essays

Where We Once Belonged

When I die, I know that some part of me will remain earthbound and return to the farm we left when I was fourteen. I have only to close my eyes and I am there as it was then. From where I so often stood, at the top of the Steep Hill, I look down into the green valley. There, at the east end, in the distance, our house perches on a rise at the farthest end of 40 acres. I descend into the valley and walk a mile or so down the county road past the few neighbors to our mailbox and the gate. I lift the u-shaped latch, swinging the slatted-metal gate forward, wide enough for me to walk through, and close the latch behind me. The long graveled driveway winds around so I cannot see the house from the road. Gazing up at the horizon, I repeat the names of the hills that ring the valley: Cave Rock, Squaw Face, Table Mountain.

It is late July. In a few weeks we will move away, emigrating to our father’s home, Australia, half a world away from the Pacific Northwest. Since retiring a year ago, after twenty-five years in the Merchant Marines, he has decided that we must leave our friends and relatives, our home, our country. He was never here as much as the rest of us, gone for months at a time, at sea.

I slip off my sandals and walk barefoot through pools of warm dust where the craters of mud-puddles have dried. To my right, a five acre field stretches to the neighbors’ fence line. The hay is nearly waist high, embroidered with Queen Anne’s lace. We will not be here to smell the fresh cut bales. I pass the creek lined with

alders; the leaves shiver in the breeze, turning gold, now green. Past the alders, I inhale the astringent aroma of blackberry vines humming with bees. The new owners will pick the crop this season. Instead of following the driveway to the graveled square where cars park, I take the shortcut, a worn dirt path between three giant fir trees leading to the front yard. The trees seem to be standing guard. I listen for the familiar soughing sound of the wind stirring their limbs; the lower boughs dip, caressing my shoulders: Welcome home, they seem to say.

I step out from the sheltering trees and there is our home: a two-story farmhouse built in 1910, with light green asphalt siding, a pink roof and a dark-green porch wrapping around two sides. The view from the southwest porch looks through an orchard of apple, pear, plum and cherry trees, toward the valley spread out below. The Steep Hill, where I started from, rises up at the opposite end of the valley.

The sheep and horses have been sold, but I imagine them placidly cropping the grass in the yard. Buck, our half-German Shepherd, half-Collie, lolls in the shade of the porch, his tongue hanging out from the heat. He ambles over and licks my hand in greeting. Only he will stay behind; the new owners have agreed to take him. To the left, the ancient barn hulks, gray and weathered, missing boards like gaps in teeth. A wooden corral fence circles a chicken run. Beyond that, I can see the garden surrounded by the deer-proof fence. At the clothesline, I follow the silhouetted motions of my mother behind a wall of sheets as she unpins and folds laundry into a basket. I hear her low, calm voice replying to my younger sister. For the first summer since we’ve lived here my mother has not preserved quarts of apple sauce, blackberry jelly, or bottled dandelion wine. My older sister, astride her sleek black horse, Apache, thunders up the field to the barn; my younger brother, his fly-fishing rod against one shoulder, heads off to the trout pond. The Chevy Suburban is gone, which means our father is not home.

Passing through the arbor, I stop to press my face into the heady sweetness of the trailing roses, then walk up the old sidewalk, inlaid with marbles and colored stones, leading to the back door. Through the back porch, full of tools and bags of feed, I step inside the house. I see it as it was before the rooms echoed with the absence of all furnishings: there is the Duncan Phyfe dining table and chairs, the Radar Range stove with the wood-burning grill, the oven’s clock face clouded by the steam from hundreds of meals. Reproductions of paintings by Renoir, Rembrandt and Constable hang from the high-ceilinged walls of the living room. I remember when Mom papered those walls the color of chocolate ice cream, adding her own crescent-shaped flourish of white trim where the walls meet the ceiling. The glass in the windows is so old, the view shimmers like a mirage. The built-in bookcase shelves are full of well-read treasures. The books, along with hundreds of record albums, packed into a trunk, will surface two months after our arrival in Sydney, like a battered piece of jetsam from a shipwreck.

At the top of a steep stairwell, four bedrooms lead off from the landing. The air up here smells of wood baked dry in the sun. The room I share with my younger sister is on the right. A dresser fronts a corner of the room and a set of bunk beds fills the space of one wall, though I remember they were sold months before we moved and we slept on the thin mattresses on the floor, our clothes and other belongings in cardboard boxes.

For decades after leaving, I dreamed that somehow I bought the farm back and I, my mother and my siblings returned to live there. After all these years and several return visits, I no longer dream that dream. The family that bought the farm from us lives there still. Perhaps they have discovered - like us - the place does not belong to them; they belong to the place.

I am there on that July day, drawn outside the house, when the summer afternoon turns to twilight.Swallows dive and swoop in great arcs over the rooftop.I look up to see my teenage self in the bedroom window.Her chin is cupped in her hands, elbows resting on the windowsill.Her fixed gaze is committing to memory every detail of the landscape below, as if she could stop time by staying still.I’d almost forgotten those pig-tails and those awful cat’s-eye glasses.She turns her head.Our eyes meet.I smile as if into a mirror.She smiles back and closes her eyes.In the gathering dusk, her image fades until just her smile remains, reminding me at first of the Cheshire cat, but now, I see it is like the smile on the face of a Buddha.