Timeless

I helped my dad fix his barn today. It is a slow and steady process which takes time, cooperation and patience. Rotten beams need to be replaced amongst old horse harness and years and years of junk and memories. We're standing under a leaky roof on a rainy day.


As I am hammering, trying not to fall through the rotten floor, I look over at an old, rotten pile of hay. Suddenly I see myself at eleven or twelve, sitting on top of that very pile, with three fuzzy black kittens moving under my yellow sweater. Memories come rushing in... the hay loft is filled with bales of hay and I am staking it out, waiting for the momma cat to betray her nest of new kittens. I climb down the ladder and go through a doorway, where I imagine a cow or two, or the big black work horses that we used to keep for someone else. An old saddle brings me back to the rush of galloping our pony up the road, pretending I am starring in a western movie.

Then there is my dad. We have a time crunch. We need to fix the beams and studs for the roofer to come before the snow flies. I have only a few hours before I have to return home to meet the school bus. Yet dad stops to help Johnny put a piece of wood in a vice for him to saw. He later obliges a request to drill a hole in a piece of wood, even though it requires some effort to climb over lawnmowers to unplug the fencer and plug the drill into an extension cord. Johnny has been pawing through old scraps of metal and wants to put an old bolt through his newly sawn wood.

We stop for home-made soup and good conversation. We linger over our tea although the clock ticks. Back at the barn I almost fall through the floor, and lean on a rotten piece of wood which almost lands me in two feet of chicken poop below. I arrive home tired. But it is a good tired.