Beyond the Barn

It is years past its glory days but those days were the most precious to me.  Now the old barn must be torn down and along with it go some of my dearest childhood memories.

The barn was a mysterious, lovely place to all the children who came to it.  Our friends found it fascinating and we were proud to show them our hideouts, our secret meeting places and the wonderful treasures inside.  It was a dark place so you weren’t sure what lay too far back in its corners but yet it was comforting at the same time.  It was a home to the sweet smelling feed barrels, horse saddles and bridles, and old garden equipment, dusty and rusty from lack of use. 

The barn’s tin roof was a refuge from the sun and was musically alive when rain would fall.  The hayloft was filled with rectangular bales of hay that my sisters and I loved to sit upon and hold our secret country club meetings. We would open the loft door and look over the barnyard area as we repeated our pledges and made plans for the future.  It seemed huge and vast and we felt like we had a handle on the world.  The connections my sisters and I made then will last always.

The cows and horses would eat below the loft and as we brushed them we had dreams of grandeur.  It was a privilege to be the one who pushed the hay from the loft onto the waiting animals below.  Chickens (while hated by us girls) would strut in and out of the barn and seemed to delight in flying from a perch and scaring us.  Kittens, puppies and even rabbits all had a home at one time in the old sanctuary.

Years have passed by and the animals have all gone.  Mom has been unable to care for the barn or make any repairs and each passing year has taken its toll on the old barn.  The tin has mostly blown away from the roof, the wood has become weak and rotted, and the color has all but faded away. 

I pay a tribute to the old place.  I have never found a solace quite like the one I had in the loft and barn and I think my sisters feel the same. We dreamt of the future and thought things would go on forever just as they were then.  While those adventures were years ago, the tears of loss flow easily and mournfully today.   When we lose a childhood landmark, it brings a sense of reality and reckoning that we are changing too.  Maybe that’s the hardest part.