowling the premises, lurking stealthily. I hold my breath, scared that even an exhale would give away my place of refuge.

My ears perk like a cat as a floor board groans just a few steps away from me. I dare to lean over, my hands pressing the floor, my knees scuffing up against the wood.  My eyes dart across the inside of the barn. I can not see the evil Lord Joseph. I lean even further, craning my neck slightly to try and catch a glimpse of his viciously black cape.

"I"VE FOUND YOU!"

A gurgled scream erupts from my throat. Hands grab my shoulders from behind and whip me backwards. The evil Lord found me!