A radiant explosion of sunshine brightened the typically dull January landscape in the small town in Michigan where my sister lives now. But, it wasn't to last long. The soft welcome of that late winter afternoon sunshine was met by a piercingly cold winter wind, presumably fresh in from a dance across the great lakes.
Alexandra pulled her blue winter hat down over her freezing ears and slipped the hood of her jacket over it, covering up her short hair in an attempt to get warm. A vague kind of longing crept over her - just a feeling really - but terribly real nonetheless. Softly, it seemed to envelope her until she found herself immersed in another time and place, another world when life was idyllic and magical.
Winters in Michigan are long and hard, as life in general has been there these last few years. It's common knowledge that the Asian automobile industry had usurped the former throne of American opulence, home-based in Detroit. But, it seems lately every town in Michigan has been impacted by the declining economy, sadly too often leading the young men into military service just for a paycheck. And, where there's job loss, there's poverty and where there's poverty there's crime, drugs, and every other imaginable human vice.
But on this cold afternoon, the hardness of life seemed to recede as she slipped into remembering a kinder and warmer time, that time in childhood when dreams are made, when hope was real and life was fun. Our childhood summers at our grandfather's Canadian home at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., were breathtaking, a gift that would remain with us for the rest of our lives. The place had always been a place of hope and healing from life's harshness, a place where new lives were begun.
It was a magical place that held meanings for each of us in our own ways. For me, it was the beauty of the place, the endless, exquisite fresh florid atmosphere, the sense of safety and space that inspired me then as it still does today. Alexandra also loved to play by the fountain with me and hide-and-seek from the others behind the garden greenhouse, but she was especially captivated by the bell tower and dark tunnel under the old house which our mother said ran all the way to the river and had been part of the Underground Railroad. Those two images stood out in her mind on this bitterly cold January afternoon.
Winters in Michigan are long and hard, as life in general has been there these last few years. It's common knowledge that the Asian automobile industry had usurped the former throne of American opulence, home-based in Detroit. But, it seems lately every town in Michigan has been impacted by the declining economy, sadly too often leading the young men into military service just for a paycheck. And, where there's job loss, there's poverty and where there's poverty there's crime, drugs, and every other imaginable human vice.
But on this cold afternoon, the hardness of life seemed to recede as she slipped into remembering a kinder and warmer time, that time in childhood when dreams are made, when hope was real and life was fun. Our childhood summers at our grandfather's Canadian home at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., were breathtaking, a gift that would remain with us for the rest of our lives. The place had always been a place of hope and healing from life's harshness, a place where new lives were begun.
It was a magical place that held meanings for each of us in our own ways. For me, it was the beauty of the place, the endless, exquisite fresh florid atmosphere, the sense of safety and space that inspired me then as it still does today. Alexandra also loved to play by the fountain with me and hide-and-seek from the others behind the garden greenhouse, but she was especially captivated by the bell tower and dark tunnel under the old house which our mother said ran all the way to the river and had been part of the Underground Railroad. Those two images stood out in her mind on this bitterly cold January afternoon.
Climbing up into the bell tower was an awesome experience. The old bell tower, reminiscent of a church steeple, was hung on worn, white wooden scaffolding with a huge bell suspended over equally old flooring. The whole area, about 10 ft. by 10 ft., was protected only by a weak 3 ft. high guardrail. Remembering the tower as an adult helps us both realize our parents' concern when we begged to go up there - a request that was rarely met. Maybe it was the out of reach nature of it made it all the more appealing to us as children.
We were never allowed to ring the bell, but we wanted to know all about when it was rung and why it was rung and if we could ring it someday. Someday never came. I remember the endless staircase that spiraled up to the tower. Hot and dry, dead flies in the tightly closed windows, which had probably never been opened, sealed shut with paint a hundred years previously.
What did that bell tower mean to Alexandra? Was it a place away? From what did she want to escape? Was it the loftiness that offered a kind of magical experience of being up and away from the activity below, a kind of heavenly height that enchanted her? I guess it was all of that and that everything in those days was a kind of magical mystery tour. Our natural curiosity and joyous pursuit to explore endlessly, lured us into the high and low places. The radiant sunshine on this cold January day reminded her of those times. The memory kept her warm as she struggled against the wind to get home to her waiting musician husband.
But there was so much more. It was a place where a hardworking family would come home to recover from life's heavy demands during equally hard former era. It was a time when the country was still steeped in its worst depression with long breadlines, when the unemployment rate nationwide was close to 27 %, strangely the same unemployment rate in inner-city Detroit now. It was a time when Europe, struggling in its fight to free Jewish captives, imprisoned, tortured and gassed by the nightmare Nazi machine, beckoned American support.
Our grandfather, who had been stricken with polio as a child yet managed to reign over the large family from his wheelchair, died just before our father was drafted into World War II, leaving our gentle grandmother doubly heartbroken. This magical place, now silent, stilled in time, was a vibrant playground for us. As our parents, aunts and uncles gathered inside, discussing more serious events unfolding globally in the late 1960s, we danced in water fountains, climbed garden walls and dreamed endlessly.
Alexandra's cheeks were burning from the wind when she opened the back glass sliding doors into their large old house, a house that in many ways seemed to resemble that old house back in Niagara. It too was near water, it too had been home to so much living as her three children grew up.
Her husband met her at the door, smiling. A musician, sensitive to the movements of the soul, saw the distance in her eyes. He knew deeply both her strong creative, passionate nature, and his own personal artistic angst. As a musician with a strong reputation as both a teacher and a drummer, recently he has felt the oppression as a technological and litigious age bore down on him. He found his music a welcome retreat, a place of healing and joy which transcended their life in Michigan.
Alexandra knew there was so much more to life than the daily grind she was so immersed in lately. She also wanted to find her own inner artist, she needed to go back and reclaim something that was left behind at that old house. In her emerging memories, even growing desire to return, the memories themselves would unchain buried dreams. Maybe the memories of the old bell tower and underground railroad even help her have the courage to explore her own creativity.Our grandfather, who had been stricken with polio as a child yet managed to reign over the large family from his wheelchair, died just before our father was drafted into World War II, leaving our gentle grandmother doubly heartbroken. This magical place, now silent, stilled in time, was a vibrant playground for us. As our parents, aunts and uncles gathered inside, discussing more serious events unfolding globally in the late 1960s, we danced in water fountains, climbed garden walls and dreamed endlessly.
Alexandra's cheeks were burning from the wind when she opened the back glass sliding doors into their large old house, a house that in many ways seemed to resemble that old house back in Niagara. It too was near water, it too had been home to so much living as her three children grew up.
Her husband met her at the door, smiling. A musician, sensitive to the movements of the soul, saw the distance in her eyes. He knew deeply both her strong creative, passionate nature, and his own personal artistic angst. As a musician with a strong reputation as both a teacher and a drummer, recently he has felt the oppression as a technological and litigious age bore down on him. He found his music a welcome retreat, a place of healing and joy which transcended their life in Michigan.
(Photo of the front of the house and the bell tower.)
Once used as a safe house for slaves fleeing the real oppression of slavery, today the old underground tunnel at our grandfather's house has been closed up - maybe to keep little girls from getting lost in there. The memories of that dark, damp tunnel and the bell tower where she once felt as free as a bird in the large oak trees over that beautiful place, helps her reconnect to a more innocent time, a time of real dreaming, of vision, of life itself. It is a forever place.
Maybe childhood memories don't solve anything, really, but they help us reconnect to something that may have been lost, left behind and forgotten in the dusty trails of our lives. They may signal an unacknowledged longing in the soul to grow, evolve and nudge us to greater awareness of our own creative dream-making. Maybe there are times when the memories of the past help liberate our long forgotten childhood dreams, buried by our unwitting slavery to the cacophonous demands of our daily lives, even our blind collaboration with the collective illusion that leads us further away from our truth.
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