Chores and Barns

The morning chores are done, these easy village chores. I have let the pet out, scrubbed the glass on the fireplace, lit the fire, fed Judge, started the coffee, and cleaned the kitty litter. Oh, and emptied the dishwasher. Easy chosen chores, the world would not come to an end if they weren’t done. Judge and Annie are horrified with that thought. The world would come to an end if Judge weren’t fed. He would sit at my side with the most sorrowful expression in his eyes…I love you…you have forgotten me…I love you still. I don’t have any barn chores. No buckets of water to carry to the barn, no horses to let out, no stall to muck out, no hay to throw out the upstairs window.

It wasn’t bad, those chores. You would think it was terrible. Children rise to any chore situation with their instinctive defense. Where there are two children there will be a fight over chores. A true win is when the parent sighs and does the deed herself, easier than hearing the squabble. There was no way, though, that Mom would EVER go into the barn and do the chores.

If you went to bed early enough, and got enough rest, and got up early and went out peacefully and looked out the back window and saw the early light through the willow tree fronds, if you fondled and scratched and got your nuzzles, and the Jimmy actually chose to go out the door the way he was supposed to, if all those things happened, it was a peaceful, loving moment. Of course it never happened. Oh maybe it happened once.

A lot of the barns are still there. Ours is. Faithful’s is. The one across the street is, and the old barns on our walks around town are, in their bleached grey old hemlock siding with the windows in a bright green or leftover white. Every house had a barn. We never asked why every house had a barn. A barn is pretty big just for a car. So every barn had stuff you might find a need for. A chair with three legs. A bunch of milk cans. Wicker lawn furniture that snapped off and stuck up. Dresser drawers, trunks. Broken lawn mowers.

They weren’t exactly forbidden, the barns. Why would kids want to go in a barn anyway? They did, though, we did. The sun came through a high open window, grabbed the dust off the hay, and shone a pathway of light all the way to the floor. Bales of hay piled high were a set of building blocks for forts and tunnels and houses. Bales of hay were snipped apart and tossed in free-for-alls. Mountains of hay were created and fought over and slid down. And then, months later, when the mess was discovered by a father, well, who could name the perpetrators? It wasn’t me. Of course it wasn’t me.

Oh and behind the barn, all the experiments behind the barn. Paper rolled up to make a sort of cigarette, filled with hay maybe, or just empty, and lit up and inhaled and then coughing and choking and deciding smoking was overrated. Or the real thing, an uncle’s purloined cigar, lit up and inhaled and YUCK I am going to be sick. Why would anyone voluntarily do that.

We walk down the street, Faithful and I, and I see the barn with the corn crib, the glorious corn crib, that cleaned out became the best sleepover sight in Chautauqua County, where you could see the lights in the forested hill behind the village, lights that must have been fire flies but they weren’t that night, they were spies signaling deep secrets to the Russians, in Morse Code. The corn crib became an ark raised high in floods of imagination and two by two filled with plots of drama and romance and danger.

Chores. Cleaning the smoky glass with the ashes of the fire that smoked it. So philosophical. Feeding Judge. So gratifying. Emptying the dishwasher. So forsightful. Making the coffee. So satisfying. Cleaning the kity litter. Well. At least it is done. Good morning. Have you done your chores?

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