The Farm

I have a whole slew of first cousins. My father was the oldest of seven and together the siblings averaged two children apiece. There were a few sets of us: a couple who were born in the 60s, possibly even the late 50s as my oldest aunt and her mother, my grandmother, were having a baby at the same time — this happened more often before birth control was widely available and women had late in life or surprise babies¹ — one set born in the mid-60s, three of us in the early 70s, and then one last one in the late 70s.

This is a bunch of us, pictured with our grandmother Jewel and our PaPa Claude. On the front, L to R are Brian, Steve, Denise and then me with the Dorothy Hamill haircut. Right behind me is Kevin and in the back row are are my brother Liam, Suzanne and Alana. We’re missing Brent and Carol from our core group and some of the much older cousins.

The core group was a mixture of boys and girls and when we were young, we all spent a lot of time together. There was almost always a subgroup of us there on Sundays, usually missing Alana and Steve who lived on the other side of the state. Our families would converge at the farm after church, gather around the table for an incredible home-cooked lunch, usually a meat and three² and homemade biscuits and sometimes cornbread, too, that my grandmother somehow put together after returning from church herself.

After lunch our parents would retire to the living room for naps of varying lengths and we would be turned loose. There was a creek about three hundred yards from the house and we’d head there after walking through two gates and being sure to close them after us, a command embedded in our brains by our grandfather. None of us had ever seen any of his dairy cows get out, but we knew it would be bad if they did. To get to the creek, sometimes we’d have to walk by the aforementioned cows— Holsteins — and they scared us a little with their size, but they generally ignored us altogether.

The creek was always more fun if we’d been allowed to change out of our church clothes. I can remember once somehow ending up in the creek anyway and watching the skirt part of my Sunday dress rise up and float on the surface of the water. I can also remember my mother’s ire that I had gotten in the creek in my dress. That seems very unlike a thing I would do, being the good, rule-following girl that I was, but it definitely happened.

I was probably trying to impress my older cousins. I was the only girl in the early 70s group of cousins and while I remember playing with giant metal Tonka trucks under the big tree near the well with Brian and Steve, I really always longed to be with the older group, in which there were three girls.

When the older group began to get their drivers licenses, they would often spend Sunday afternoons driving one of the many and various nearby dirt roads. My father had bought my brother a ‘64 Chevy Impala that had enormous front and back bench seats and he could fit a lot of us in there, though I and the other younger cousins were often left behind, being considered too young and uncool for such things. I can remember wanting to go with them so badly and the absolute pit that would open in my stomach, how my heart would clench when they would drive off without me, the corners of my mouth tugging down as I tried not to cry.

I remember one time they did let me tag along (but not my same age boy cousins!) and we were packed in like sardines, seven or eight of us crammed into a space fit for four or five. This was before seatbelts were required — I was probably sitting in someone’s lap — but you can’t drive very fast on dirt roads — well, you can, but we didn’t — and the most dangerous thing likely to happen was a wild turkey running across the road in front of us. I don’t remember anything else about that day except the slightly nerve-wracking crossing of a small wooden bridge with no rails of any kind and the sheer joy at having been included.

I would spend the night at my grandparents’ regularly. I remember the smell of the line-dried sheets, the smell of the milking shed, the tractor shed, and hay. I remember the smell of the dirt from their garden. I remember feeding the calves with a giant bottle. I remember the hot smell of the vinyl seats of my PaPa’s truck in the summer, the sweet-rank smell of the spittoon in the floorboard, the dim coolness inside the old store we would go to each afternoon, the icy coldness of the small Coke bottle I was allowed to have. I remember PaPa’s twinkling blue eyes. I remember Grandma rubbing my back at night when I was feeling homesick. I remember being allowed a slice of Grandma’s homemade poundcake that was always on the sideboard.

I often felt joy when at my grandparents’ house, though I didn’t know it was joy then. At the time it just felt like love.

I heard this song recently and fell in love with it. Every time I hear it I think of my grandparents’ house. I don’t know where we go after we die, but if we go somewhere, and we get to pick, I pick the farm.

1. My grandfather was the oldest of eighteen children, all from the same mother and father. My father’s youngest uncle was only five years older than he was, and that great-uncle of mine, the last of the eighteen, died after my father.

2. I saw someone online the other day saying that his wife didn’t know what a meat and three was, so in case you are one of those people a meat and three refers to a type of restaurant at which you can order one type of meat and three sides, often vegetables, but not always, especially if there’s mac n’ cheese on the menu.