My youngest son was already over 6 feet tall by the time he was 13 years old. I homeschooled him during his thirteenth year. It was a difficult time for him and a worrisome time for me, because he was beginning to make bad choices that had real potential to get him into a lot of trouble if I didn't intervene.
So I intervened, took all choices away from him, and kept him close to me that year so I could help him find his footing again.
We spent a lot of time together during that year, and one day he came back from walking the dog by a stream at a park close to where we lived, and told me that he had found a treasure chest.
He asked me if I wanted it, and I said yes. So we drove down to the stream to retrieve it.
We parked beside the stream, and I watched my tall lanky boy wade down the middle of the stream. He walked quite a way, and while still watching him, I wondered just how far he had to go to get this "treasure chest".
Eventually he stopped, and still in the middle of the knee deep water, bent down and picked something up from the bottom of the stream.
It was obvious from the way he was moving, and struggling with the object, that it was extremely heavy. And as I watched him struggle all the way back with it, I wondered just what the heck my child had found.
He had indeed found a treasure chest. Or more accurately, an old ammunition box. And he gave it to me as a gift.
It is old, the lid is rusted half shut, it weighs a ton, it has moved with me to every place I have lived since my son gave me to me. It sits in my new yard, and I love it very much. It will always come with me wherever I go.
Now it sits in the yard of my rented cabin in Juneau Alaska.
When my second husband and I and my two young boys first moved from Western Ontario down to middle Tennessee I still did not have a work permit at that point, so could not get a job.
My husband was new to his position and the salary was pretty low. And we were broke. Flat broke.
And then one day I was driving in the neighborhood that we lived in at the time (a fairly well-to-do bedroom community just outside of Nashville) and someone had left a pine armoire by the side of the road for the trash.
It was beautiful, unscratched, fully functional for what I needed - a TV stand with doors I could close, and two drawers below it to store videos. I stopped and asked the owners if I could take it and when they said yes, I thought I had struck gold.
After that I began to notice that well-to-do bedroom community dwellers had a tendancy to throw very nice things away.
I've picked up some really nice things over the years by the side of the road. The sled and wooden hat boxes below are a couple of curbside things that made it up here.
We use the stacked boxes now as an end table. The top one was actually a lamp in another life - I took the legs, pole, and lamp parts off of it and kept the box.
The stoneware crocks were a huge PIA for my Mountain Boy to bring up here to Juneau, but he brought them up because he knew that I like them so much.
Somewhere still in boxes down underneath the house are another 15 or so of them, and after trying to figure out where to put them in this small Alaskan cabin, we have decided that we just need to build some shelves and leave them on the covered porch outside.
They were all very cheap (because almost all of them have something wrong with them - a chip here, a crack there, maybe a broken handle), and I have bought almost all of them for next to nothing at yard sales over the past 10 years or so.
I bought this milk can while I was still living in Canada and hauled it all the way down to Tennessee when we moved.
It was rusty and dented and a mess, but I loved it anyway.
While still waiting for a work permit, I killed time (in one of my extremely brief creative periods) by painting it.
It looks like it could use another paint job after all this time, but I may or may not ever get to it.....
While still living in ritzy bedroom community about 14 years ago, my youngest son and I were walking the dog at yet another park beside a lake.
It had stormed badly the night before, and as we were walking along the shore, walking and talking and spending wonderful time together, we came across this wooden boat rudder.
We took it home, I cleaned it up, and at each house I have lived in since that time it has held a place of honor on a wall in the livingroom.
I love this rudder. But more importantly, when I look at it I think about my son.........
For about a year, around 2001 I think, I worked for a hospital in a small neighboring town.
One day I was walking in the parking lot of the hospital, and saw this table standing beside the dumpster.
I recognized it as the table that had been sitting since the 1950's in the employee break room.
I asked someone why it was now sitting beside the dumpster, and was told that it was being thrown away to make room for bistro tables and chairs.
Excitedly I asked if I could have the table, and when I was told yes, and not owning a truck at that time, scrambled to find someone who could take it to my house.
It is about 9 feet long, solid wood, has three drawers in the front of it with brass handles, and yes...I love that stupid table.
My Mountain Boy and I fretted for months about whether or not to bring it to Alaska, and if we did how the heck were we going to pull it off, and get it up here in one piece.
And what we would have to leave back in Tennessee in order to make room for it.
We left a lot of stuff. A whole lot from a big house.
But my Mountain Boy found a way to bring this table, and it now sits in the kitchen.
A bird house that my youngest son made for me for Mothers Day when he was about 12 years old.
Yet one more of those crazy things that means a lot to me, that has little monetary value but has huge emotional value.
I remember one Christmas when the boys were about 18 and 20 years old. One was a senior in high school and the other was in his second year of college, and neither one of the guys had much money to buy gifts.
Chris (my youngest) called me at work a few days before Christmas to ask me where the Christmas tree stand was.
We were living in the country at the time and he had cut me down a Christmas tree.
I told him where it was, and when I got home that night the biggest tree I had ever seen in someone's house, was set up in my den. I have no idea how he even got it through the narrow front door.
It took up half the room (he had moved a bunch of furniture into another room to make room for it), and he had put the ornaments on it.
He told me I could change the ornaments out, or put more lights on it if I wanted to.
I told him it looked perfect just the way it was.......
That same Christmas my oldest boy Sean made me two CD's. There were two new CD's that had just come out on the market, and even though I had not mentioned them, my son knew what music I liked. He downloaded them and gave them to me, and I was very very pleased.
The fact that my youngest son had cut down a tree from along our neighbors' fence line........and the fact that my oldest son had downloaded music without paying for it was beside the point.........
My kids (little lawbreakers that they were) searched for and found ways to please their mother.
And I was pleased.
From my yard in Tennessee to my yard in Alaska
My son's antlers from the first (the one and only) deer he ever shot. It was on our own property out in the country in middle Tennessee, and we ate deer meat throughout the winter.
He was 15 that year.........
This walking stick was made by a fine man from Eastern Tennessee named Tree Topper.
LC and Tree knew each other in Vietnam and then lost touch with each other when they returned stateside.
One day maybe 20 years after they got back, LC responded to a police call. Tree was at the scene, they recognized each other and rekindled their friendship.
And they have been friends ever since.
Tree is native American, and I don't know what his real name is, but he (not surprisingly) had (before he retired) a tree trimming service. He is one of those guys who could scale 100 foot trees like they were nothing, and then cut them off as he worked his way down.
I have only met this man once, about a year before I left Tennessee.
Vietnam and his experiences over there still remain a very powerful influence in his life. But there is also another side to him. He is wonderfully giving, has a genuine sense of humor, and is chivalrous.......so chivalrous to me that I was not sure how to respond.
Only Tree would say something like "I lost a lot of muscle mass when that cannon ball hit me in the head....."
His heart is good.
Tree gave this walking stick to my Mountain Boy.
My Angel..........
As I continue to unpack the boxes underneath the house I continue to find things that I have not seen in six months.
As with most moves, but especially with this move to Alaska, a lot was left behind. These things in the pictures are some of the things that made it.
They don't hold any value in terms of money, but every one of them means a lot in terms of the stories they represent. And stories are what make a life......
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