THE HOMECOMING

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On the front porch, the plywood benches, painted a mud color since I left, sat empty. So often I had rested there in the evening and let the ivory-crowned mountain valley cradle me for a spell. To my left, a dead Christmas tree leaned in a white margarine bucket.

Outside the barn, I noticed with a pang that my oval flower bed was gone. Also gone was the graceful clutch of birch trees that had marked the point of land above the pond. I had leaned against their tattered bark often and once caught the sight of a great horned owl staring from one of the top branches. He observed me for over an hour. Later, on a walk out to the Ningunsaw River, we had been startled to find him lying dead on the trail. Jay had stuffed him and he had surveyed our main room ever since.

I walked back and perched on the back porch, where I noticed the little red wheelbarrow that Natalia's father had made her when she was two years old tipped over beside me. The bright red paint was nearly worn away and a substantial crack ran the length of it. The kick-sled on which we had glided down the sparkling river sat marooned on the grass close by. Descending a quick 40-foot decline, I caught my breath when I saw the pond. Three stout stumps poked above the once-deep water, in the stifling embrace of several feet of silt. Along the center ran a stranded stretch of grass-crazed land. Beyond was the frowzy brush island which was once the only protrusion. Behind me in a damp log building, the water wheel whirled on in ranting rhythm.

I rushed along toward the spillway where I saw Natalia running my way, sobbing her heart out "It looks so horrible!" she wailed. And so small. She had remembered it as a much larger place. Together we pushed on to the garden. Bands of tulips speared the soil here and there amongst the matted spread of grass, but the expanse on which we had once grown most of our food had gone untilled...for years it seemed. Ben burst through the fringe of alder and joined Natalia and me. As I embraced him his chest heaved with sobbing. Although what he wailed was, "My Archie comics are all gone!" I think what was hitting him full force for the first time was the loss of this life. I suspect that when we left, a light went out.

When I climbed the hill and reluctantly went back inside, I was amazed to find so much of myself strewn about the shambles of what had once been a warm and vibrant home. In the entryway, the herbs that I had dried still sat in gallon jars, opaque with time and neglect—dried parsley, oregano, zucchini, mint, sage, rose hips, and more. My fancy Findlay oval wood cookstove, in which I had baked scores of pies, cakes, batches of bread, muffins, and other delectables, was overgrown with a thick coat of dust and grime.

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