Memories
Swing on an Old Gate
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Clearing My Land, Clearing My Life
The other day
I began something I never thought would happen: tearing down the chicken coop.
I've loved the old rusty outbuilding, so organic and elemental and rising
from pure down home stuff. Jimmy-rigged all the way around, the coop was the
epitome of rural.
Ripping it apart wasn't a conscious plan, but I've been looking at my land with a wider expanse lately and somehow the chicken coop didn't fit in the picture. After my friend Laura had such a grand time felling trees a few weekends ago, she offered to help tear down the coop.
"It'll make cutting trees
a lot easier," she said. She was right and I took
her up on her offer. And the next day when I went out to survey the small
but substantial dent we'd made in the project, I knew immediately what it
was about.
I'm clearing my land because my life is clearing.
The obvious times when the outer
clearly reflects the inner feels like
magic; and this time the metaphor of cutting trees and making more space in
place of the old chicken coop is extraordinary.
Nearly two years ago I began parting from longtime friends, as we outgrew
our need for each other. Each parting should have felt like skin ripping from
my bones. How odd that it felt common. Friendships spanning 37, 22 and 20
years merely folded back into the journey. The resulting gap left me feeling
disoriented for awhile, yet I continued on feeling completely intact.
Then a few weeks ago I got a "Dear John" from another friend. We'd palled around for six years, laughing and crying together; one evening we even burned relics of past men in my woodstove, a ritual we talked about again and again.
Her letter wasn't completely out
of the blue, though. I'd begun to tire of
her repetitious whining. Everything was everyone else's fault and she was
always the victim. No longer willing to maintain that stance in my own life,
maybe I wasn't supportive enough of her. The day after I got her letter, I
began clearing my land, clearing away the dead wood knowing she was doing
the same.
This is the beauty of living in
the country. For some reason it's easier
here than in town to watch how outer events mirror inner-life phases. It
hasn't taken much lately to see that my small patch of forest has turned
into a garden of sage advice. Easily it's taught that along with loss often
comes an unexpected spaciousness.
Also, with trees coming down, the old coop being demolished I'm getting around
to seeing that when a parting comes, it's always the right time--whether we're
ready for it or not.
(This first appeared in "Born to Remodel" my regular column in The New Mexican.)
Memories
Swing on an Old Gate
Well, I made it back to New Mexico in one piece. But then I had to endure
some teasing while unloading the U-Haul. I'd rounded up my friend Dodge to
help out.
"What's this?" he asked, a tone of incredulity in his voice.
I turned; he was holding a true treasure. "It's a gate," I said.
"Sure am glad you didn't leave it behind."
I explained that the gate had been part of my parents' patio since 1946. I
have fond memories of swinging on that gate.
"You don't even have a fence," Dodge reminded me.
"That doesn't matter," I insisted, and after arriving back home,
I began eyeing my garden with renewed interest. Before being called away to
my mother's side while she died, I'd worked long hours on a stone pathway
in my rock garden making it longer and sturdier. And it's funny. For years,
while looking at the garden through the kitchen window, an idea kept creeping
in at the edges of my thoughts. It always seemed that a gate at the end of
the stone steps would be perfect. Never mind there was no fence.
It took weeks to clean out my mother's house, and one day a long-time friend
since junior high came by to help. He was the one who suggested taking the
gate. Dave started mowing lawns in high school and today has a well respected
landscape company. He has an eye for design when it comes to creating ambiance
in gardens.
"You don't even have to let it weather," he said, running his hand
over the rounded edges of the rails. And he went to work loosening the gate
from its moorings. It wasn't easy. When my father built the stone wall, he
sunk some bolts into the mortar that the gate's post attached to. There was
no way those bolts were coming out. So Dave got a hatchet and split the post.
Then he had to cut the heads off the screws to extract the hinges. Finally
it was free; and now it's ready for my garden.
It'll take some doing, but the scene from the kitchen window will be wonderful:
a little stone pathway leading up to a garden gate. How picturesque. I'll
always be grateful Dave saw the potential. "That gate was a part of your
childhood," he'd said. What he doesn't know is it's even more special
now. Dave lived down the alley and we went steady for a whole day in seventh
grade. We laugh about it every time we see each other. Sweet memories will
forever live in that gate, something impossible to find in a new one.
