My cousin the Charlottesvillain posted today at Tigerhawk an exquisite piece about a family place that is now his own but where every step connects and reconnects to past generations.
"I spent Friday afternoon in the old building we were taught to call “the barn,” although most would call it the garage. Its an old stables, painted dark green and standing apart from the house, and it was where my grandparents kept their car when I was young. It hangs out over a hillside and most of it is held up with pillars of dubious strength, and I’ve been told not to park cars there anymore. It’s still filled with tools that go back to when my grandfather was around, along with the detritus of our house renovation: siding, lumber, old screen doors and commodes, and contractor’s equipment apparently in temporary storage. On Friday, after spending my whole life timidly venturing into the barn occasionally to borrow a tool, I finally made it mine. It was always a mysterious place, and practically forbidden when I was young. It gave me a very strange feeling to be in charge of it, moving things that had not been moved in decades, and deciding where they should go. I hope “poor ole Pop” doesn’t mind too much."
CV is a marvelous writer, and his Christmas letters are legendary in our family. His description of belonging to a place and yet redefining his relationship to it resonates deeply for me after my most recent visit to my Grandmother at "Windrock" on Buzzards Bay, and especially as I suspect that this may have been the last time I will see her there. Sipping bourbon with family spirits and feeling the wheel make another turn forward is a place I am familiar with, and although I only visited CV's Indian Gap as a toddler, that place and his experiences there come alive in the telling. You can read the entire post here.
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