Nick's blog

In William Faulkner’s book, “The Sound and the Fury” there are words and images that express such a deep, and devastating sense of loss, that it makes your heart feel heavy and dense, like velvet lined lead in your chest. And there is a pervasive phrase throughout the book that still rings in my mind. “She smelled like trees.”

I had the fortunate experience of having grandparents that had not only lived out in the country with chickens and cows, but also had a tennis court, a pool, mountains of discarded “junk” in the barnyard for contraptions and hideouts, several barns for said purpose, and acres upon acres of woods and gullies.

When we were younger, everything had a personality and a soul, I can still walk around and tell you the personality of every tree and every place. There was the tree filled with huge black carpenter ants, the knot was stained black where they came out. There was the tree by the back porch where the rain would trickle down the trunk, past the hanging laundry and broom, over the whitewash, while I listened to the thunder and my grandma watched soaps and folded clothes. There were the two trees in the front that supported the white wooden swing, their trunks grown over the rusty metal pole between them. There where the trees with the knotty exposed roots where the chickens had pecked them bald by the barn where we fed them every morning, There was a tree by the statue of the virgin Mary. There was the tree in the front surrounded with a 5 foot radius of lush ferns that were watered twice daily in there white 5 gallon buckets, ferns relatives would often borrow for weddings and anniversaries. There was the tree behind the basketball goal that kept basketballs and tennis balls from going too far out of bounds. There was some weird tree between the highway and the tennis court that I always thought was a tuttle tuttle tree from Dr. Suess. There was the orange tree, grapefruit tree, cumquat tree, pecan tree and fig tree in the orchard, and the persimmon tree. We all got in trouble for when we had a persimmon war one autumn. The tree with the tire swing in the orchard that would always ruin your clothes if you didn’t line it with old news paper. There were the big muscadine vines that grew over the fence between the house and the tennis court. There was even a pirate tree if you were willing to make the hour long hike through the woods with your pellet gun, a huge fallen pine with old cow bones near it my grandpa told us were the bones of pirates that used to sail the gully.

Its strange to see it all now, 3 years after she passed. It has been more or less abandoned since then. She had 7 children and somewhere around 28 grandchildren. She cooked dinner every Sunday, and most of us, usually about 25 or so, sometimes more if extended family or friends would all show up after church, for dinner. There would be 2 six foot collapsible tables set up in the living room, a smaller square one in the kitchen, combined with the normal dinner table with its expander put in, 20 or so extra folding metal chairs would be taken out of the closet in the old back bedroom “the girls’ room.” 25 or 3o family members eating and exchanging stories and jokes under the same roof, every single week at the same time and in the same place. There would be rice dressing, German fried potatoes cooked in a fryer outside, corn, brisket, rolls, iced tea, wine, green salad, fruit salad, and later in the day home made ice cream made in a churn with ice and salt. After dinner everyone would pitch in with the dishes, folding up the tables and chairs in the livingroom, wiping them down, bringing them back to the girls room. Some cousins would go to the back and play Nintendo, some would trek out to the woods with pellet guns and sometimes get in trouble for ending up in a field miles away, or shooting at crop dusters, some would pull out the huge rolling chest full of toys, some would swim or play basketball on the tennis court, sometimes there would be a softball game in the barn yard. And there were a few instances when we would actually try to catch a chicken by hand and put it to sleep by tucking its head under its wing and rocking it (yes, it actually works). At least 2 cousins would spend the night there almost every night; you could hear the katydids chirping so loud it almost drowned everything out, owls, coyotes would howl in the woods some nights. But you always felt safe there, incredibly safe. The linins and rooms where always meticulously clean, the sheets were always cool and crisp under the whirring ceiling fans and the ice cold window unit AC in the back where we would sleep when we stayed over. Sometimes we would watch an old black and white TV before bed.

Now, being a little older, having lost her suddenly to a stroke, and a very close cousin my same age on that side of the family to suicide within 3 years. My grandfather moved out and got remarried. The house is empty, completely empty. All of the whitewash has crumbled off the trees, the tennis court has turned black and grey and needs painting. The basketball goal is broken, the ferns are all gone, the old barns are falling down. The toys and games and pictures on the walls have all been parceled out and gone their separate ways. And things in life just don’t seem as secure or certain anymore. There is no matriarch to shield us from how desolate and lost the world can feel some days. There is no barnyard softball, no crisp, cool sheets, or an army of family. There are no rainy Sundays lying on the carpet in the den watching television with blankets and pillows. There are no carpenter ants. I don’t hear the coyotes or owls at night anymore safely in the distance outside my walls. And I don’t hear the aphids like a choir in their tree lofts making an ebbing and surging fugue.

And I miss those things, especially knowing that they can never be that way again. I guess that’s why I can understand Faulkner’s character, a debilitated man, trapped in time and unable to reconcile the innocence and comfort of something that once was, with a foreign and unforgiving reality that comes with years. And I guess that letting that be, just the way it is, is what makes a person old on the inside, and makes him grateful, quiet, sad, and humble.