The house has been sold. I'm not "allowed" to snoop around the barn anymore or run my fingers over the grooves in the wood my grandfather made writing memories in carpenter's pencil on the wall of the garage. How many cows he owned on Sept 15 1957...or the horseshoe's he nailed to the wall. The lilacs that bloomed each early summer next to the white washed garage were barely acknowledged. They were just lilacs and they would always be there.
I moved away. I came back to visit less frequently. It wasn't until my gransmother's 90th birthday celebration at Hainstock that I realized the beauty and simplicity of lilacs. They were cut for table vases. Every table had sprigs of lilacs- pink, purple, white. Memories of the lilacs on the farm. Driving through Red Deer.. lilacs bushes bloomed. Lilacs were a memory of the praires and how much I enjoyed the fragrance of their summer blooms.
We'd sit at the kitchen table- next to the bay window that looked out on the lawn. My grandmother watched the birds and encouraged them to come to the window with birdseed feeders. Chickadee-dee-dee she would say. An occasional blue jay.. but always a robin would be looking for worms in the grass. My grandmother would always say that spring had arrived because there would be a "robin red breast" in the yard. It was a symbol for a new beginning and that winter was breaking.
I love these things..things from the farm. The wheat and barley fields. Yellow yellow Canola fields against blue blue skies. Tangled lines of barbed wire and roses that grow in ditches. Barn swallows dancing on the wind and peeling paint from an old barn or shed. Abandoned farmhouses and their secrets. Lilacs and robins and the peaceful simple air of a small Alberta town. I immortalize these things, pay homage to them permanently in my flesh. Yesterday I had lilacs and 2 robins tattooed on my leg. It's like a lace- delicate and worthy. An heirloom that can't be passed down.
